For only 700 000 rand anyone can climb mount Everest and I do mean anyone...I read it has now been climbed by a blindman, , a man with no legs, a 76 year old and a 13 year old. For these people it is pretty remarkable although if you have all your limbs and are healthy etc maybe... just maybe... it's not that remarkable. It has now been climbed by 4000 people.

Does anyone know how many ascents Clinton's route- 'Marry poppins' has seen on TM?

Funny you mention that! I went by there last week and just happened to see a blind, legless thirteen year old chalking up for a burn...

_________________
...Chalk is cheap...

"The challenge for me after finishing rugby was, in 12 months, to go from complete novice to the highest point in the world."
From No room at top in Everest rush hour

Yes, Everest has become a tourist attraction, I think it has been for some time now. Think I'll skip the queue and take the helicopter ride in order to get my summit photo

_________________
Climb ZA - Administrator

Sees a fair bit of deaths as well, but yes if you don't die and are fit you can proberbly do it. I am planning on being the first fat guy to climb everest, anyone want to sponsor me.

_________________
Fat men are harder to kidnap

if the weather is good most people can make it to the top i guess ("a yellow brick road to the top" as alluded to by one of the professional guides in "into thin air"). if the weather goes bad you can join the grisly array of frozen corpses up there. too close to russian roulette for my liking.....

btw, the kind-of-famous snowman trek in bhutan has a lower success ratio than everest (i.e. proportionally less people manages to complete it than summiting the big E) - part of it is probably that Everest preparation is taken a lot more seriously. personally i think its cooler to do the snowman trek...

http://www.bhutan-trails.org/trekking/snowman-1.html

ps: my stats here is based on something i read in a book a few years ago or maybe i've dreamt it

time we bumped that everest hiking photo off the home page.

29,107 metres? Wow thats stratospheric! I think if you got that high into the sky, you would start to float away into the unknown...Rather stay on your feet (now where is the smiley for cheezy?)

_________________
...Chalk is cheap...

is this samuel jack a computer generated personality that make posts to advertise "romatic bed & breakfasts"?????

the most pointless post ever

Hiya,
The SamuelJack user was a spam posting and his user account has been deleted.
J

_________________
Climb ZA - Administrator

Wow - thats a pretty sophisticated SPAM program - replies to all postings on a forum with seemingly intelligent and relevant (if extremely irritating) comments...

Back on topic: interesting question - number of repeats of local climbs vs repeats of high profile peak bagging routes... preparing to climb many of these would arguably take more (longer) physical and mental preparation than ascending the big one?

No-one has answered the question about the TM route...

I have a question aimed at KZN climbers about a much easier, yet to me and a few others, excellent trad climb:
Tuxedo Junction (21) at Boothill - apart from the opening ascent (apparently on pre-placed gear), who else has led this? I ask because some very competent traddies (not me!) were looking at it this weekend and backed off ...
Still, makes a fantastic top-rope route...

C ya,
Bruce

_________________
LCD SCUM

I suspect that technically, Everest may not be the trickiest of mountains, but to get to the top is pretty much a war of attrition. I recently trekked to Everest Advanced Base Camp on theTibetan side, the trek starting at around 5100m above sea level and going as high as just over 6400m. During the 8 days on the mountain I experienced:

- freezing temperatures (we measured minus 12 degrees at 8am in the morning); though it fortunately
warmed up quite a bit during the day
- biting winds
- kick ass headaches, and various other rather unpleasant effects caused directly by the
altitude
- the effort to just put one foot in front of the other got more and more the higher I got, and my
muscles swore blue murder at being deprived of all the oxygen they are used to while living at sea
level.

And just to think, there's still around another 2km straight up that one has to go to reach the summit! Summit teams spend between 6 weeks to 2 months to bag the highest point in the world; all because of the need to acclimatise. Now if THAT isn't attrition, then I don't know what is.....

Personally,that blind, legless thirteen year old is welcome to the summit, as it doesn't appeal to me
I'll stick to going back to the Himalayas and doing a 6000m instead.....

The fact is that if you have run out of other options of making a living or feeling un-famous, then any South African that ascends Everest is considered a hero and instantly becomes a qualified motivational speaker.

It is no irony that at any one time there are one or more of the best and boldest rock climbers, mountaineers or boulderers in South Africa and nobody (other than climbers) give a damn.

But if you have climbed Everest......Wow...

ja, if you climbed K2 you probably have bragging rights.... it's been said that the 2nd 7 summits are WAY harder than the "7 summits". and then there's the like of Gasherbrum 4 or the Ogre....... do yourself a favour and read andy de klerk's "sharper edges" - in the world of real mountaineers everest will not earn you that much respect.

but i guess for the average joe it is one moer of an accomplishment to make it to the top of the big E. sjikes, in the world of beer boeps and mall rats a kili summit is treated with awe&wonder.

okes, like sherpas, who handle altitude okay has a great advantage. the record for summiting everest from basecamp is 8 hours 10mins via the south col!!! given good weather i do not think it is much more of an accomplishment than to complete the cape epic or hike the snowman trek. the stakes are just much much much higher.

Just to add on to Snort's comment about any South African who climbs Everest instantly becomes a hero and a qualified motivational speaker...Anyone read any of the books written by our local "hero's"? Two of the books I've read recently have reference to our local mountains that are factually incorrect.

The one book says "Later I was invited to climb Cleft Peak, Mont-aux-Sources(3282 meters - the highest peak in South Africa) and Sterkhorn."
Come on, you're writing a book because you're such a hero that's climbed the highest mountain in the world but yet in your own home country you don't even know what the highest mountain is (For those who don't know either it's Mafadi in the Injisuthi area of the Drakensberg at 3450meters and lies on the SA and Lesotho Borders).

The other book written in 2008 says " My all- time favourite is the Drakensberg traverse along the escarpment from Mont-aux-Sources to Giant's Castle. I had first done this traverse"......."in record time. It took us five days. To date no one has ever crossed this section of the Drakensberg any faster."
Now the record time since 1999 for the entire range never mind just to Giants Castle ( which is about the half way mark for The Grand Traverse) was 4days 9hrs. This record has recently been broken three times and is now at just over 60hrs. Walking from Mont-aux-Sources to Giants Castle in five days is a perfectly achievable task and would have been done by many parties over the years.
So again the guy is writing the book because he's climbed the highest mountain in the world but yet makes claims about his achievements in his home country that are so so wrong

Mr McCoy has a point of sorts; any author writing factual / autobiographical works should make sure his facts are correct. The two lines quoted don't ring bells to me, so I probably haven't read either of them; but to assume that an avid mountaineer who has conquered Everest is writing just because he has got to the top sounds like a bit of an assumption to me. Mind sharing the titles of the two books, please? (if the title is "Everest or Bust" or something on those lines, then the author probably then DID write simply because he made it up there... )

Yep,maybe Sagarmatha lost a bit of her status and fame with all the traffic up there.The only real challenge left is without supplemental oxygen,solo & winter ascents,like the Poles who try all the 8000'ers in winter,now that is "hardcore"!
Getting back to "hardcore".

Maybe everyone can climb Everest,but not everybody wants to.
And those that want to,let them be.If they get famous by doing so,let them.People want "idols" in their lives,something to look up to and to give them hope.
I think we must live our lives personally to the max that we can.Not everyone can be a Adk or some hardcore athlete,but be content with who you are and let the average Everest Joe summiteer be,soon somebody more bolder,stronger & crazier will be coming along,setting new standards and the Mandy's and Ronnie's will be forgotten.

@mjs The name of the books are "To The Top From Nowhere" and "Everest Surviving The Death Zone". So I think my assumptions were fair. No Everest = No book.