Dangerous Mountain Climbing and Marathons in the Desert

I am fascinated by mountain climbers for various reasons but especially those who attempt and sometimes succeed to make it to the top of Mount Everest and survive to tell their ordeal.

1. I could never ascend Mount Everest or any mountain due to physical inability. I see these people as super humans and admirable in a strange way. They spend years training and rehearsing every possible scenario that they may encounter in harsh environments. They spend thousands of dollars on the best gear available, oxygen bottles, and five to six figures for the privilege of climbing the most inhospitable of peaks such as Mount Everest. There has only been one German man who actually climbed Mount Everest without the help of oxygen, particularly in the Dead Zone.

2. I have no desire to climb huge rocks, glaciers, and avoid dangerous crevasses just to test my body and claim bragging rights. God bless those who do!

3. I am fascinated by people who do climb and succeed in the face of certain death by freezing after falling asleep from severely reduced oxygen saturation in their blood, suffocating, or dying of stroke, or heart attack.

4. I am fascinated by the training mountain climbers undergo, the mental and physical challenges they must overcome, and the blood transformation (genetically in some Nepalese) in order to allow them to survive.

5. I am equally fascinated by people who run marathons in the desert of countries like Morocco and Algeria. One such extreme marathon runner, an Italian, survived getting lost in the desert in Morocco and walked 181 miles into Algeria before he was found by a Bedouin shepherd girl and saved. He even tried to slit his wrists to die because he was convinced that he would not be found, and he did not bleed out because he was too dehydrated.

6. It is gruesome and lugubrious to climb past the bodies of those who have perished previously, frozen in time, resting in eternity along the path of climbers who must step over them in order to maneuver the narrow path to the peak. One such famous person is an Indian man nicknamed Green Boots. It is too expensive and logistically impossible to remove these bodies from the mountain and have them buried properly. Those attempting to engage in such a dangerous recovery mission would surely die trying.

7. The most remarkable feat of survival has been that of a Nepalese crew who climbed all 14 highest peaks in the world, in an impossible to duplicate six-month period.