Expedition Everest Isn’t a Joyride Mt. Everest stands as the tallest mountain in the world. This majestic monster towers at 29,028 feet. Journalist, Jon Krakeur, records his own experience climbing the mountain and his personal account of the 1996 Mt. Everest disaster. In the text, Into Thin Air by Jon Krakeur, the author demonstrates how commercialization can give false hope to the public. An expedition on Everest should not be taken lightly. In order to keep receiving sponsorships from companies, climbing enterprises must constantly challenge their climbers in different ways. Companies who wish to keep in business have to make “the next climb [...] harder and more spectacular than the last” (35). When one climbing company successfully guides a group of people to the top of Mt.
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Everest every year, most of them have a very specific reason as to why they would take on such a task. For a large majority of “Everesters myriad others, less virtuous motives come into play as well; minor celebrity, career advancement, ego massage, ordinary bragging rights, filthy lucre” (140). There are a great number of people who climb Everest solely for the purpose of saying that they climbed Everest. The media treats successful Everesters like gods among men, making many people crave that exact same attention. However, the conditions prove to be too difficult for some people who only wish to fulfill their own selfish desires. Unfortunately, such an aspiration will never disappear as “Everest has always been a magnet for kooks, publicity seekers, hopeless romantics, and others with a shaky hold on reality” (92). A lot of Everesters are actually regular people who wish to brag about their magnificent feats on the mountain. Blinded by the publicity, they see the mountain as a bucket list task rather than a serious undertaking. Since so many others have been successful in climbing it, it causes the common folk to believe they can do the impossible
Everest every year, most of them have a very specific reason as to why they would take on such a task. For a large majority of “Everesters myriad others, less virtuous motives come into play as well; minor celebrity, career advancement, ego massage, ordinary bragging rights, filthy lucre” (140). There are a great number of people who climb Everest solely for the purpose of saying that they climbed Everest. The media treats successful Everesters like gods among men, making many people crave that exact same attention. However, the conditions prove to be too difficult for some people who only wish to fulfill their own selfish desires. Unfortunately, such an aspiration will never disappear as “Everest has always been a magnet for kooks, publicity seekers, hopeless romantics, and others with a shaky hold on reality” (92). A lot of Everesters are actually regular people who wish to brag about their magnificent feats on the mountain. Blinded by the publicity, they see the mountain as a bucket list task rather than a serious undertaking. Since so many others have been successful in climbing it, it causes the common folk to believe they can do the impossible