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After my experience I have gotten more and more interested in mountain climbing and in particular climbing Everest. Everest has always intrigued me as a mythical yet very real mountain. It was not simply rock. It is the tallest peak on our planet, the deadliest mountain on earth and the most challenging climbs known to man. Since its first summit in 1921 by George Mallory, thousands have followed his steps to the top. Mallory's era represented a different time on Everest in which summiting peaks was known to an adventurous few. They were the pioneers of an era. Getting to the top of everest was comparable to walking on the moon. Throughout time, men have came and went attempting to reach the top. One such man was Jack Krakauer, author and journalist for the fateful 1996 expedition that cost eight climbers their lives all in one night. This proved to be one of the deadliest events on Everest. His firsthand accounts can tell us so much about what took, and could have saved, the lives of many. Finally, you can not talk about Everest without bringing up the legend, Rob Hall. Hall was the second wave of pioneers that singlehandedly scaled and created more routs to the top than any man in the world. He knows this mountain better than anyone who's ever climbed it. Just ask, he's still up there.
Backpacking and hiking have always been one of my family's favorite pastimes. In the last five years, I have hiked Mt. Whitney, Yosemite and other mountains out west. Both of my parents were avid hikers when they went to college together in California. So I grew up hearing about stories of all of the times they went to Yosemite and climbed Half Dome. This was really the fuel of my determination to hike. I became interested in hiking after I did a backpacking trip to th top of mount Whitney. This really fostered my interest for the environment, and is why I decided to do my capstone project on all of the ways we benifit from the environment.
The raw power of a mountain like Everest is truly remarkable, and can be seen as the ultimate connection between human and nature. For people who seek guidance and seek for adventure, this can represent the holy grail of adventure. Humans in general seek out some kind of adventure at some point in life. Adventure is what drives us forward and makes us want to continue living. People who lose their connection to seeking adventure are usually lost in life or struggling with some kind of depression. Adventure drives us all, and the feeling you get from doing dangerous things makes you feel alive. Everest is beautiful in the sense that it re-defines what it means to be alive and what adventure is all about. Climbing Everest is an extremely powerful natural experience and can give you the mental endurance to take on almost anything in life.
