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Comment by karmakaze | Hacker News Reader

So topping Everest is now becoming a pay-to-win title.

It's been like that for a while. It costs 30+k for a cut rate attempt, probably closer to 50-60k to do it with a reputable company. Travel expenses and equipment is probably a bunch more on top of that. If you really want to get to the top, you can pay a bunch more to have sherpas and guides hold your hand and drag you to the summit and hopefully back down.

It has always been pay-to-win. Expensive “expedition style” ascents—where hired Sherpas shuttle oxygen bottles and other essential gear up to high elevation camps, setting fixed ropes and ladders along the way—vastly outnumber “alpine style” ascents where climbers attempt to summit with no support using only gear they can carry themselves.

The mountain has been flooded with rich people paying guides to get them to the top for decades. It’s obviously still a major challenge, but very much a well-monetized one.

It has been for a while now.

It's actually to the point where even though I have to assume it's still quite challenging and arduous compared to like a day hike in the cascades or something, it's for me to not just mentally discount it, like buying high fashion stuff or a fancy car with a normal income. As in, a friend tells me they went and bought a Porsche, and I'd be like "sweet dude", because it's still probably neat, just not something I'd be terribly enthusiastic to explore; just a vibe of buying clout or something because it's the highest point and requires quite a lot of extra money. The base camp trek would be kinda neat though.

I have similar thoughts. The base camp trek was high on my list but then I've heard that it has become a rich people's village and I lost interest.

While on this topic, one book I really enjoyed is Into Thin Air [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Into_Thin_Air

Many people had your though so everest base camp trek is also full of people and queues at choke points.

I mean, for me that alone would be enough to just pass on it. I'm sure there are more interesting, more secluded trails that are just are intrinsically novel if I wanted to visit that range.

I'm chill with a bit of traffic on popular trails, but that also kill the vibe I'd imagine. Hope it was still fun though.

> I have to assume it's still quite challenging and arduous compared to like a day hike in the cascades or something

That's an understatement.

It's trendy to downplay climbing Everest now that it's associated with rich people, but it's still an incredibly difficult feat. There isn't any comparison to a day hike in the cascades.

I have several friends who I consider very athletic and trained. Even they had difficulty with smaller, less challenging peaks. You can't climb Everest without a lot of training, motivation, and dedication, even if you have all the money in the world to spend on it.

Ya it was intended to be. I guess I'd probably just prefer to allocate that time and those resources to some other mountaineering expedition or a series of them. There are a few in the cascades (not day hikes), and then maybe the tallest in Canada + the U.S (Logan/Denali), but I'm not actively pursuing any atm, would still be a lot of training and gear etc.. Probably starting even smaller with some 2-4 day summits. Everest wasn't something that was ever in the cards or dreams anyway, but it does now seem to have an image problem.

And apparently visiting the Titanic.

Rich people are weird.

What, you never thought it would be cool to see the Titanic yourself? The only weird thing is actually being able to do it.

Like climbing Mount Everest though, it seems like one of those bragging-rights things that rich people feel they need to do in order to show they are rich.

Always has been. Time or money.

Climbing Everest is an incredible feat no matter many aids you have.

There are a lot of delusional people who wish they could pay their way to the top, but they get filtered out by the realities of how hard it is to climb at altitude before they can even get to the point of making an attempt.

It's definitely easier to make a climb today than it was decades ago, but it's not something the average person can pull off. You have to be very fit and motivated to do it even with the aids.

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