Related, someone that once held the record for oldest to climb Everest has now gone missing on Rainier. This would’ve/might’ve been his 50th ascent of Rainier. Also, he held that Everest record for two days.
Missing for a week now, 80 years old… I don’t like his odds. I wonder if he decided to go out doing what he loved.
Is that the guy they gave an MRI and discovered he was neurologically incapable of feeling afraid?
I looked it up, and yeah, I knew that name rang a bell.
They’ve found a body matching his description (I’m guessing “old” would be enough). If him, he definitely went out doing what he loved.
I’ve watched several Honnold videos, but watching Free Solo on a big screen (I think it was at a traveling Banff FF) had me afraid, sitting in a chair watching. It was almost too much. I prefer the more sedate, but also painful “sufferfest” videos with Cedar Wright.
The Alpinist tells a familiar but ultimately quite different story without as much white knuckle action.
I haven’t seen this and it’s on Netflix…in the queue. Thanks.
Edit to add: Nope, not on Netflix. But rentable from Amazon Prime.
That was a very good film. Marc-André Leclerc — amazing!
About summiting without Os, another one was Anatoly Boukreev who summited Everest in 1996, as a guide and he guided without Os. Jon Krakauer blasted him for doing that, but Boukreev was right because it was he who left Camp IV in that bad night blizzard and made two (not one, which was incredible enough, but two!) rescue ventures.
Boukreev was to summit Everest once more, in 1997, but sadly he died later that year on Annapurna I (8,091 m / 26,545 ft).
Thank you for that link. Tamping down fears like that is quite a “skill”, seems absolutely necessary for a sport like free climbing. I wonder if high speed motor sport participants , or other “instant” decision sports (downhill skiing comes to mind as well) have a different kind of brain/fear response? Tamp the fear down once and off you go? Perhaps its the years and years of training and experiences, in order to get to the top of a sport like these, you have to stop the fear, or you fail early.
Ive never been fond of heights, but it was when climbing a fire ladder, very exposed, and I could see through the metal stairs, that I realized what trouble fear can cause, my hands started to sweat profusely, on the railings, and thought, “jeez, this is how you fall off something, just freak right out”
Really had to stop and compose myself, wipe my hands off, before I could go to the top.
The ladders over the ice crevasses at Everest, seem to me at least, the worst part of the whole slog!
Apart from the general misery of a very high altitude “workout”
Yeah, that’s a hard “no” from me. But I’m not exactly a thrill seeker. I’m fascinated by people who are, though.
Me, too. I was lucky; summitting Mt. Whitney is basically walking. Even with altitude problems it was technically easy. And the one icy patch had a chain railing to grab.
I love hiking, but not rock climbing. We were on the backside of Whitney, ( during a John Muir section trip, and I took off in my shorts and sneakers, power bar or two, and scooted up Mt Langley, 2nd highest after Whitney). It was a dumb move, may partner was sleeping, and I was restless and full of energy to explore… soI didnt mention anything… but I didnt know better, and was feeling quite strong. Pretty much ran and scampered to the top in a few hours. (Never neglect to tell someone where you are going)
At the top, which was flat and broad, I realized, that on one side, looked off from say 30 ft away, it seemed to drop off straight down, about a thousand feet…I checked my topo map, and realized that that assessment was pretty accurate. I couldnt walk anywhere near that edge, even from 30 ft away I was getting bad vertigo, so I lay on my stomach and slithered over for a bit of a peek. I felt ok that way, but did not stand up again until I was a good distance away.
We crossed Trail Crest the next day, which is the fork to Whitney, and people were sitting there looking really quite ill from the altitude. I thought about running over to the peak, but my companion was ill as well, so I let that go.
Conscious deep breathing is about the only thing that helps keep altitude sickness away, you usually have about 30% more air capacity than you think. When I came back to sea level California at the coast, it felt like breathing in giant pillows of moist air.
The John Muir Wilderness is truly magnificient.
When we started down, I felt better with every step I took. By the time we got to Whitney Portal, I felt 90% normal.
I trekked the Annapurna Curcuit in Nepal, and we topped out at 17,800’ going over Thorong La Pass. The trail to the pass had many slight ups and downs, and it was really amazing how a very slight decline would make walking so much easier. As soon as the trail tilted up we all slowed down to a snails pace. Once we were over the pass and descending we were all able to keep the pace up.
It is amazing. I’ve spent the vast majority of my life at sea level (well, very near to the sea itself), and the affects of altitude were new and interesting to me. As I said, I was puking my guts out at the summit, but every step down made me feel better and better. It was fascinating to experience.
I went from sea level to 4000m+ (14.000ft+) altitude in about 2 hours (by car) …
up there I tried to add 17+36 for quite some time and couldn’t … and I am good at math… 
an interesting experience to say the least … and made me completely understand the 90% stupid stuff people are doing in high altitudes (like inadvertedly closing oxygen support instead of opening it on the bottle) …
… and 4.000m are not too high in the scheme of mountaineering
Because It’s There
“There have been a bunch of stories about Mount Everest lately, mostly about the bodies of ascent tourists that litter its slopes (one of them was a vegan woman who was determined to make the summit in order to prove that vegans could do anything omnivores can do. Sadly, she didn’t make it, but at least she died doing what she loved: Telling people she was a vegan), but Everest is a Sunday School picnic compared to the second highest peak in the world – K2.”
Second Highest Strangeness – Kairos – By Brian Niemeier
Earth’s second-highest mountain–in a just world, it would be the first–towers 28,251 feet above the Godwin-Austen Glacier in the Karakoram Range on Pakistan’s border with China. Despite its enormity, the mountain remained unknown to the outside world until the British surveyed it in 1856. Its location is so remote that it cannot be seen from the nearest human settlements–whose people manifest European features and claim to be the posterity of deserters from Alexander the Great’s army. In sharp contrast to Everest Base Camp, which you can drive to, and which does in fact have blackjack and hookers, just reaching K2 base camp entails a two-week expedition worthy of an Indiana Jones flick, complete with rickety rope bridge.
According to the Wikipedia article on K2, it looks like that mountain could be the next Everest…
On 22 July 2022 more than 100 summits on K2 in a single day have been recorded. This is the highest number of summits in a single day ever on K2.
I laughed way harder than I should have …
Nice.
The article I linked earlier says “The differences show up in the stats. Over 4,000 people have climbed Everest.”
But - Wiki sez: “As of July 2022, there have been approximately 11,346 summit ascents by 6,098 people.”
So who really knows for sure. (I mean, about the hookers and blackjack)