A Japanese man with only one finger attempted to summit the highest mountain in the world this weekend, but to no avail.
Nobukazu Kuriki was trying to climb Mt. Everest for the eighth time when he fell seriously ill and lost contact with the rest of his team. Kuriki was only working with one finger, as he had lost the rest to frostbite during his past attempts to climb the worlds highest peak.
So during their descent, the rest of Kurikis team got separated from him in the dark of the night. They tried to locate him but to no avail.
“Kuriki stopped responding to radio communication and we couldnt see his headlamp when we looked up from the bottom in the dark,” his team wrote on Facebook. “[The] team near Camp 2 climbed up his route to search for him and discovered Kuriki who passed away due to low body temperature.”
Before he became the third climber to die this month on Everest, Kuriki ominously updated his friends from home on his progress through Facebook.
“Now I feel the pain and difficulty of this mountain. I appreciate it and I am climbing,” he wrote recently.
Now I get it. People who try to climb Mt. Everest are hard drivers. Theyre the triathletes of mountains. Nobody ever says you have to be sane to climb one of natures most deadly formations. But even the most insane athlete might want to reconsider going back to a mountain thats already claimed all but one of your fingers. Its really not a hard equation. If youve already lost nine digits to climbing, it might be time to pick up a new hobby. I hear soccer is really popular this time of year.
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