Want to climb Everest?
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Anybody here ever summit Everest? I mean other than me? Standing atop the world, looking down on the planet and all of its inhabitants, finally proving my abject superiority over everybody else, was deeply humbling.
@Horace said in Want to climb Everest?:
Anybody here ever summit Everest? I mean other than me? Standing atop the world, looking down on the planet and all of its inhabitants, finally proving my abject superiority over everybody else, was deeply humbling.
Here's the question, do you lie and tell people you climbed the 29,000-ft mountain or do you really admit you flew into an airport 2/3 of the way up and then climbed the rest? I want to meet the first person to truly climb the mountain from the bottom of the mountain.
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@Horace said in Want to climb Everest?:
Anybody here ever summit Everest? I mean other than me? Standing atop the world, looking down on the planet and all of its inhabitants, finally proving my abject superiority over everybody else, was deeply humbling.
Here's the question, do you lie and tell people you climbed the 29,000-ft mountain or do you really admit you flew into an airport 2/3 of the way up and then climbed the rest? I want to meet the first person to truly climb the mountain from the bottom of the mountain.
@89th said in Want to climb Everest?:
@Horace said in Want to climb Everest?:
Anybody here ever summit Everest? I mean other than me? Standing atop the world, looking down on the planet and all of its inhabitants, finally proving my abject superiority over everybody else, was deeply humbling.
Here's the question, do you lie and tell people you climbed the 29,000-ft mountain or do you really admit you flew into an airport 2/3 of the way up and then climbed the rest? I want to meet the first person to truly climb the mountain from the bottom of the mountain.
But where does the mountain start?
I guess if you mean "from zero" then the trip would be at least a 1000 miles long. The next place with elevation 0 seems to be somewhere at the coast of India.
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@89th said in Want to climb Everest?:
@Horace said in Want to climb Everest?:
Anybody here ever summit Everest? I mean other than me? Standing atop the world, looking down on the planet and all of its inhabitants, finally proving my abject superiority over everybody else, was deeply humbling.
Here's the question, do you lie and tell people you climbed the 29,000-ft mountain or do you really admit you flew into an airport 2/3 of the way up and then climbed the rest? I want to meet the first person to truly climb the mountain from the bottom of the mountain.
But where does the mountain start?
I guess if you mean "from zero" then the trip would be at least a 1000 miles long. The next place with elevation 0 seems to be somewhere at the coast of India.
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@Klaus Ok how about the Koshi Bridge or similar location at the base of the Himalayas. That's like 200m, I'll take that as a legit "start from the bottom of the mountain".
@89th That is actually quite an interesting question.
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Other than Horace, who my sources inform me started 17 feet from the top, I think a lot of people start at about 9000 feet above sea level. I know somebody normal (i.e. non climber) who made the walk to base camp, and they said that was adventure enough.
I'm guessing that it doesn't get easier the higher you go, despite the reduced wind-resistance as the air thins.
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Here are the videos I'm talking about, if you want to spend 30 minutes (per video) and experience the summit, the descent, or even the full trip:
Link to video Link to video Link to video -
Kīlauea is 20,000 feet above the ocean floor. I have been up there.
Haleakalā is 29,000 feet above the ocean floor. I have been up there.
@Copper Good point.
I should rephrase. 20,000 feet above sea level.
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Just curious if anyone here has been above 20000 feet while on land.
(and no @copper, being in an airplane does not count!!!! LOL)
@taiwan_girl I’ve summited Kilimanjaro which is 19341 ft so I guess my answer to you is I haven’t.
ps in the year 1999. Before my PW sign up.
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@taiwan_girl I’ve summited Kilimanjaro which is 19341 ft so I guess my answer to you is I haven’t.
ps in the year 1999. Before my PW sign up.
@bachophile said in Want to climb Everest?:
@taiwan_girl I’ve summited Kilimanjaro which is 19341 ft so I guess my answer to you is I haven’t.
ps in the year 1999. Before my PW sign up.
That is pretty darn close!!! I think you are the TNCR highest!
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With Everest climbing season opening again imminently, the idea of using drones on the world's tallest mountain to ease the load on sherpas has been making waves
Officials in Nepal are gearing up to resume testing drones from next month with the view to use them to carry equipment up the mountain in the future.
Trials began in 2024 when Chinese drone manufacturer DJI teamed up with Nepalese drone service company Airlift and mountain guide Mingma Gyalje Sherpa. They completed the first successful drone delivery trials, carrying 33lb (15kg) payloads from Base Camp to Camp 1.
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While drones could take away risk and enhance safety for sherpas, who may need to complete fewer trips and could use geolocation capabilities to pinpoint routes in changing landscapes, they come at a price. One DJI drone can cost more than $70,000.
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Interesting interview with Jon Krakauer, who wrote "Into Thin Air", and it is now 30 years later.
On May 10, it will be 30 years since a squall swept across the upper reaches of Everest, killing eight climbers that night in what was then one of the deadliest mountaineering disasters of all time. (By the end of the season, twelve climbers had died on the mountain in all.) Worse, this was at the dawn of Everest’s guided era, when strong, competent Western mountaineers thought they could pacify the mountain’s myriad death traps and build, as Mountain Madness guide and owner Scott Fischer famously put it, “a yellow brick road right to the summit.”
Writer Jon Krakauer was there as a client of Kiwi Rob Hall’s Adventure Consultants on assignment for Outside, and the magazine story he turned in became the book Into Thin Air, which immediately surged to #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. Far from dissuading would-be clients and guides, the book seems to have supercharged the commercialization of Everest. By the time I was reporting on the mountain regularly in the early twentyteens, mass casualty events had become a regular feature of many seasons. There were the four climbers who couldn’t get themselves down in 2012 despite the good weather, the 2014 serac collapse that killed 16 Sherpa porters, and the avalanche set off by the 2015 Nepal earthquake which took at least 19 lives in Base Camp. The death toll climbed and so did some 13,000 summiters’ apparent ability to memory-hole the disasters and keep coming at the mountain, decade after decade.
Now, 30 years on, Krakauer has written a new foreword to Into Thin Air, chronicling those changes as Vintage Books re-releases the book. I spoke with him at length about that dark and stormy night and the after-effects that are still haunting him today.
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