Uncanny Tuesday

Ain’t No Mountain High Enough. Except This One. It’s REAL HIGH.

What would you say was your greatest moment? Your finest achievement? The most amazing sight you have ever seen?

Mine is the time right before Covid when I saw the magic of Celine Dion in concert.

Seriously, magical.

But maybe for you it’s finishing a marathon or like inventing Post-It notes or something. I don’t know your life.

Whatever high you reached, just know that there’s a much more deadly and expensive one. It’s called climbing Mount Everest.

Located in the Himalayas, on the border of Nepal and China, Mount Everest is the tallest mountain in the world. It’s 8,849 meters tall. That’s 29,032 ft for you people not on the Metric System. Let me try and put that distance in perspective for you. Jet Airliners cruise at 31,000 ft. It’s 5.5 miles up, 96 football fields stacked end on end.

Dude, that’s freaking high AF.

The first person to summit Everest was a badass Sherpa from Nepal named Tenzing Norgay and his buddy from New Zealand, Edmund Hillary. They reached the top of the mountain on May 29^th, 1953. If you read last week’s blog, you’ll know exactly how Wolverine bad-ass Sherpas are. New Zealanders are cool too, I guess. I mean, Xena is, so…

Since then, over 9000 people have summitted and 305 people have died trying.

I know. I expected more too. In comparison, 1 out of 4 people die trying to summit the world’s second tallest mountain, K2. That’s 25% death. Way more METAL.

How can you die? Okay, so:

Your ass can fall. It’s 8,849 meters high. SMUSH.
It’s cold AF. It’s a freaking snow-covered mountain. It’s ice and rock and you gotta climb it. It’s like -4F and the winds gust over 100 mph, which is a Cat 2 hurricane. You’ll freeze to death and die.
There’s very little oxygen, which you kind of need. On the summit of Everest there’s only 33% of 20.9% of the oxygen that is at Sea Level. Last week we went over all the terrible shit that happens when you’re at altitude. Let me sum it up: CHOKE…HEART ATTACK… STROKE… CAN’T SLEEP… CAN’T POOP. DIE
Yeti Attack.

He’s NOT here to carry your shit up the mountain.

Okay, so a 1 in 30 chance of DEATH doesn’t scare you and hey, mountains are there to be climbed, right? (No, they’re actually not…) So how do you do it?

First, you better work, bitch.

Seriously, workout. You need to be in the best shape you can be. Strength training, cardio, hiking, hiking carrying a heavy pack. You better do all of it. If you’re out of shape, you won’t make it and you may endanger other people climbing, so don’t be THAT GUY.

Next, save up. Climbing Mount Everest isn’t cheap. In fact, it’s stupid expensive. Let me break this down for you:

Airfare to Katmandu: $2000
Hotel and Accommodations in Katmandu: $700
Visa: $100
Vaccinations: $200
Food and Stuff as you trek to Base Camp: $1000
Some yaks: $600
Porters to tote your crap and handle the yaks: $700
Permits: $20,000
Guide Service: $5000
Insurance: $3000
Gear: $30,000

I had to take off my shoes and socks to cypher all that up, but it comes to $63,300. That’s a shitload of money. And it doesn’t count all the stuff you had to do to get ready, like climb other mountains and such, which are also expensive.

Okay, Richie Rich, you got the monies, now what do you do?

Just stop drinking lattes and switch to Gieco.

Carve out a few months. Fly to Katmandu, which is where most expeditions depart from. Hang out there for a while, because remember our good friend, altitude sickness? Katmandu is at 2860 m. Yeah, you’re gonna get sick, so hang out, rest, and let your body add some hemoglobin.

Next you’re going to walk uphill to Everest Base Camp. That’s going to take at least 7 days, more like 14. Everest Base Camp is at 5500m, which is extreme high altitude. Again, you’re going to need to slow your roll and chill because you need to acclimatize.

Then the real shit begins. You begin hiking up to 3 higher camps to build up your skills and endurance. Camp 1 is 6100 m, Camp 2 is 6400 m, and Camp 3 is 6800 m. You hike up and down many times until you can go Base Camp to Camp 3 quickly enough and don’t die. Once you can do that, you’re ready to attempt to climb the whole thing.

Climbers usually take a day to go to each place and rest. So, you go to Camp 1, stay the night, Camp 2 next day, Camp 3 the 3^rd day, then on to Camp 4. You hang at Camp 4 and rest a little. Camp 4 is 8000 m, so you can’t dick around. The clock is ticking. You’ll start for the summit in the middle of the night. The goal is to be up to the top about midday. Why?

DEATH ZONE

You cannot stay above 8000 m very long. Just long enough to take a selfie or call your partner from the Sat Phone, and then you gotta haul ass back down.

Important thing to consider: You just expended all your energy climbing up. That was hard but going down is a lot more dangerous because you are tired and gonked in the brain due to low oxygen. You gotta bust a move, but be careful, because if you wonk up, see the 1-4 list above. DEATH.

Anyhoo, if you don’t biff and the Yeti doesn’t eat you, you descend down to at least Camp 3 before nightfall. You rest a bit, then you hike down to Base Camp and pop the bottle of Bolly you saved to celebrate your great success.

Congrats, you lived and achieved your dream. Unless you died, in which case they will straight-up-now-Paula-Abdul leave your corpse on that mountain because nobody cares to haul you back. It’s dangerous up there. And it’s full of corpses and Yetis and probably that guy: