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I think I’ll trust the Sherpa from the article instead of you. The article is literally about how Everest is very hard and dangerous and that how tourists are b

by mruts 7y ago

I think I’ll trust the Sherpa from the article instead of you. The article is literally about how Everest is very hard and dangerous and that how tourists are being convinced it’s not.

jhrmnn 7y ago
I’m no mountaineer, but I’ll guess the misunderstanding here stems from where one draws the baseline. If you’re someone who spent years climbing in the Alps, then I assume that Mt Everest
jhrmnn 7y ago
I’m no mountaineer, but I’ll guess the misunderstanding here stems from where one draws the baseline. If you’re someone who spent years climbing in the Alps or in Colorado, then I assume that Everest simply may not be an upgrade. It’s like doing an easy climb in the Alps at half the oxygen and more severe weather—in terms of athleticism, there’s no extra achievement. The sherpa in the article probably talks about very fit “urban” people, which is still very different different from an experienced mountaineer. I may still be off though.
jdietrich 7y ago
It's stupendously dangerous, but by mountaineering standards it's not a technically difficult climb. With enough Sherpas lugging enough oxygen bottles, you can drag a complete no-hoper to the summit. A substantial proportion of people who summit Everest have minimal mountaineering experience and some of them have never even worn crampons before. They're objectively bad mountaineers, but they make it to the summit nonetheless - they're taking big risks to get there, some of them won't come back, but it's not a particularly great achievement. By contrast, your local indoor climbing gym almost certainly has routes that are beyond the ability of 99% of climbers. There's no team of Sherpas to get you past the tricky parts with ladders and fixed ropes, just holds and chalk and muscle and brains. The only way you're ever going to complete that route is through years of hard training. That's the point people are making when they say that Everest is "easy". Everest has taken an outsized place in the popular imagination because it's the biggest, but it's a million miles from the hardest - it's just incredibly dangerous, for reasons which are mostly beyond the control of even the most skilled climber.
- mruts 7y ago
  I mean, that’s like saying killing yourself isn’t hard to do. You probably don’t need “crampons” (whatever that is) to do. But why is it that more/most people don’t commit suicide? Because it’s genuinely hard to do. Every evolutionary single is telling you not to do it. The same goes for Everest. Whether something is hard or not doesn’t depend on training or dedication or whatever. It depends on how likely you are to do it. To give a more extreme example: how hard is it to cut off and eat your own finger? By your standards, it sounds pretty easy (no crampons required). But actually going through with it requires such force of will that only a few would ever be capable of such a feat.
  - ahelwer 7y ago
    It is humorous you feel confident enough to write a whole opinion about what makes mountaineering difficult without knowing what crampons are, or taking the five seconds to google it. Knowledge of crampons wouldn't make your opinion valid, but lack of knowledge definitely makes it invalid.

by mruts 7y ago

I think I’ll trust the Sherpa from the article instead of you. The article is literally about how Everest is very hard and dangerous and that how tourists are being convinced it’s not.

jhrmnn 7y ago

I’m no mountaineer, but I’ll guess the misunderstanding here stems from where one draws the baseline. If you’re someone who spent years climbing in the Alps, then I assume that Mt Everest

jhrmnn 7y ago

I’m no mountaineer, but I’ll guess the misunderstanding here stems from where one draws the baseline. If you’re someone who spent years climbing in the Alps or in Colorado, then I assume that Everest simply may not be an upgrade. It’s like doing an easy climb in the Alps at half the oxygen and more severe weather—in terms of athleticism, there’s no extra achievement. The sherpa in the article probably talks about very fit “urban” people, which is still very different different from an experienced mountaineer. I may still be off though.

jdietrich 7y ago

It's stupendously dangerous, but by mountaineering standards it's not a technically difficult climb. With enough Sherpas lugging enough oxygen bottles, you can drag a complete no-hoper to the summit. A substantial proportion of people who summit Everest have minimal mountaineering experience and some of them have never even worn crampons before. They're objectively bad mountaineers, but they make it to the summit nonetheless - they're taking big risks to get there, some of them won't come back, but it's not a particularly great achievement. By contrast, your local indoor climbing gym almost certainly has routes that are beyond the ability of 99% of climbers. There's no team of Sherpas to get you past the tricky parts with ladders and fixed ropes, just holds and chalk and muscle and brains. The only way you're ever going to complete that route is through years of hard training. That's the point people are making when they say that Everest is "easy". Everest has taken an outsized place in the popular imagination because it's the biggest, but it's a million miles from the hardest - it's just incredibly dangerous, for reasons which are mostly beyond the control of even the most skilled climber.

mruts 7y ago
I mean, that’s like saying killing yourself isn’t hard to do. You probably don’t need “crampons” (whatever that is) to do. But why is it that more/most people don’t commit suicide? Because it’s genuinely hard to do. Every evolutionary single is telling you not to do it. The same goes for Everest. Whether something is hard or not doesn’t depend on training or dedication or whatever. It depends on how likely you are to do it. To give a more extreme example: how hard is it to cut off and eat your own finger? By your standards, it sounds pretty easy (no crampons required). But actually going through with it requires such force of will that only a few would ever be capable of such a feat.
- ahelwer 7y ago
  It is humorous you feel confident enough to write a whole opinion about what makes mountaineering difficult without knowing what crampons are, or taking the five seconds to google it. Knowledge of crampons wouldn't make your opinion valid, but lack of knowledge definitely makes it invalid.