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> He made the first attempts on K2 and Kanchenjunga Huh. I guess the locals were just too dim and incompetent. Or maybe history only begins when we in the West
by tomcam 4y ago
> He made the first attempts on K2 and Kanchenjunga
Huh. I guess the locals were just too dim and incompetent. Or maybe history only begins when we in the West say so.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- RogerL 4y agoNeither India or China had named the mountain (hence 'K2'), it is far from any trade route or village, the approach takes a month and you finally end up at a glacier which is still 10 miles from the base of the mountain. Starting in June there are heavy floods that render the rivers impassable until fall. It takes a month of porters and camels transporting 10-15K pounds of equipment and food. There is no recorded or verbal history of anyone making that effort, no recorded or oral history of high altitude mountain climbing as a sport prior to these early attempts, no villages or routes remotely nearby, no evidence of the kind of equipment that would be needed (ice axes & rock climbing gear - it is full on mixed climbing). It's pretty safe to say they were the first for any reasonable definition of "attempt". Not to mention at the top of the article they write > Crowley is notable as the first Westerner to attempt K2 ...
- aliswe 4y agoThis reasoning entices me. You ascribe meaning to climbing high mountains, and as such you assume "they" do too, and that this feat - which is only a feat because of the ascribed meaning - must have been attempted or perhaps even achieved before the whites.
- pessimizer 4y agoThe assumption is that "the first to climb K2" is the same as "the first to discover America" i.e. a racial achievement masquerading as a human achievement.
- poulpy123 4y agoAccording to Wikipedia, the first attempt on climbing the mont blanc was in 1757. So climbing on top on mountains wasn't an universal experience until recently. However I don't know for Asia and the Himalaya specifically
- 082349872349872 4y agoMost mountain dwellers are interested in the lowest practicable route in between one valley and the next; summiting* occurs only once you have people (outside tourists?) who are rich enough to do it for the lulz. * type II fun, with serious risk of type III: https://www.rei.com/blog/climb/fun-scale https://www.rei.com/blog/climb/fun-scale
- glass3 4y agoIt's not always for the lulz: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mummy_Juanita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mummy_Juanita
- 082349872349872 4y agoThanks for the correction. Instead of lulz I suppose there must be a better word for the category of "we do these things not because they are easy but because they are hahd"?
- mjhay 4y agoThere were absolutely no pre-modern climbs of K2. That's like saying we can't say the Apollo 11 astronauts were the first on the moon because the Incas might have had a space program we aren't aware of.