Browsing through YouTube I stumbled upon an old story of the May 1996 disaster:
➜ https://youtu.be/So3vH9FY2H4 ■
Speaking of killing and injuring, I realized that May 1996 disaster, of which Jon Krakauer wrote Into Thin Air, was exactly 30 years ago on 10 May.
And the additional scenes for the Krakauer IMAX movie Everest were filmed on Mt Washington NH in order to simulate conditions on Everest and to prepare the crew.
And if you look at prominence, instead of height,
Mt. Washington isn’t too shabby. It ranks 136 in north America, and it’s the most prominent peak in the eastern US.
I would argue that for most purposes, the prominence of a mountain is more interesting that it’s height.
I’ve been to Nepal twice, and here’s what I can’t get past;
There are other mountains. Right there! Many. With challenging climbs, and spectacular views. But some metres shorter. The climbs are more beautiful, and not life threatening. The routes are NOT covered in trash, there are not guidewires, ladders, etc. There is also no queues.
Imagine how much better that experience would be, you, your guides and the mountain. No crowds, no other climbers, no dead bodies to step over. Your every interaction, with everything, the environment, your mates, your guides would be truly, wildly enhanced. The guides wouldn’t be off in a separate camp, you’d all be together the whole time. You would most certainly come back with such a better experience.
And honestly I’d be impressed with that choice, and sincerely want to hear all about it. I mean, isn’t THAT what Everest climbers are ultimately seeking? Instead I bet they get asked about dead bodies, lineups, and garbage a lot. That’s got to take the shine off the apple a titch, surely.
No, clearly what Everest climbers want is to say the climbed MT. EVEREST!
No one’s ever heard of this other peaks and won’t be impressed.
speaking of Krakauer, a pretty interesting interview with him recently in Slate: Everest’s worst disaster has never ended. Jon Krakauer is still living it.
I figure the Everest climbers are pretty focused on Mount Everest, at least in the moment, just as the Nanga Parbat climbers want to climb Nanga Parbat and the Annapurna climbers want to climb Annapurna.
Also, it is a lot more impressive to summit, let’s say K2, and survive than Everest if one is going to be telling the tale at cocktail parties… 
(or at all— what those extreme mountaineers enjoy is the experience and the challenge)
If I’m reading that chart correctly, Mount Washington is the 59th most prominent peak in the United States.
And the Presidential Range in the White Mountains of New Hampshire (of which Mount Washington is a part) are some of the most dangerous mountains in the U.S., likely because of their proximity to population centers like Boston (as opposed to the many more distant peaks in Alaska). People have been documented as dying on them from the early 1800s up to the present day.
K2 is a real mountain man climb. It’s a technical climb. (While I couldn’t do it) Everest is like walking up a steep roof. It’s not that technical.
And there was a short period* in time where K2 was the highest mountain. Then they got their tape measures out and said no, Everest is and has always been higher. But if you had climbed K2 then, you would have bragging rights. 
I think you should use the “climbing height” not height above sea level. If you go to, say, one of Colorado’s 14K footers, but you drive to the parking lot at 11,500, then you’ve climbed 2500+ vertical feet. Going from Everest base camp to the summit is 11K-12K. But that’s just me.
*1986-1987
I have a friend who summitted Everest, and she’s a pretty accomplished mountaineer. She said it was easily the hardest thing she’s ever done. It’s not particularly technical, but doing even mildly technical things at those altitudes is very hard. Your body is constantly telling you “This is very bad and I refuse to cooperate.”
Compared to other more technical climbs it is easier, but it is a major undertaking. The vast majority of people on this planet have no chance of making it up there.
Thanks for sharing. It’s interesting, and sad. And mostly, it’s kind of depressing to think that if all had gone well for those people in 1996, Krakauer probably would have still written his article, then book, but the true crime element, the who really made mistakes element, what really happened when, would not be there and there might be fewer people interested in climbing Everest. Because apparently for some people, the risk is part of the allure.
I believe I said that.
K2:
Everest:
(yes yes there are technical parts of Everest, and walking parts of K2. Not that technical.)
Depends what kind of cocktail party it is. Is it a gathering of accomplished mountaineers? Then sure, K2 will be more impressive than Everest. Literally any other cocktail party on Earth? Then at least half the attendees are going to say some variant of “K2? You sank my battleship! Ha-ha!”
I didn’t take note of that one, but i think the most interesting stat is that it’s the most prominent mountain i east of the Rockies the US. And yes, because it punches into the jet stream it has some horrendous weather.
And yet, you can drive to the summit, or take a train.
I agree with your whole post, but this part struck me. It seems absolutely true. I would go further and say the risk IS the allure. Many of the clients on Krakauer’s expedition and later ones are not mountaineers really, but thrill seekers. That is, they didn’t go on the expedition because it was the next natural progression in their long mountaineering careers. Rather, they did it because the risk, the danger, and the high visibility of climbing the “tallest mountain on Earth”. For whatever reason, some people are drawn to high risk activities, whether that is sky diving, racing motorcycles, or climbing extremely dangerous mountains. It kind of reminds me of the movie Point Break. I know the movie is absurd on pretty much every level, but the motivations of the character of Bodhi (Patrick Swayze) rang fairly true to me. Take away all the philosophizing and pseudo-Buddhist babble he was always spouting, and it was pretty clear he was a simple adrenaline junky, and his only motivation was chasing the next big rush. If he survived the final wave at the end, I could see his next fixation being climbing Mount Everest.
Heh, when I hiked Whitney, they said it was 14,495 feet. I always rounded up.
We started at Whitney Portal which is at 8374. The summit is 14505 (just looked it up), so it’s over 6000’.
If you take the Great Gulf trail to the summit of Mt Washington, the elevation gain is 5000’, although most hiking routes are around 4000’. You can drive up in summer, but in winter parts of the road are under 20’ of snow. There’s no road up Mt Adams, but the hike up gains 4500’ by the most common route.
Certainly, some of the 14’ers in CO are wilder and more remote, but the White Mountains in NH are rough and dangerous enough for the crowds on the trails. I’ve been up a few 14’ers and elevation is its own challenge that you can’t duplicate in the east, but a lot of the actual hiking is easier due to the different approaches to trail building.
You and I must think alike. If I ever spend a grand vacation in Hawaii it would be on Molokai, not Oahu or the big island, for the same reasons if not so extreme.
I read years ago when the height for Mount Everest was first determined in the 1850s it came to exactly 29,000 feet. The surveyors reported it as 29,002 so it wouldn’t look like it was rounded off.
Wish I could find it, but some hiking friends of mine all chuckled at a letter to the editor of a local newspaper a few years ago complaining about the condition of the trails in the White Mountains and how they were not safe at all and needed to either be improved or closed to the public.
This was similar to the person who demanded their lift ticket money back at Sugarloaf in Maine due to the “dangerous and hazardous icy conditions,” and that the mountain needed to be shut down for people’s safety. Now all east coast mountains get icy conditions sometimes, but not that day. Instead it was just typical New England packed powder. We spent all day skiing looking for the “dangerous and hazardous icy conditions” without any luck. 
I assume both of these people were not locals.
I wonder if we haven’t reached the “Too Big To Fail” phase when it comes to climbing Everest. Yes, it’s doing severe ecological damage to the mountain, and people are dying left and right for bragging rights, and it’s a clusterfuck at the summit and on the way down, and there are discrepancies in the health care that sickened/injured individuals receive, and scam artists are in the industry, and yada yada yada. In a perfect world the Nepalese government would declare the mountain sacred and end all climbing of it. Problem solved.
Except that the livelihood of many Sherpas would be irrevocably ruined. Those tourist dollars build Sherpa hospitals, build schools for Sherpa children, and hell, I imagine that a not-insignificant number of Sherpas would have difficulty putting food on the table if we shut it down. So there’s that.