Quote:
Originally Posted by burn_this_city
I thought fotze was kidding about the climbing hills in Toronto... Wow...
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It really is insane. From what I've read, and from talking to some very experienced mountaineers, Everest isn't a technical climb at all. It's more about willpower and being able to work through exhaustion, which is why it's littered with people that have next to no climbing experience, a basic foundation of fitness, but enough cash to have someone haul their sorry arse and all their gear up a mountain. The sherpas do almost all of the work there; a lot of these self righteous a-holes summiting are only there to make a claim to "climbing" the worlds tallest peak, and either jump on a motivational speaking tour, or pass themselves off as mountaineers to people around them as some kind of narcissistic ego boost.
I met a guy that summited Everest twice, and all he talked about was how much of a climber he was. It took one glance at his fat ass to know that wasn't true, and where his motivation was to make that claim. My uncle and a whole lot of his friends were climbers up until a few years ago (they're all old as dirt now) but when they were climbing, they were weathered, fit as f*** mountain men that spent days roped onto the side of a 1000ft cliff face, pi**ing in their helmets and eating chicken broth while a snowstorm passed over.
A lot of that is my opinion, and I've never been to Everest so take it with a grain of salt I guess.
National Geographic's team made it up today, and this is what they had to say
We all had to pass dozens upon dozens of climbers, a fair number of whom have no business being on Everest. Crowds of inexperienced climbers are generally the bane of the highest point on Earth if you take the standard route. But there are over a dozen other routes for hard-core mountaineers.
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ev...5-25/we-did-it
Darwinism at its finest as far as I'm concerned. If you jump on a speed boat with no life jacket and minimal driving skills, is it going to surprise anyone when you drown?