Another Everest season ended on a tragic note when two members of the Old Spice Coors Lite Everest Expedition died yesterday (See Footnote 1).
The deceased are Samantha Summerhays of Hershey, Penn., and Jonathan Smack of Milwaukee, Wis.
Group members were shocked by the horrifying deaths.
“Nobody saw this coming,” said Leon Shark, the group’s leader and noted mountain climbing guy (Footnote 2). “They were among the best clients I’ve ever taken up on the mountain.”
Climbers not attached to the Spice-Lite expedition, however, paint a different picture of Shark’s group?which they often colorfully referred to as “those idiots who are going to die.”
“Let me be blunt,” said Joe Sharp, a professional climber making his fifth ascent of the mountain. “I’ve seen sea monkeys better prepared for the rigors of an Everest expedition.”
All Shark cares about is attracting as much attention as possible so he can write a book and hit the lecture circuit, Sharp added.
“I’ll bet Leon just found them on the floor of some bar and agreed to pay their tabs if they’d come,” Sharp said.
Shark refuted any accusations of deliberately recruiting unqualified climbers only from bars.
“I didn’t meet Summerhays at a bar,” Shark said. “Both she and Smack are American heroes who preferred to die how they lived, rather than alter their lifestyles in the slightest,” Shark added.
To many people, that seems to be the problem.
“Minor behavioral changes might have saved their lives,” noted health expert Jack Sprat said (Footnote 3).
“If Smack would have stopped chugging beers like he was a locomotive, he might still be alive today,” Sprat said, referring to Smack’s mountaineering goal.
Smack was attempting to be the first man the climb Mount Everest while legally drunk every step of the way. Having had numerous close calls throughout the trip, Smack finally died 2,000 feet from the summit when the Sherpas dared him to go the rest of the way singing Wooly Bully and walking backwards (Footnote 4). Smack fell off the mountain two hours later.
“We were sick and tired of carrying case after case of beer up the mountain, and frankly he just wasn’t a pleasant drunk,” said lead Sherpa Engril Sanrp. “We’d known the pull-my-finger joke since the Hillary expedition, but he got belligerent several times a day if we wouldn’t pull it.”
“Summerhays was much nicer, but we all knew she didn’t stand a chance,” Sanrp said. “There’s a reason nobody has previously sought the title of heaviest woman to climb Everest.”
“She was 400 pounds light, not heavy, and she was driven by a dream,” Shark retorted. “She told me she wanted to prove to everyone that body mass challenged women could do everything thinner women could?I just facilitated that process.”
One thing Summerhays did prove was that big women can die on Everest, just like thin ones.
Shark is no stranger to Everest tragedy.
In 1999, he led the ill-fated Express expedition, consisting of 10 individuals who had spent the night at a Holiday Inn Express (Footnote 5).
Many experts agree with Sharp that Shark has been deliberately choosing unqualified or bizarre climbers to create tragic results.
One sign they point to is the title of his upcoming lecture series and book, “Tragedies on Everest: The Express and Spice-Lite Expeditions.”
Shark countered that the title, which arrived at his publicist’s office two weeks before the expedition began, was an unfortunate typo.
“I’m not seeking to capitalize on unusual people’s freakish deaths,” he said.
“I’m in the business of helping people fulfill their dreams?It’s not my fault they tend to die in route” (Footnote 6).
Shark said he hopes the last of his three unique clients, Joe Blotsky, will make it down Everest safely. Blotsky plans to be the first person to climb Everest as a man, and come down a woman.
Shark, also a licensed plastic surgeon in Cuba, will be performing the surgery.
Footnotes:
(Footnote 1) Both Old Spice and Coors Lite are licensed trademarks and should be treated as such?otherwise you might hurt their feelings.
(Footnote 2) Mountain climbing guy actually means mountaineer, of course, but clinical studies have proven that mountain-climbing guy is a much more humorous way of putting it.
(Footnote 3) Yes, the Jack Sprat of nursery rhyme fame.
(Footnote 4) The song is by Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs, a bands with one of the best names ever.
(Footnote 5) Yet another trademark that we must zealously protect.
(Footnote 6) Do you know anyone in the dream business? Do they spend a lot of time “unemployed” or “in jail”?
Editor’s Note: The Comical is a totally satirical Web feature. Please don’t sue. For more RED Herrings see www.red-mag.com.