Did you read the article? The sherpa is saying the exact opposite of this.

> "Climbers need to wake up and understand that climbing a big peak like Everest is extremely risky. They need to stop believing just because they are with a 'Sherpa guide' who has summited Everest 10 times that they will be rescued if they get in trouble," says Alan.

Yes, I read the article, and am a mountaineer, and stand by what I said. It's tricky to talk about difficulty with those not versed in the sport, because with mountains like Everest (which are non-technical high-altitude walkups) it's about objective risks like weather or avalanches or HAPE/CE rather than subjective risks like lack of strength or fitness or coordination or whatever.

I’d like to piggy back on this comment and ask you: what do you see as your aspirational mountaineering accomplishment(s)? Or is that even the right way to look at mountaineering? And what would you suggest to a beginner how to get more into the sport safely?

I’m getting pretty into mountaineering (or at least setting myself up to be), I rock climb outside about once a week now in Clear Creek, Colorado. I hike as many 14ers as I can a summer. I also back country ski in the winter and am getting my AIARE 1 this winter.

Currently I aspire to do the seven summits once I’m confident I’m prepared and ready. So I’m wondering about the above because I’m starting to see this as a flawed accomplishment.

It's certainly worth examining what you want out of the sport, because at some point you'll get seriously injured, or have a near-death experience, or have a friend die, and will have to justify your participation to yourself. I won't go so far as to say that if a traumatic incident changes your approach to the sport then you were living/climbing inauthentically (trauma has real mental effects), but it shouldn't send you into too much of a crisis.

Mountaineering is a very personal sport and I don't want to gatekeep it saying you're approaching it the wrong way. Having a list of peaks you want to climb is fine, but I do roll my eyes a bit at the box-checkers. It's a fine line.

It sounds like you're taking a good approach into mountaineering (I'm really not much of an authority here, honestly). Personally I went the route of joining a local volunteer-run mountaineering club, but independent close-knit groups of climbers are just as good (assuming you have similar attitudes toward safety, risk, and technical education).

My personal goal with mountaineering is to be climbing well into my 70s, just like some of the older people in my club. This requires avoiding routes with higher objective risks, but there are more than enough mountains in the world with which to fill one's heart.

I definitely struggle with the idea of box checking, it is however one of the easiest ways to show progress to myself. Which is why I think many people start with it. I think I'm going to reevaluate how I show personal progress, as well as always double check that safety is my number one priority vs summit chasing. Even though you aren't an authority, this is great info, thanks for this.

As with anything, people get into trouble when they fixate on goals rather than the process.

If your objective is simply to become a better mountaineer rather than tick off a list of summits, that'll naturally lead you in a sensible direction. You'll get the right training, you'll work on your skills and fitness, you'll look for routes that offer the greatest technical challenge at the lowest risk. The inverse attitude is what gets most people into trouble on Everest - they push far beyond the limit of their abilities, they ignore clear warning signs that their body is failing, all because they're preoccupied with the summit.

As a mountaineer do you actually come across people who show off about climbing Everest? I guess that could be really annoying.

I am not a mountaineer but I have always dreamed of climbing Everest just because of reading books as a kid. It seems like an amazing form of escapism rather than about ego or anything like that. I think that is what drives a lot of extreme fitness activities. You have something to focus on and work towards and a possibility of feeling a sense of achievement. I think rock climbers are more about feeling a sense of flow which makes it a completely different sport.

I had a go at climbing Everest but turned back at about 8400m when my oxygen gear packed up. I find it funny that people are really impressed by Everest climbing which always seemed to me a bit of a dumb expensive trudge up a large rock and very unimpressed by my attempts to figure why the universe exists which seems to me a noble and logical thing to do but people think you're nuts. Life's odd like that I guess.

That said Everesting was quite fun. I went unguided but with a lot of logistical support, and tried to develop my own oxygen gizmo. It wasn't my invented bit that failed by the way.

Standing in the street in Miami during a hurricane is also extremely risky. That doesn't make it a impressive achievement.

For that matter, so is playing russian roulette.

It can be both 'unimpressive' and reckless.

You are talking about Cho Oyu, not Everest. Everest, especially without supplementary oxygen, is a major achievement and if you don't prepare well, you are likely to increase mortality rate. Not to mention avalanches, falling seracs and a sudden major change of local weather can kill you anytime without any warning.

It's rare to climb without supplementary oxygen. Weather/avalanche/seracs fall in the objective hazard category and are unrelated to how fit you are (beyond moving through danger zones faster). Everest is not a major achievement, it's a high-altitude walkup.

Not really, look at list of deaths on Everest here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deaths_on_eight-thousa...

Many people abort due to altitude sickness and resulting cerebral edema at altitudes below 7,000m but you never hear about it. Super-trained athletes can get altitude sickness and sometimes unfit people don't, and that can completely change a year later; it's basically a lottery if in a given time-span you are able to climb to the top or not. From about 7,500m your resting heart rate becomes over 120bpm and from 8,000 you are literally dying from asphyxiation; doing a 9h training run on a bike is easier than an hour on Everest at that altitude. Your mental capacity is diminished , you are no longer able to focus on other people just on yourself, and it's all about your own survival and your own will to progress further and live. Anything that goes wrong at that elevation is likely to kill you and maybe others around you as well.

But I agree that from purely technical standpoint there is only one spot on Everest that requires real climbing, but that one is pretty high up, making it super challenging comparing to e.g. Swiss Alps. As an athlete, you'd find south face of Nanga Parbat a real challenge that no "rich tourist" can ever climb and that's probably why you are so dismissive.

I think we agree it is a collection of objective hazards and getting to the top is largely chance. The baseline fitness required is not astonishingly high and is within reach of moderately fit people as they spend weeks/months at base camp acclimating.

Last I heard the Hillary Step had been destroyed in the earthquake, but people still talk about it so who knows. Also, I will never climb nanga parbat lol (barring the greatest midlife (end of life?) crisis the world has ever seen)

Yeah, there are conflicting reports about Hillary step:

"Last year, Mingma Tsiri Sherpa who has nine summits told the Daily Mail, “The fixed lines are more to the right of the step (than before). We’re now walking on the snow whereas before we had to walk on the rocky side. That is the reason for the confusion.” And 15 time summiter, Pemba Dorje Sherpa said “The Hillary Step is as it was before, but a large stone above it has fallen”"

I think I’ll trust the Sherpa from the article instead of you. The article is literally about how Everest is very hard and dangerous and that how tourists are being convinced it’s not.

It's stupendously dangerous, but by mountaineering standards it's not a technically difficult climb. With enough Sherpas lugging enough oxygen bottles, you can drag a complete no-hoper to the summit. A substantial proportion of people who summit Everest have minimal mountaineering experience and some of them have never even worn crampons before. They're objectively bad mountaineers, but they make it to the summit nonetheless - they're taking big risks to get there, some of them won't come back, but it's not a particularly great achievement.

By contrast, your local indoor climbing gym almost certainly has routes that are beyond the ability of 99% of climbers. There's no team of Sherpas to get you past the tricky parts with ladders and fixed ropes, just holds and chalk and muscle and brains. The only way you're ever going to complete that route is through years of hard training.

That's the point people are making when they say that Everest is "easy". Everest has taken an outsized place in the popular imagination because it's the biggest, but it's a million miles from the hardest - it's just incredibly dangerous, for reasons which are mostly beyond the control of even the most skilled climber.

I mean, that’s like saying killing yourself isn’t hard to do. You probably don’t need “crampons” (whatever that is) to do. But why is it that more/most people don’t commit suicide? Because it’s genuinely hard to do. Every evolutionary single is telling you not to do it. The same goes for Everest.

Whether something is hard or not doesn’t depend on training or dedication or whatever. It depends on how likely you are to do it.

To give a more extreme example: how hard is it to cut off and eat your own finger? By your standards, it sounds pretty easy (no crampons required). But actually going through with it requires such force of will that only a few would ever be capable of such a feat.

It is humorous you feel confident enough to write a whole opinion about what makes mountaineering difficult without knowing what crampons are, or taking the five seconds to google it. Knowledge of crampons wouldn't make your opinion valid, but lack of knowledge definitely makes it invalid.

I’m no mountaineer, but I’ll guess the misunderstanding here stems from where one draws the baseline. If you’re someone who spent years climbing in the Alps or in Colorado, then I assume that Everest simply may not be an upgrade. It’s like doing an easy climb in the Alps at half the oxygen and more severe weather—in terms of athleticism, there’s no extra achievement. The sherpa in the article probably talks about very fit “urban” people, which is still very different different from an experienced mountaineer. I may still be off though.

I’m no mountaineer, but I’ll guess the misunderstanding here stems from where one draws the baseline. If you’re someone who spent years climbing in the Alps, then I assume that Mt Everest

I think you’re underestimating the difficulty. No moderately fit person can do it. You have to be very good but even then it’s still a big risk.