What surprise me most about stories like these is that, people seem to have lost their sense of self preservation almost completely in the last few years.
Why do you go up a mountain in flip-flops even in the best of weather?
People must be rescued from the Brocken regularly. It is just 1141 m high and you can go there by train or by car. Yet people totally underestimate the weather. It can be sunny at 23 degree C at the bottom, but 20 cm of snow on top.
A story my girlfriend experienced when studying in Geneva: she wanted to do a mountain hike with another girl. Weather was fine in the city. She came prepared with hiking boots and rain gear. The other girl in slippers with a light jacket. They took the cableway to the top and surprise: rain and snow. The other girl bought a totally overpriced jacket and they made a small tour of 20 mins before descending again. My girlfriend was so pissed.
There was one sentence in a documentary about mountain rescue. One of them said “There is this mindset that whatever you want to accomplish, you can achieve. However, the mountains do not care about what you want to accomplish.”
We are currently in a trend that you can do everything you set your mind to, and, to be fair, people can do incredible things. But somewhere, there is a limit and I think the open ocean and mountains show you these limits quickly.
I love it when someone posts about living in the woods away from civilization and most comments recognize how difficult it actually is in practice.
Nature is very harsh and a very clear indicator of how incompetent or helpless we can be without our tools and regular comforts.
I remember a guy on Reddit saying that he was going to climb Mount Everest. Motherfucker admitted to being not being physically fit enough, but that he would get fit enough by doing some running. He also had no to little experience in climbing any mountains, and hadn’t ever climbed any mountains above 7k meters. He then said he put money on a reserved non-refundable trip to everest in a year to motivate himself. Oh, and all the training and experience gaining was to be done in the year before he went.
Mind you Everest “”“”“can”“”“” be easy if you hire like multiples guides and plenty of Sherpas to basically drag you up there. But the guy didn’t even have that. The absolute confidence some people have when this mountain has taken many lives of much more experienced and veteran climbers already.
At least nobody is stupid enough to climb K2 with no experience. If you’ve climbed and summited K2, I’d respect you alot more than if you said you climbed and summited Everest by far.
At least he recognized there is some difficulty. If he balked halfway and came back in one piece, then it’s not money wasted.
Some people just need to feel the pain in order to regain sobriety.
Others though, it will be pointless no matter how much you try to convince them otherwise.
What surprise me most about stories like these is that, people seem to have lost their sense of self preservation almost completely in the last few years.
Why do you go up a mountain in flip-flops even in the best of weather?
People are so used to everything being safe, especially with tourists from the US or middle East.
I saw people in Flipflops going into the Partnachklamm, a 3 hour hike through a gorge, with a secured but still slippery path. Crazyness.
I think the “it has to be secure otherwise they would get sued” mindset is to blame.
People must be rescued from the Brocken regularly. It is just 1141 m high and you can go there by train or by car. Yet people totally underestimate the weather. It can be sunny at 23 degree C at the bottom, but 20 cm of snow on top.
A story my girlfriend experienced when studying in Geneva: she wanted to do a mountain hike with another girl. Weather was fine in the city. She came prepared with hiking boots and rain gear. The other girl in slippers with a light jacket. They took the cableway to the top and surprise: rain and snow. The other girl bought a totally overpriced jacket and they made a small tour of 20 mins before descending again. My girlfriend was so pissed.
Partially. It’s also a “what could possibly go wrong?” and “looks easy enough, I can do that too” mindsets that tag along.
There was one sentence in a documentary about mountain rescue. One of them said “There is this mindset that whatever you want to accomplish, you can achieve. However, the mountains do not care about what you want to accomplish.”
We are currently in a trend that you can do everything you set your mind to, and, to be fair, people can do incredible things. But somewhere, there is a limit and I think the open ocean and mountains show you these limits quickly.
I love it when someone posts about living in the woods away from civilization and most comments recognize how difficult it actually is in practice. Nature is very harsh and a very clear indicator of how incompetent or helpless we can be without our tools and regular comforts.
This is why it’s nice to dream of an off grid Alaska home, then realize what a pain it would be…or maybe not… I bet I could do it
I’m sure you could do it. It’s the how well and for how long that make me waver.
I remember a guy on Reddit saying that he was going to climb Mount Everest. Motherfucker admitted to being not being physically fit enough, but that he would get fit enough by doing some running. He also had no to little experience in climbing any mountains, and hadn’t ever climbed any mountains above 7k meters. He then said he put money on a reserved non-refundable trip to everest in a year to motivate himself. Oh, and all the training and experience gaining was to be done in the year before he went.
Mind you Everest “”“”“can”“”“” be easy if you hire like multiples guides and plenty of Sherpas to basically drag you up there. But the guy didn’t even have that. The absolute confidence some people have when this mountain has taken many lives of much more experienced and veteran climbers already.
At least nobody is stupid enough to climb K2 with no experience. If you’ve climbed and summited K2, I’d respect you alot more than if you said you climbed and summited Everest by far.
At least he recognized there is some difficulty. If he balked halfway and came back in one piece, then it’s not money wasted.
Some people just need to feel the pain in order to regain sobriety. Others though, it will be pointless no matter how much you try to convince them otherwise.