Mount Everest is a fake ass accomplishment for rich people anyway. You don’t carry all your shit, there are lines to the peak, garbage everywhere, it’s basically Times Square for CEOs who want to market themselves as ‘adventurers’. Slightly more death involved each year, but that has more to do with the weather than how Tough someone is.
They have luxury expeditions with private chefs, hot tubs and massages. Kinda misses the point in my opinion.
For those interested, hers is a video on the subject I recently watched:
Holy fuck. If you’re a first time climber, you have a 1 in 6 chance of dying? That’s insane.
Playing Russian roulette would be a lot cheaper.
Makes me think about how rich people apparently ruined Burning Man
We were just talking about that in our house. Some people have died waiting in line for a selfie.
And none of them are missed.
Doesn’t make it a fake ass accomplishment
You can’t just stroll up there still.
I’ve done up to 6000m, and hoping to do 7000m.
You do rely on sherpas, but it still isn’t a day hike either. Even Hillary’s team used sherpas to assist
What makes it fake is presenting it as the work of an individual, as those egotistical peak selfies and tedious biographies frequently do. (General) you didn’t make it to the peak, you were helped along by underpaid locals dragging around all the shit that is keeping you alive, who frequently lose their lives in an effort to support their families so some tech bro can get a selfie. It’s a gross way to spend $30k+.
And 30k is on the cheap end. I think the average is like 50-60k now. Over 100k if you go with the really high end companies. Its crazy.
You’re being upvoted, but, what experience do you have mountaineering training? Any? Have you even got hiking experience
It feels like you’re just saying stuff that simply sounds valid, but is distorted.
- A good company costs 60K minimum, and another 20K if you want 4L of oxygen.
- No, you cant just spend 60K and climb either. Nobody will take you.
- You MUST have 7000m experience, which eliminates mountains like Island Peak and Mera (which was the FULL intention), and it means you have experience staying overnight at altitude.
- Don’t speak on behalf of the locals. I personally knew 2 different Sherpas who want to climb Everest. One did, the other wanted to (and hopefully has already). Operating as a guide allows them to achieve this
- Preparing the camps is a matter of time primarily. Summit guides have the advantage of living at 4000m+, so it saves a lot of time.
- You still carry your own gear at 8000m+ which is basically 30% Oxygen, and you cannot acclimatise.
- Clients still do many acclimatisation climbs. Getting the camps prepared is basically a matter of time (months).
- Whilst I agree a lot of it is just rich people trying to get attention, don’t underestimate the level of fitness it takes. Based on my experience a huge number of people can’t even get to base camp (which is only 5400m). People doing Everest don’t simply wake up and do acclimatisation walks. Even at 6000M, you’re at 40% Oxygen, and its already a bit hard to breath… Every step feels a lot harder
- Staying at the camps isn’t as luxurious as you think lol. That being said, at places like Island Peak Base camp, it actually takes hours to go fetch water. The Base Camp manager handles that
- Good companies still pay sherpas the FULL amount even if summit/climbing is completely cancelled for the year.
- I haven’t climbed Everest, but, don’t underestimate the fear of being dropped off in a glacier for the first time, and being told you’ll fall into a crevasse at some point during training. It takes courage too. I have done a large ladder crossing. And, suspect you know what it’s like to wake up and midnight, start climbing, and simply just hope things are ok
Also, one other fact that people don’t realise, is that using oxygen makes it sound like a cakewalk, but its not.
Your breath has water vapour in it that freezes and accumulates. So, you’re even competing with your oxygen mask getting frozen shut apparently at high altitude, and have to squeeze it regularly to keep it clean). At 8000m+ you need it, and to sleep at 8000m, you apparently still need some oxygen, or you gag.
Apparently oxygen bottle theft is also common which is another problem
Once you’re at 8000m (camp 4), you’re basically on your own… Yes, its a bigger accomplishment to set up camps and carry everything up, but, it doesn’t mean that even getting to 7000M isn’t a huge achievement (Everest is 8900m).
I am planning to do a 700km walk hopefully within the next year, and, I don’t think anyone is going to downplay it simply because I have done food drops (and had others helping with food drops). Well… Maybe some will…
Finally, Norgay Tenzing and Edmund Hillary had a team of 400 people helping them climb Everest. Yes, that took money too. Are you saying that it wasn’t an achievement?
A good company costs 60K minimum
You get how that’s even grosser, right?
Don’t speak on behalf of the locals. I personally knew 2 different Sherpas
‘Don’t speak on behalf of the locals, allow me, who knew two dudes, to do so instead’? No, I think I’ll listen to reporting by the BBC, who talked to people whose livelihoods didn’t depend on telling them what they wanted to hear. Obviously some locals do want to climb, but you are delusional if you believe nobody is doing it for money to support their family.
Everything else you’re saying here is irrelevant, I never said it wasn’t physically challenging. It’s just immoral to climb Everest due to the local exploitation and environmental degradation inherent to climbing it. Outside of the nearly 20 lbs of waste each person creates climbing the mountain (the majority of which doesn’t get removed), there are also deforestation issues from locals over harvesting wood to meet tourist demand.
There is not an amount of explanation that is going to move me beyond those facts.
What’s gross at this point, is that watching a bbc documentary doesn’t make you a professional lol .You know no dudes, so, I know more dudes than you.
You’re not even getting some of the basics right.
- On both my trips they only burnt dried yak dung and even the hot water either uses massive reflector solar mirrors or gas . Nobody is carrying wood to any of the camps. Do you think at camp 4 they’re sitting oxygen deprived around a nice fire which produces more co2?
- Are you running on full renewables at home? Any renewables? Or, is there a double standard? Its ok for you to burn wood at home? If you’re sitting there only with a blanket and no HVAC, congrats, that’s how you stay warm at camp
- When you go hiking, or pull over on a long drive, do you use a wag bag? If not, you’re not any better than them…
- The climbing permit has now changed and people have to carry down some garbage, and there is a lot of work going into cleanup. Yes it’s a problem, but it doesn’t make climbing any easier.
- At kala pattar actually (5500m), I actually saw a mouse which was likely eating scraps. If anything, ironically there is actually more life due to tourists because it’s barren even at that altitude
- Your phone was produced by someone who didn’t want to work but had to. What is your opinion on that?
- I also had the great fortune to have lunch with one of the record holders for the first people to complete the seven summits. Nothing about him shouted “wealthy tech bro”. In fact. Nobody at Unwin hut seemed to recognize him except my trainer(who is also a record holder related to Everest)
At this point you’re throwing random things you heard from the documentary at the wall and simply claiming it’s relevant. Big shocker, but a documentary is trying to paint a story. The funny thing is that on one of those documentaries, apparently my guide can be heard on the radio telling people to “go back to sleep”.
Go do a mountaineering course, and then report back at how little of an accomplishment even 8000m is, let alone an altitude where your body is dying, and you have limited time to summit and return before it does.
It’s clear at this point you’re not able to have an unemotional conversation about it. Your anecdotal experience as someone dropping the cost of a down payment on a house on a vacation to a place with serious, long lasting issues with the tourist trade and talking to two dudes you are paying isn’t the same as a team of journalists investigating. You keep saying documentary for some reason, which is only revealing you didn’t even bother reading the very extensive article I linked. If you’d like to discuss specific points from it you’re going to have to read it. It’s also grasping at straws to pretend using electricity in a city is just like the environmental destruction or human exploitation happening to climb the mountain.
I hope you find less destructive and exploitative hobbies in the future.
Firstly, your link didn’t show on my phone… It changes nothing. Checking it changes nothing
- You’re a hypocrite, because “underpaid workers” collect your rubbish, and throw it into a hole nearby (probably in farming land). And despite being in an environment where you can eliminate trash completely, you choose not to, whilst preaching to others that they’re destroying the planet. It’s inconvenient to your argument, which is why you’re shrugging it off.
- Whats crazy, is that the second time I went to nepal, I actually met one of my ex-porters at a tea house on the way, and we said hello. Apparently, they are all exploited so badly, that they saw me, and wanted to chat with me again.
- I operate a free hiking group in my free time, which is likely less environmentally damaging than you sitting at home on your computer. I guess the people who join my trips owe me credit for any walk they do too?
- You were noticeably quiet about any volunteering (I bet you don’t even help your local park rangers by joining clean up days). I guess doing nothing however is ok.
- I literally am friends with a few Nepalese people that I met in Nepal… who added me on Facebook after getting exploited (apparently). Weird thing to do by them. Actually, my friend (who is nepalese, but lives in Australia at the moment) has mentioned she hopes to summit one day too.
You call people gross all you want to justify your lack of ambition. But, you have no idea what you’re talking about (which became clear even before you mentioned deforestation in your desperate attempt to seem credible)
Even Hillary’s team used sherpas to assist
Nothing says “fake accomplishment” like claiming to be the first to reach the top of a mountain by relying on the help (read: exploitation) of local people who had presumably been doing it for hundreds of years before you showed up.
Nobody was climbing Everest before then for hundreds of years. Absolutely 0% fucking chance that happened lol… especially from the Nepalese side (I seriously doubt from tibet either).
The ice fall on the Nepal side is literally moving 1m every day and constantly changes for starters, and by the time you set up the camps, if there was any bad weather, they might not be there when you come back. Glacier travel you have a team of 2-3 people because of things like ice bridges and crevasses too and it would be impossible to summit without ladders. If you were solo and were doing the drops, your oxygen bottles could be stolen too
It can’t be done without a large team, just like you can’t captain a submarine without a team who built it, and helps maintain it. It is a group effort. Even a job like programming owes credit to a lot of people. Every thing you do does
You do realize that Tenzing was Nepalese too right? He was there with Edmund. Nims purja also had both a small team of climbers who were highly experienced and a much larger team helping. He is Nepalese. Is it exploitation by him too?
So Sherpas just knew exactly how to do it through cultural osmosis?
That would never happen because women dont have bowel movements.
I’d like to workshop how to make climbing Everest uncool amongst the stupid rich.
Make it inexpensive. They’ll drop it in a second.
Quite the opposite! Charge them ten million bucks. They’ll all want to go and quite a few won’t come back.
Worked for the Titan sub
I’d like to workshop how to make it more alluring and dangerous.
Left at green boots, right at shitting girl, and if you see jorking it guy, you’ve gone too far.
Can’t miss it, right next to Green Boots
I mean, you’d be remembered in history, eh? It might come back every generation or so…“Dude! Look at what I found! This page shows that Shitting Girl is apparently someone forever stuck in a squat on Mount Everest! We have to go!”
They’d bring even more garbage up there in memoriam and some would die in prayer to the squatted wonder. Then one day, the mass of trash and accumulated snow would crack and the shitting wonder would avalanche to be lost until the aliens would track you down, freeze you in Carbonite, and sell you in the nearest intergalactic flea market. You get the idea.
