Young and Full of Fluff

Last night I decided to give myself insomnia by watching The Summit, a documentary about the day in 2008 on which 11 people died trying to reach the summit of K2. I read the wikipedia page on it first so that I knew which people died, otherwise it would have been excruciating to watch.

A couple of things about this.

( Ethics, ethics, ethics )


I am both fascinated and repelled by stories such as this. I am morbidly fascinated at the same time that I think that these climbers voided their right to my pity by voluntarily taking those risks. I mean, like I said, one in four people who have attempted the summit of K2 have died for their trouble. So if you do that and the mountain kills you, this is really not such a surprise.

And listening to the climbers talk--I mean, they call people who climb Everest tourists. K2 is for the real mountaineers. If that's your attitude... The doc focused mostly on one of the climbers that died, Ger McDonnell. This guy had attempted K2 previously and been struck by falling rocks and almost died. On his Everest ascent, he almost died rescuing the team leader. Look, if you're going to come within a hair's breadth of dying multiple times and still go back, eventually the mountain is going to win.

Another climber, who lost her husband on this climb, talked about how the two of them had previously hiked K2 "to get to know the mountain," not attempting the summit. The last trip they spent three months on the mountain. This attempt was also three months. So part of me was watching like, who are these people? Who has months of their life and tens of thousands of dollars lying around to just spend "getting to know the mountain"? Are there, like, sponsorships or grants I don't know about? The whole thing just defies my understanding.