“People ask me, 'What is the use of climbing Mount Everest?' and my answer must at once be, 'It is of no use.'There is not the slightest prospect of any gain whatsoever. Oh, we may learn a little about the behaviour of the human body at high altitudes, and possibly medical men may turn our observation to some account for the purposes of aviation. But otherwise nothing will come of it. We shall not bring back a single bit of gold or silver, not a gem, nor any coal or iron... If you cannot understand that there is something in man which responds to the challenge of this mountain and goes out to meet it, that the struggle is the struggle of life itself upward and forever upward, then you won't see why we go. What we get from this adventure is just sheer joy. And joy is, after all, the end of life. We do not live to eat and make money. We eat and make money to be able to live. That is what life means and what life is for.”
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What has changed?What drives people to climb Mount Everest? Is it their shear passion for climbing? Or is it just another summit to check off their bucket list? Every climber has a personal reason for why they want to climb and in general most climb out of passion and the thrill. There are those that like the challenge and adversity, however there those who only climb so they can tell the story of the time they climbed Mount Everest, the tallest peak in the world. There has been a distinct change in why people are climbing Everest now, and this is the motivation of many climbers, but not all, to "bag" this enchanting peak. On the mountain today a lot of the time it comes down to whether or not a person can write the massive check to pay for this expensive endeavor, and sometimes they do not offer the skills or true passion to deserve to be on the mountain. Many climbers find this to be very troubling, that people can just pay to be on the mountain that may not be very deserving of it.
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