AnonymousAnonymous wrote:
Who would be crazy enough to climb K2?
Which is worse to climb, Mount Everest or K2?
This is similar to what happened in May 1996
when 8 climbers were killed attempting to summit Mount Everest.
It is mentioned in the article.
Jon Krakauer {Into the Wild} was one of the climbers
who survived Mount Everest and talks about it in his book
Into Thin Air.
The article says that three times as many people have died attempting K2 than have died on Everest. Apparently K2 is the world's worst mountain to climb. The Himalayas really don't have the tallest peaks on earth, at least not in the sense that they're closest to the stars. Since Earth is an oblate spheroid, the equator actually bulges more than the poles, and more than the Himalayas. The tallest mountains on the equator are in Ecuador in South America, and the tallest is a little known peak called Chimborazo. Chimborazo is so little known that I'm not aware of any attempts by non-Ecuadorians to climb it. ABC News last year did a fluff piece highlighting Chimborazo, so there may have been attempts since then. But when the shape of the planet is taken into account, Chimborazo is the mightiest mountain. But steamy jungle doesn't seem to have the appeal that icy cold does, even though icy cold is far deadlier. Most Westerners' fear of the jungle is of the things that live there, such as native tribes and tropical diseases. With cold, it's you vs the raw elements.
03 Aug 2008, 6:30 pm
