Dueling? I think the death rate might be pretty high.
Is that supply or demand, though? Relatively few people know that “I climbed Annapurna” is more impressive than “I climbed Everest”, and a prepackaged climb probably wouldn’t impress such people anyways, for either mountain.
Have there been people who have entered duels as a hobby?
German-style academic fencing? Not quite a duel, but there’s no bright line between the old kind that occasionally killed people and the more symbolic kind. Nowhere near as deadly as Everest either way, though.
If The Simpsons is to be believed, yes. And they are all southern gentlemen driving across the country in an RV looking for duels.
I’m not sure that it’s useful to class “climbing Everest” as a hobby. Everyone who has climbed Everest has done lots of other climbing, and climbing Everest may be the high point of their career, but it’s not the sum total of their hobby. If you can class “climbing Everest” as a hobby and rate it for danger, can’t you do the same with “base jumping off particularly low buildings” or “camping during electrical storms” or “skiing on mountains known to be prone to avalanches”?
Um. . . .
I really hate to ask this, but–
Do you not follow the news at all? Have you never heard of Jon Krakauer? Everest is WELL-KNOWN for attracting climbers who have little or even no experience with mountain climbing.
Everyone on the 1996 Adventure Consultants and Mountain Madness teams was an experienced climber. Most of them–and all of those that died–had attempted Everest before, and/or successfully climbed other Seven Summits peaks.
iswydt
I think Everest is well-known for attracting people who have little or no experience of mountain climbing at the level represented by an Everest climb, but that’s not quite the same thing as people who have never been into the mountains at all.
But if, in fact, people who have never been on mountains at all are indeed attempting to climb Everest, then I dispute that that can be considered a hobby. Something you only do once in your life is not a “hobby”, as commonly understood. I think the concept of “hobby” requires some degree of regularity and repetition.
I think you can, and I think those are all potential answers to the question. But can you find a specific example of an activity, from those categories or otherwise, that people voluntarily (and proudly, even) undertake with knowledge of its risks, that’s anywhere close to as popular as climbing Everest, and anywhere close to as deadly?
Maybe the question is actually “what’s the deadliest thing that people do that serves no practical purpose, and yet is still considered brave instead of stupid”?
Well, as post #3 points out, climbing Annapurna seems to be deadlier than climbing Everest. And I dare see we could find other mountains that might be deadlier still.
But, if we generalise to an activity rather than a specific location, high-altitude mountaineering looks like a possible winner. I’d accept that as a “hobby”, too.
thank-you for enriching my lexicon.
Mr. Evil’s lugeing could possibly be a hairy hobby. (well, not literally for Mr. Evil, snicker, snicker)
Interesting, brief demonstration (from 3:24 to 3:35, here) of a Norwegian hobby that I’ll bet has a nasty “dire consequences” ratio:
Well that’s why I wrote “hobby activity”. Mountain climbing is a hobby, climbing Everest is a specific activity within that hobby. Sky-diving is also a hobby, a single jump would be an activity within that hobby.
What I was primarily interested in with the OP was to look at risk assessment. Someone deciding to do a parachute jump know that there’s a risk involved, but the risk is relatively low for each jump and accidents are mainly about human error or faulty equipment. Dying due to the stress of the experience or weather conditions is extremely rare. You can buy the experience of a tandem jump with zero experience yourself, and I expect that has a safety record even better.
Someone deciding to join a climb to the summit of Everest know that there’s a 1 in 100 chance of dying from relatively frequent factors outside human control.
The annual risk when BASE jumping probably comes a lot closer, there are some numbers here although they’re not precise. But the risk per jump is much lower and the psychology is quite different on some points at least.
Now if there was a place an experienced sky-diver could by a BASE jump package with one or more jumps and a total known fatality risk of 1 in 100 I think that would be comparable.
Dangnabbit! I left this out of my post. Lots of good replies in this thread.
Beach volleyball during tsunamis
Whitewater rafting down Niagara Falls
Capture-The-Flag in ISIS-held territory
Definition of hobby is very fluid. I would say that we should divide activities on a very basic level. Your are either making money (it is a job) or you are doing something for the pleasure/thrill of it and are minimally not being paid, and are probably paying. The latter is a hobby.
I know someone who has twice climbed Everest and ran a company that took climbers up. (He has since sold the company.) When he took people up it wasn’t a hobby for him. Sherpas don’t do it as a hobby. But for the most part Everest is a tourist destination. Climbing it for tourists counts as a hobby. (Your hobby might be simply running down an extreme bucket list. It doesn’t need to be mountain climbing.)
This trend of Slavic kids dangling off of tall buildings must be way, way up there. (so to speak.) I’m not sure how many are doing it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-vjutwJyY4Presumably this is also why the Everest death rate is so low as compared to K2, Annapurna, etc., however. There’s a literal and commercial superstructure dedicated to making Everest relatively accessible, which other eight-thousanders lack.
I like how the one guy wore a helmet. Reminds me of Jerry Seinfeld’s line about skydivers: “He’s breaking the helmet’s fall.”