UPDATED: On Saturday, May 18, Tamae Watanabe became—at age 73—the oldest woman to summit Everest. This is an amazing accomplishment because (1) it is Everest, (2) she attacked the mountain from the difficult north face and (3) she broke her own record, set in 2002, when she was a spry 63-year-old.

So congratulations to her. And respect to 70-year-old American Bill Burke. Like Watanabe, Burke is on a return trip to Everest; in 2009, he became the oldest American to climb the world’s tallest mountain and, like Watanabe, he was planning to break his own record.

Burke is a madman: he didn’t begin high altitude mountaineering until he was 60. He’s now climbed the highest mountain on every continent and, according to his website, he is the only person to have climbed the highest mountain on each continent and the Carstensz Pyramid, located in West Papua, Indonesia (for those who consider Oceania a kind of continent). Again, all after age 60.

But he isn’t crazy mad: he had the good sense to turn around in the face of savage conditions that popped up, as they do on Everest, over the past few days. Conditions that have killed three people (and possibly a fourth). (UPDATE: A German website now confirms four deaths and cite a possible fifth.) Burke’s wife Sharon reports: “Bill just called from Camp 3.  He made it to the ‘second step,’ about 4 hours from the summit and turned around.  He said the weather was horrible, wind blowing, snowing, miserable.  He said he passed by a couple bodies and has decided it’s time to find something else to do.  He is going to rest a little and then head down.”

Reuters reports that one of the dead was a 61-year-old German doctor who as part of a team that’s trying to clean up the messes left by other climbers. And now, in a bit of tragic irony, he might become part of the problem. His body is lying on the mountain at the South Col (at about 28, 700 feet). According to one of the sherpas: “If the family wants the body to be brought down we will try, but it is very difficult to do so from that altitude.”

We’re all for having a goal. We’re all for persistence. It’s important to be hardcore about something. And maybe the satisfaction of getting to the top is extraordinary and validating and redeeming and you just don’t get it till you’ve been there. But seriously, the risk/reward on this one eludes us.

It is only with war and extreme mountaineering that one tosses off a line like “he passed by a couple of bodies.” And in war, they always try to carry out the fallen.