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Earth Science

Climbers Hold World's Highest Tea Party on Mount Everest (cnn.com) 46

Posted by msmash from the for-the-record dept.
High tea took on a whole new meaning for Andrew Hughes and his climbing crew. From a report: The group of adventurers held a tea party at 21,312 feet above sea level at Mount Everest's Camp 2 in Nepal last year, setting a new 'Guinness World Record -- which was officially recognized by Guinness this month -- for the highest tea party ever held. Hughes, a self-described high-endurance athlete from Seattle, Washington, said he first had the idea for the tea party early in the pandemic when Covid-19 travel restrictions and shutdowns meant expeditions were not possible. He said the isolation made him realize he missed the community more than the summits. "The greatest things in life are often those shared," Hughes said, adding he hopes the feat -- held on May 5, 2021 -- will "inspire others to seek their own dreams, no matter the heights." According to a news release, Hughes' "highest of high tea parties ... exceeded the previous mark by thousands of feet in altitude and was full of complexities, including carrying supplies through the treacherous Khumbu Icefalls."
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Climbers Hold World's Highest Tea Party on Mount Everest More

Climbers Hold World's Highest Tea Party on Mount Everest

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  • Actually, I believe Cheech and Chong had the highest tea party sometime in the 70's in LA.

    But I could be wrong about the tea.

  • I was pleasantly surprised that this wasn't a joke based around cannabis. Now the question is, does it have to be a land based tea party? Can it be by plane or shuttle?

  • Water boils at 78 deg C at this altitude. What with the outside temperature, you are certain of a cold cuppa.

    • More to the point at 78C the water is not hot enough to make a decent brew

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Zocalo ( 252965 )
      78C is fine for serving prior to consumption. Really, you shouldn't be drinking anything much hotter than 60-65C anyway, so you'd still have a fairly decent amount of time to consume it before it cooled down too much, even without decanting it into an insulated mug or thermos.

      • The problem is that if the water boils at 78C in the thin atmosphere up there, that's probably not hot enough to steep the tea leaves - I don't know what the effects of atmospheric pressure would have on that process.

        There's a good chance that they drank very weak tea if they didn't bring a pressure cooker to actually get the water to a proper steeping temperature, or pre-brew.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Zocalo ( 252965 )
          Utimately, it was a stunt and a way to get a World Record nod from Guiness. If they had thought it through they would have probably realised they need to increase the pressure to boil the water and brought a small pressure cooker or something modified to the same ends, pre-brewed and re-heated it, or just been content with weak tea. Sure, tea-drinking purists would probably have a fit at the latter two ideas, but a perfectly steeped brew was kind of a secondary aim here, don't you think?

  • Everest has become a dumping ground of human waste, dead bodies, and garbage. [unimelb.edu.au] It's time that we found another career for Nepalize sherpas and a source of revenue for the Nepal gov't instead of the large climbing fees. Having a YOLO competition with confections at the summit is just arrogant.

    • List of dead bodies with actual pictures and short story, when known. (unsettling) https://www.altereddimensions.... [altereddimensions.net]

    • Having a YOLO competition with confections at the summit is just arrogant.

      At 21,000 feet, they were more than a mile below the summit.

    • Maybe someone needs to go clean it up?

    • I'm not an expert, or even a connoisseur of mountain climbing. (Most of what I know comes from the wikipedia). But I've read all this stuff about Mt Everest and I can't help but feel like the whole Everest thing has been cheapened somehow.

      If I were young and fit and rich enough (or had sponsors who were rich enough), and got seriously into mountain climbing my goal would to climb K2, not Everest. I even like that K2 doesn't really even have a name. (That info I also got from the wikipedia.) Of course,

      • K2 (Karakoram Range, Peak # 2) has many names. The name "Mount Godwin Austen" is for the peak's first European surveyor, Col. H.H. Godwin Austen. The Chinese call it "Qogir Feng" The Nepalese call it "Dapsang" or "Chogori"

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by shoor ( 33382 )

          I don't know why the Nepalese would have a name for it, as it isn't in Nepal. (One thing I always thought was interesting was that the two highest mountains were actually pretty far apart. Nepal has 7 of the 8 highest mountains, but not K-2, which just makes K-2 even more cool somehow.) About the names, here's what the wikipedia has to say (I edited out stuff in weird fonts that slashdot doesn't like, also
          footnote nrs.):

          The policy of the Great Trigonometrical Survey was to use local names for mountains wherever possible[b] and K1 was found to be known locally as Masherbrum. K2, however, appeared not to have acquired a local name, possibly due to its remoteness. The mountain is not visible from Askole, the last village to the south, or from the nearest habitation to the north, and is only fleetingly glimpsed from the end of the Baltoro Glacier, beyond which few local people would have ventured. The name Chogori, derived from two Balti words, chhogo ("big") and ri ' ("mountain") ) has been suggested as a local name, but evidence for its widespread use is scant. It may have been a compound name invented by Western explorers or simply a bemused reply to the question "What's that called?" It does, however, form the basis for the name Qogir by which Chinese authorities officially refer to the peak. Other local names have been suggested including Lamba Pahar ("Tall Mountain" in Urdu) and Dapsang, but are not widely used.

  • Seems to me like that'd qualify.

  • If they had dumped 340 chests of tea inti a glacier's crack disguised as Indian warriors however, I would be impressed.

  • I can recall making tea from psilocybin mushrooms with a group of friends back in the 80's. It was like a page out of Lewis Carroll.
  • Must be a slow news day. Who cares about a tea party by highly motivated people? And were will all that waste go? Is it time to add high altitude mountaineering to the enviro 'do not do if you love our planet' list?
  • World's highest altitude kegger?
  • Had a cup of tea the last time I flew on a commercial jet.

    • Did any of your seatmates join you? I think you need at least 2 people to make it a party. (Or stuffed animals may qualify too, perhaps.)

  • A tea party at a popular tourist spot should not be news. Nothing about Everest should have been news after it became a meme attraction.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Gavino ( 560149 )
      24 hour news cycle brah. Every stupid tidbit gets posted / reported. Infuriating stuff like this gets people wound up (=engagement). The algorithms are now claiming the article is a winner due to people commenting on stories like this - we both failed humanity by commenting here. The only way to avoid the crap is don't read it.

  • If someone smoked pot at the top of Mt. Everest, would that qualify as the "highest high" (until someone smuggled a gummy bear or something with pot onto the ISS)?

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