KDdidit wrote:
Joe Orr Road Rod wrote:
There is a real point there in that, from a mountaineering standpoint, Everest really is no big deal, particularly for a peak of its size. Which is exactly why so many goofs get up there in the first place. One needn't have the great technical skills that are necessary to climb K2 or The Eiger.
Spoiler alert, they're doing the same to K2. It's a race to the bottom with a race to the top as companies try to offer the lowest rates to get you to the peak. There's 7 summit expeditions set for K2 in the Summer.
Everest is like capitalism.txt with rich dudes getting to the top on back of the locals while they ignore the carcasses of the dead and dying that surround them (not that they can do anything for them, to be fair). At the same time they're literally shitting up the mountain with garbage an human excrement which is threatening the water table at lower altitudes. At least the Sherpas get paid decently.
krakauer has been saying this for over 20 years. it's just been getting worse. even back when he made his disaster expedition, it was already starting to get more about warring adventure campaigns to rich people. now it's gotten so out of hand, this is going to happen pretty much every year.
douglas adams used to joke that everest was just a "smart jog" up from base camp to the summit. he was defending that Kilimanjaro was the real mark of a climber.
everest *was* an impossible mountain to climb until it became a resort with base camp. since then, it literally is just being taken along by sherpa who wind up being your valet to the summit.
i have zero sympathy for any of these climbers who are still paying up and taking these trips. if i really wanted to climb everest i'd wait until the tourists are cut off and it became about actually climbing again.
There should be some kind of qualification for being allowed to climb. But again, a lack of technical prowess is not really the issue here. It's the amount of people trying to summit in a very short window. Even if all of them were as skilled as Krakauer, there would be problems with people getting jammed up at high altitude.
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