There’s also the technical difficulty. Summiting Everest is within reach of a lot more people than even climbing the routes Alex does with ropes and protection.

There’s also the technical difficulty. Summiting Everest is within reach of a lot more people than even climbing the routes Alex does with ropes and protection. What’s objectionable about Everest isn’t so much the risks as the commercialism involved. Free soloing relatively easy routes is also fairly common. Both for the challenge and in the case of easier routes as shortcuts to avoid a long walk around. I think a lot of the anger boils down to limited experience driving peoples risk perception coupled to their own risk tolerance.