Comments on: Extreme sports build character and judgment

By: Brian S.

Brian S. — Tue, 30 May 2006 05:08:41 +0000

Michael could be right, but I’ll leave it to the person who has never driven by the scene of an accident on a busy highway to make the final decision.
Main route on Everest on a good summit day is a highway.

By: aimai

aimai — Sun, 28 May 2006 13:57:04 +0000

I shouldn’t have spoken so harshly in my original post. I have very strong feelings about people who can afford financially to take on extreme sports/events that potentially endanger others who have not properly prepared themselves for it. But on the other hand you might as well argue that all of life is an extreme sport and we are all, and necessarily so, at the mercy of the kindness of strangers. Blaming the guy who made a mistake and excusing the guys who stepped over his body to get to their goal (which no one here but me did) seems, on reflection, to be rather like the fighter pilots in Wolfe’s The Right Stuff who are convinced that only incompetents get killed in plane crashes and that there is always something a truly great pilot could have done to avert disaster. In the end, I’ll come down on Michael O’hare’s side with the tenatitive “maybe they are just pathologically self centered and nuts to boot” and that goes for those who survive, mutilated, but find insufficient challenge in ordinary life and those that die, abandoned, in pursuit of the will of the wisp of an extra-ordinary life. There are so many more worthy things to die pursuing than bragging rights to having climbed a mountain that, after all, was just standing there minding its own business.
aimai

By: Steven

Steven — Sat, 27 May 2006 23:53:23 +0000

As someone who does climb non-trivial routes solo every now and then I accept its my own damn fault if I get in trouble and can’t get help. But I don’t understand this ethic of not helping people when you can that seems to be appearing on some of the more popular peaks these days. Fortunately, I’ve never encountered it in my climbing career and the people I have met on rock & ice have been more than helpfull when something goes wrong.

By: aimai

aimai — Sat, 27 May 2006 19:02:46 +0000

Creepy story all around. Hard to sympathize with anyone, really. Climbing everest on the cheap? Refusing to take enough oxygen and counting on someone else having enough to bring you back down when yours runs out? And who is supposed to sacrifice their oxygen for you? its not going to be the rich white climbers but their hired sherpas. People die in nepal–nepali people die of curable illnesses, or die bringing tasty food up the mountain for mountaineers who represent themselves as “summiting” more or less alone. One westerner who chooses suicide by incompetence when he doesn’t have to does not begin to measure up against the hundreds of nepalese who have lost their lives or been injured servicing this industry.
aimai

By: Cranky Observer

Cranky Observer — Sat, 27 May 2006 12:34:54 +0000

If you are depending on the charity and judgement of people who have been breathing low-pressure oxygen at 28,000′ for 2 days to keep you alive, well, think Darwin Award.
I wasn’t there so I can’t judge the situation or the people. I can say: don’t go up on that mountain unless you are are aware there is a good chance you won’t come back alive. It may look routine in this day and age, but as a friend of mine found out sometimes all the high-tech gadgets do is allow you to talk to your family on the satphone as you die.
Cranky

By: wplasvegas

wplasvegas — Sat, 27 May 2006 04:55:08 +0000

Q: Why did you climb the mountain?
A: Because it was there.
Q: Why did you step over the dying man?
A: Because he was there.