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Comment by Mikeb85 | Hacker News Reader

First of all, what's the point of climbing Everest when you're basically being carried to the top?

As someone who is into more 'extreme' endeavours, it's more about the experience than the result. Where's the fun in having someone else do the heavy lifting?

Second, why not climb new mountains? There's plenty of interesting places in the world to explore, climb, and have an adventure. Plenty of peaks to ascend (and descend on skis!), plenty of remote locations to reach, and many peaks where you can bag a first ascent, rather than be the X climber to have been carried up by a Sherpa...

Want to be extreme, and enrich your life experience? Learn how to actually be a mountaineer, learn the ropes (figuratively and literally), and do something on your own. But I guess that's too hard.

About the Sherpas on Everest - they need to decide as a society whether depending on tourist dollars is what they want, or whether they want to actually create something...

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My stock answer is to point out that I’m a climber, and that Everest isn’t a climb, but a walk. This usually gets the person at the other end a bit confused and flustered as they check their notes. “Yes” I usually continue “If you have to step over a dead body half way up then it’s classed as walk. On real climbs the bodies fall to the bottom”.

From http://www.andy-kirkpatrick.com/blog/view/everest_sucking_on...

The "only" difficulties with the Everes ascent are with cold and oxygen deprivation, which are solved by technical means and sherpas hard labor. Unlike plenty of climbs in the Alps or the Rockies the only prerequisite for Everest is (very) good physical condition, time and money.

Everyone has different preferences. Personally I have no interest in climbing up Everest, but if I could, reasonably cheaply, get there with absolutely no effort for a not-huge price (say $3k for a helicopter to the top and I could get out for an hour) then I might well be up for doing it.

That price/method example isn't an "I hope this is possible", just what it would take for me to personally want to go, I'd be paying for the view and the experience of being up there, rather than the experience of getting up there (since I'm never going to be able to do it that way, I won't be doing it at all). But that's just me, others like you it's largely about the experience, while some people will be in between, wanting some of the experience, but have it be not too difficult.

There is subtle difference in bragging rights between I climbed Everest and I visited Everest.

Interesting - your parent didn't say anything about bragging rights. That they talked about "an experience" and you read "bragging rights" is probably a major difference between them and you and generally between people who would be happy to take a helicopter somewhere cool and people who wouldn't feel good about it unless they climbed there.

While you're right that I didn't mention them, and indeed isn't why I'd want to go if I could do it easily, it is the case that there can be "bragging rights" on both sides, just that one is bragging about the achievement and the experience, the other just the experience - if that's your goal. (Let's be honest, even if it's not the reason you want to do it, chances are you would brag, at least a bit.)

Agreed with this. There's some amazing adventures to be had in some remote mountains of China. The photos coming out of the crowds alone at Everest basecamp make it unappealing, though probably still the ideal vacation for those who like to talk about themselves, a lot.

I like how Krakauer referred to his own Everest adventure as "I was guided up Everest" in his article.

Well, what do you think is the point, regardless of whether you're carried to the top? I think you'll find that when it comes down to it, for most people the point is the same regardless of the purism you apply to the amount of help you get from others or from equipment.

But this a very old debate, and there may be good reasons for alpine style; though personally I don't think there are very many good reasons to climb the Everest in any style.

I don't disagree, but this sounds perhaps unnecessarily black and white.

Do you make your own ropes and biners, and walk to every mountain you climb from the house you built with your own hands?

Why draw a special line for Everest ascenders when we all depend on others to get done everything we do?

Why criticize the economics of Sherpas for being dangerous when our own economies are killing people by the millions?

Presumably the whole point of large teams with this kind of logistics is to make the climb safer. If you really want to climb Everest why take on unnecessary risk for the sake of purity? It is going to be a massive physical and mental challenge even with the support.

I'm not defending the people who pay to climb, but some simply don't want to train and would rather pay money than training time. That way, you can sneak ahead of the Joneses by saying you climbed Everest.

But what's wrong with tourism as a core part of their economy? That would make it easier to create something in the near future.

Personally I can't imagine any good reason to climb everest anymore, if hundreds do it every year. I'd rather do something original.

There are 7 billion people on earth, and a few hundred do this thing per year, so now it's so mainstream it's not worth doing? Is the point to experience something or to tell people about how you experienced something they haven't? Odds are still that they didn't climb Everest.

"Things aren't fun/good/interesting if hundreds do it."

Pardon me if that doesn't sound a bit like the stereotypical hipster excuse not to do something - a fetish for being original. To each their own, but my goodness does that make my jaw drop.

Yes, but what was the original point of climbing Everest?

Climbing the tallest mountain in the world?

While the same thought has gone through my head, so I empathize...

Isn't feeling the need to be the "first" at something the same logic as feeling the need to climb the "highest" mountain?

name one thing you've done in the past year that hundreds of others haven't.

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