FW and Mikester made some provocative statements here that I appreciated reading. Therefore, I'm going to amend, partially retract, and clarify my crude assessment above.
It's certainly true that there is a cross section of climbers who view their own climbing of mountains as "heroic". Personally, I don't identify with this mindset, nor would I ever climb with anyone who holds it. There's nothing heroic about climbing mountains, it's largely a personal- some will say selfish- endeavor, although I would stress that for myself, the entirety of the activity is validated by the amazing friendships and through the company of fine men and women. So in any case, this lady may have- accidently- touched on a valid point. I say accidently, because she clearly has almost zero understanding of mountaineering and the attractions of it, and it's obvious that her perceptions of climbing have been formed chiefly by hysterical news bites and hype coverage of high profile Everest type disasters, which the rest of us understand to offer a very biased, presumptive, and limited perspective into the entirety of why people choose to climb mountains.
It's especially galling, then, that someone with such ignorance on the subject would attempt to paint an entire sport and all of it's participants under such a broad brush- not the least of which is her simpleton's attempt to equate climbing with an outlet for "masculinity". In the context of this incident, she's also made a strong judgment about the characters and motivation of 11 deceased individuals whom she clearly knows nothing about, but she makes her pronouncements of them in such a way that she clearly thinks she doesn't need to know any more. That's pathetic.
Back to the perceptions of "heroism": one can certainly make the case that a person climbing a mountain does nothing tangible for society, insofar as comparing it against the obvious and immediate benefit of a firefighter running into a building, a policeman pulling someone from a burning vehicle, or a soldier defending the country from an attack. But I might counter that many climbers- at least many I've been fortunate enough to encounter- offer something very intangible back to society, beginning with the example of living, out of necessity, outside of the drudgery and mechanism of everyday culture. Any of us who have been out in the mountains for a long period of time can appreciate that there's a clarity and insight into your surroundings that is there on return to the city that was not there when you departed. People notice that clarity, in relationship. I remain convinced that there is a hidden social benefit in this that cannot be quantified, much the same way that the ripple effect of a random act of charity cannot be quantifiably demonstrated or described, yet most of us would agree that there is something to that. People who are less attached to the culture serve to prevent stagnation of the culture by bringing in new ideas and making visible new ways of living.
The fact that this lady focuses so heavily on the assumption of the pursuit of heroism and purely base selfishness as the primary motivations for climbing makes me question whether her problem with climbing stems mainly from the fact that she can't see anything in it that directly benefits her; therefore she must condemn it outright and she must put all climbers into the same basket.
Separately: Fairweather: is there any tangible purpose to climbing any mountain, not just big or dangerous ones? Heroism may indeed have better definitions already available but this only matters if one attaches heroism as an integral part of climbing. I'm not sure how you view this, but my view is that the perception of heroism in climbing mountains resides strictly in the realm of "me", therefore it's contrived.
Your Mallory quote is interesting- I agree with it completely, but at the same time, you can apply this sentiment all the way down the ladder to someone taking a day hike and falling to their death. The recent Dragontail accident will, and should, affect no less grief than the K2 accident. The end result for those left behind is the same in either case. Which I why it's imperative that everything involving risk be done with total seriousness. And a personal agenda that is caught up in pursuing heroism is not serious.
Risk in climbing, all the way down to living in the city, is largely relative, while death is a certainty at some point- in the end, everyone's life is a process of managing these risks as they apply to us while pursuing the things that we cherish. I'm going to guess that most of these climbers, even if they made some mistakes, had a grasp and understanding of this and were trying to live the best life they knew how, and despite the grief that their deaths has brought, none of their loved ones would trade it for the joy that they had in knowing them for who they were, for the time they had on this planet. To that end unlike this lady, I will not so disgustingly and self righteously assess the deaths- and lives, by extension- of these 11 climbers by pronouncing them a "waste".
