Why would anyone want to climb Mt. Everest?
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BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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uh….to get to the top?
I honestly can’t relate, nor could I ever do that to my loved ones.
In fact, I see all such high-risk “self-testing” behaviors (solo ocean crossings, etc.) as extremely selfish. Whenever I read about someone who dies on such an adventure, it’s their family that I am most sorry for.
You wanna test yourself, spend a year living in a neglected rural community doing whatever you can to make life better there.
AMEN!!!!
. . .spend a year living in a neglected rural community
or apply to be the next NIC Chair.
lol
For the same reason that people try to have rational conversations with dittoheads – sure, many die trying, but there’s a remote possibility that you might actually succeed.
Same reason anyone reads Jennifer Rubin at Commentary: You like train wrecks and disaster and explosions and shit, especially when it happens to other people you really can’t stand.
Climbing Mt. Everest has been done. Killing yourself spectacularly while trying, now that’s news.
I went to a candidate forum last night. It was sponsored by two Democratic groups, though all the candidates were Republicans. Interesting to hear the responses of the four candidates.
One question was along the lines of “Why are you a Republican?” With an attached question asking, “When did you become one?”
There was some laughter by all.
The first candidate answered along the lines of “Republicans reflect my values and fiscal responsibility.” At “fiscal responsibility,” there were slight murmurs among the audience and people looked at each other and smiled.
When the second candidate responded and also said, “the importance of fiscal responsibility” – many of us burst out laughing. The candidate had to pause till we became quiet.
The third and fourth candidates wisely avoided mentioning fiscal responsibility.
personally, I think it’s an elitist thing.
how many can say “I climbed Mt. Everest”?
because it’s there.
“In March 1923, near the end of his American tour, a weary Mallory was questioned by a New York Times reporter, who, like so many others, wanted a simple answer to Why climb Everest? ‘Because it’s there,’ said Mallory. And thus the most famous statement in mountaineering history was probably little more than a throwaway remark contrived for a press unwilling to take the time to listen to more complicated explanations.”
http://www.thehardway.com/stories/mallory.htm
Umm, because their meds have lapsed?
Sheesh. You guys almost make me ashamed to admit that I would love to climb Mt. Everest. I’m not sure if I would want to summit, but I’d love to at least climb.
As for why…well I guess if you don’t want to, you’ll never be able to understand why someone would and you’ll just have to accept that. People are just wired differently, that’s all.
Every generation has risk takers and those with an appetite to be an exception, a pioneer. Spending $80,000 and a year of my life to climb a large rock strewn with frozen dead climbers doesn’t appeal to me, but for those who like it, good luck. If the Kepler and Webb telescopes find an earthlike planet in another solar system someone will want to go there, even if it means spending the rest of their life in a sardine can with a hydroponic farm.
Nothing wrong with hiking or mountain climbing, but going over 25,000 feet is insane.
I have to admit to getting the audio book of Into Thin Air. It was incredibly fascinating once you allowed your mind to go there and didn’t scream, “WHY”???
Terrible disaster that the author did his best to explain the genesis of. Obsessions are best documented but I’m not sure anyone who doesn’t share the addiction can ever understand them, and that’s ok.
I mostly share your “each to his or her own philosophy”, except for the heavy price the rest of us pay for risk-taking personalities. The recent financial bust is but one example of how we all pay for the gambling habits of a few high-rollers.
When climbers and sailors get stuck or injured we send out the rescue crews (usually to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars). When drag-racing teens crash, we scrape them off the street and send them to the hospital and later to occupational therapy, etc. New Zealand recently denied a solo rower the right to launch from their shores for just this concern. If he got into trouble they’d have to send a naval vessel to help him out.
The only good thing I can say about people climbing Everest is that at least there’s no expectation that someone will come to their rescue.
Everest climbers pay their own way out, whether it be by rescue or on their own two feet. We’re not talking about a country equipped financially to help out, particularly given the high degree of risk the climbers take on and the given that someone in the party will need to be rescued. Besides that, helicopters can provide only minimum backup due to the elevation.
why would I wanna climb Everest?
To clean off all the trash every other asshole who ‘climbed it because it was there’ left from their attempt(s).
Mountains are better left to photography than the climber’s boot….
Yep. I’ve read about all the trash the mostly-Western climbers leave behind. Here’s a chilling photo.
I’ve had friends who hiked in Nepal and loved seeing Everest and the surrounding peaks, but that’s all together different from scaling the summit.
I should also add that my back-packing friends (she’s a lawyer, he’s a statistician) are lucky to have formed a good relationship with a sherpa. They are able to stay with his family and otherwise let him handle all of their arrangements. In return they pay him well and send him good hiking boots.
I suppose we all have our horizons. While living in Missouri, I planned a month-long bicycle tour of Ireland. A friend asked, “Why go to Ireland when you can bike here?” Before I gave an answer, I paused and looked at him closely. He was serious.
I had always assume those wanting to climb Mt. Everest might have a different horizon than me…granted, a horizon that involves a 9% chance of dying, to say nothing of lost limbs, ears, fingers, etc.
But Mt. Everest is not the deadliest.
I’d like to keep my toes and fingers, thank you.
A very excellent book/audiobook that lets you get inside the heads of those who do make such treks is Epic: Stories of Survival from the World’s Highest Peaks.
No, it is beyond my comprehension. e.g., Two climbers are descending, and one is faltering. The second pauses to him help him. The one you least expect is dead by the end of the day, simply because they had made the ascent too quickly. I’ll stick to my own horizons where such stuff never happens on a bicycle.
I find the whole notion of looking down on risk-taking behavior because of the social cost a bit chilling, at least in part because it’s so selective.
How many of you eat meat, drive cars, or drink beer? All of those are avoidable risks, but together their direct effects alone claim more lives every day than 9/11 did, and more than mountain climbing will in several centuries. And if you look at the work-related injury and death rates in the meat packing industry — or the high casualty rate among ambulance drivers racing heart attack victims to the hospital, or the number of innocent bystanders killed by motorists, or the role alcohol plays in violent crime, it’s not like these are risks that only impact the risk-taker. And again, their scale is orders of magnitude greater than that involved in mountaineering.
I should note that I’m not a mountain climber and have no interest in becoming one, nor do I think very highly of people with minor children who engage in such risky behavior, but I chalk up the incidental expenses of their risk-taking as simply part of the cost of personal freedom. Freedom entails the freedom to do stupid things, and there is no one amongst us who can claim innocence in that regard.
Then Corvus, you’ll be glad to know that I don’t eat meat, have never smoked, drive very consciously and conscientiously and absolutely abhor people who let alcohol lead to violent, recklessness, or anti-social behavior.
I’m not expecting perfection from anyone, but I think that are dominated by a bunch of bully-boys who are invested in normalizing “living large” in order to make their own excesses less open to criticism.
Freedom may entail the freedom to do risky things, but the societies that are the foundations for individual freedoms require that we recognize the social compact. Which, to my way of thinking, has really gone out of fashion in the US especially. It’s all about “rights” and nearly nothing about “responsibilities”.
The problem is that as soon as we start deciding to prohibit stupid behavior beyond the basic limitation on prohibiting direct harm to bystanders, someone or some group ends up being the sole arbiter of what is stupid and what is not.
Let’s say I was emperor of the world and undertook to abolish things I consider harmfully stupid. I’d start with religion, team sports, television, tobacco, and alcohol. Then we’d see an end to the private ownership of motor vehicles. And, oh yes, unlicensed reproduction. And fashion. Everyone gets a standard, durable uniform. Several genres of the arts would disappear overnight, to say nothing of a good dozen professions off the top of my head. Hm, cellphones, made-of-paper periodicals, at least half of the items in the average supermarket, probably entire industries, now that I think of it…
And yes, I can offer you an extended, sincere argument for why each of these things is harmful to the fabric of society and ought to be abolished for the good of the whole. I suspect everyone has a list of their own, some larger than others, some smaller. A lot of them probably make quite a bit of sense, too.
The problem is that humans have a natural tendency toward regimentation and hierarchy, and once that tendency has been allowed to run past a certain point, it accelerates exponentially.
In any event, mountaineering is such an incredibly insignificant human occupation that if you are the sort of person who likes to use social responsibility as an excuse to suppress individual choice, I suppose I should be grateful that you’re focused on it instead of something that actually matters.
I wasn’t talking about regulating or abolishing such “personal pursuits”, rather I was talking about how we have a culture that glorifies such “rugged individualism”, especially in men.
Yes, humans have a tendency toward regimentation and hierarchy, but what drives that is not what is good for the group as a whole, but what is good for those at the top. Sometimes the elite are best served by limiting choices, other times they are best served by the illusion of lots of choice. Which is what I think we are dealing with now, lots of seeming choices, but little real power to choose life- and humanity-affirming actions.
Because it is the best toboggan run around.
All those rocks? I’d take an inner tube – better bounce.
and a parawing….cliffs aren’t fun to fly off, over a certain height. that bounce can only buy you so much 😉
Why would anyone drive on I 95 in CT from New York to New London? If you can live through that experience why would you think Everest would be a problem?
For more than 10 years there have been strict regulations about packing out trash and such from Everest, mostly correcting a very bad environmental problem.
Going to such heights, whether it is Everest or other high mountain peaks, confronts the climber with his/her own limitations as a person, but also what it means to be human. Life at those heights is stunningly beautiful, utterly frightening, and completely unsuited for human life. Yet it is on this planet, perhaps made by the same God who gave also gave us a warm beach in FL to sunbathe on.
To do such things makes climbers more alive. Their stories make us all more alive. Not much different than viewing a great piece of art, reading great literature or witnessing a great sporting competition.
There are joys to nature. I confess I climb a mountain almost every day. Granted, my mountain, Montara Mountain, is on the bottom end of the scale of mountains, just making the thousand-foot limit for official mountainhood. And it infuriates me when anyone who has walked up and down the trail would throw trash on it. I guess I like being in nature, not conquering it, or desecrating it.
But despite my lesser mountaineering, which is good for this geezer to maintain some low level of fitness, I do find some of these radical physical things to be egocentric and anti-social. I am reminded of someone who recently swam across the Atlantic (if I recall correctly). The person swam inside a cage which was pulled behind a ship to prevent shark attacks. Presumably, at night she got out of the water at intervals to rest, regrease, eat and sleep. At a certain point there would be so many asterisks by her record I’m not sure what it proves beyond that the woman could swim a lot. It’s the same reason why the Olympics have lost its luster for me.
To be sure there can be a narcissistic core to many of these “achievements”
And to be sure there has in the past, particularly in British expeditions (not to pick on them, just that they did a lot), an element of militaristic “conquering” of nature.
And “ecotourist”, provided they have enough money, can be led by the hand to the top of Everest.
And a lot of damage to the environment has come from that mentality.
But that does not make the pursuit inherently flawed or the object of ridicule.
As someone posted above, I suggest Krakhourer’s Into Thin Air as a read into what actually happens on an Everest assent before judging to critically. You are just as likely to feel more strongly that it isn’t for you, but perhaps more inclined to feel sympathetic for those who approach it properly and with realism and without narcissism.
the problem is that in the ‘Death Zone’ above 25,000 feet, you are so wasted by the time you summit Everest that you don’t even have a feeling of triumph. Your brain cells are dying at an alarming rate. Liquid is likely to leak out of your arteries into your brain. You are too weak to help anyone other than yourself, if you are that lucky. You probably have a splitting headache and horrible nausea, and if you don’t start hustling down the mountain within minutes, you’ll die of exposure. Oh, did I mention that it’s colder that you’ve ever been in your life, that UV rays are shredding up your DNA and your corneas, and that you are functionally a mental incompetent?
I understand wanting to summit a tall mountain, even the tallest. But not under those circumstances.
Add to that because of the lack of O2 you cannot digest food and it comes out of you pretty much the way it came in, so you are also starving to death.
It’s a pretty hostile place and pretty horrifying.
The last few miles of a marathon suck pretty bad too, but people do it.
My stock answer to such questions is a question from Devo – “Are we not men?”
Jon Krakauer’s book “Into Thin Air” is a fascinating and insightful tale of a doomed Everest expedition in 1996. Highly recommended for the curious.
Everest – climbing it? Wherever I am is Everest!