What if?

"Diary: It's heartbreaking. Rob is up there, still alive, in a crevasse somewhere around South summit, he talked to his wife on the VHF relayed to a sat phone. They decided on a name for the child. Two sherpas went up looking for him, but couldn't find him. As the hours pass, we all think that he is surely gone now, but then the VHF suddenly crackle up and we again hear his weak voice calling us. And we all just sit around, waiting for a soul to die." 

What if disaster strikes.

Guess you still remember the 1996 Everest tragedy; bad weather moving in quickly and leaving several climbers dead on the mountain. Some climbers (a few not even on the mountain at the time) have written books about the disaster, pointing fingers at everything from poor climbing skills to plain madness. 

Skipping the blame and guesses, and analyzing the facts, a different picture emerges:

Most people died not because they couldn't make it back to camp, but because they couldn't find camp. Two people died in a flat area, only 20 minutes from the safety of
Camp 4. One person died when, disoriented, he stepped off a cliff. Several people would probably have survived if they had found the spare oxygen bottles.

What if the climbers had carried a small 200 gr. GPS unit with them, logging way points on the way up – and backtracking them on the way down?

What if the emergency oxygen bottles – and the climbers – had attached to them tiny radio transmitters and receivers, making it possible to find the bottles, and for rescuers to find the climbers?

GPS tracking is cheap and simple, but rarely used in high-altitude climbing. Gear radio tracking is possible but not yet implemented. If we start using positioning technology wisely, we will save lives.