Yes, no one, and especially not a ‘breadwinner’, should ever undertake challenge or put themselves in any risk just out of a desire to achieve a personal goal. They should stay at home, check their 401(k) portfolio, watch CNN, eat their Hot Pockets, drive their overscheduled children to soccer practice, piano lessons, horse riding, and ‘give me a few minutes alone’ camp, and play golf or fantasy football like the good little consumers they’ve been conditioned to be.
Complaints about how Western tourists treat their host countries may be valid (although from much of what I’ve seen the residents are often equally trashy, having adopted Western values and products) but ‘adventure tourism’ and ‘eco-tourism’ bring money and attention to places that would otherwise receive little of either. Nepal is a economically depressed nation which is highly dependent upon remittance of labor performed by emigrants and what commercial and tourism revenue it can get. At least this prevents them from clear cutting forests to create more farmland or poaching endangered species to sell tusks and organs.
From what I’ve read about Everest, getting to the summit isn’t that difficult. It’s getting back down and dealing with fatigue/lack of oxygen that are the problems. In terms of mountaineering skills, I’d be much more impressed with someone who said they had climbed K2. But Everest will always attract the people who want the distinction of being at the highest place on Earth.
Maybe the kind of people who climb Mt. Everest are also the kind of people who “discovered” new continents back in the day.
It’s also an interesting thing to talk about. There’s a guy at work who climbed Mt. Everest five years ago, and people still bring it up in conversation.
I’ve never climbed it, and I never will, but here’s my answer to the question.
I would want to climb it first to see it, to be on “top of the world”, to take in the view. But the second reason is, I would test myself. I’d want to know if I could do it. Call it a “measuring contest” if you will, but it bothers me a little that there are people that can do something that I can’t. If I could make the climb, then I would be equal to some others. Silly, but true.
I’d want to test my limits. I also have considered this in the context of Viet Nam, or Iraq. Sometimes, I want to know how I would have fared in combat. Of course, for Everest, the reality is, that I know I can’t do it. I would go there to test my limits, and I’d find them. It’s not very useful to find out your limits and then die!
Yes, God forbid anyone strive for great feats so long as there are backward countries run by petty, corrupt, bureaucrats because their people can’t get their shit straight.
I’m sure being a tiny, landlocked, mountainous, remote country wedged between two massive and not particularly cooperative powers has nothing to do with it. It must be that they are just bad people, otherwise they’d be rich.
I’d pay good money to ride the ski lift to the top. Exactly because “because it’s there.” There’s no practical use paying to go to the top of the Sears Tower or CN Tower, but I’ve done those, too, because they’re there, and you can get a good view.
I’m not willing to risk death or get into shape enough to minimize the chances via a traditional climb, but my enjoyment of the ski lift wouldn’t diminish the accomplishment of the climbers who did it the hard way, any more than the people that take the lift to the top of Huangshang or the Great Wall diminished my enjoyment of climbing up myself.
If I were a climber, though, then my motivation would certainly be that it’s a challenging climb, I have fun climbing, so, hey, let’s do this thing. There are things that I like to do that others certainly see as pointless.
Are you under the impression that they were well-off to begin with? If not isn’t that desperately poor people taking on the task because it’s “one of the few ways open to them to make decent money”?
Some people are inspired by God to go to undertake a journey to places for divine reasons for the ultimate betterment of themselves and all of humanity by what one learns along the jourey. Others just follow thinking it’s cool and all that shit.
I highly recommend this last article. It sounds like sherpas can make a lot of money, but it’s a big gamble, and they are often inadequately protected.
