Why Are People Still Eager To Climb Mount Everest Despite The Dangers? Essay

Why Are People Still Eager to Climb Mount Everest Despite the Dangers?








Introduction
Mount Everest, which has height of 29029 feet, is located on the border between Nepal and China. There are two routes to reach the summit of Mount Everest: the south face of Himalaya Mountains and the north face of Himalaya Mountains. The south face is the easier of the two routes to reach the summit; but inherent difficulties still exist, such as altitude sickness, weather and wind. Compare to the south face, the north face could be a disaster. Despite being only about half the distance of the south face, the difficulty of the north face is double that of the south face. The whole journey of the north face is on the Tibetan Plateau, so-called the roof of the world. Everything in the Tibetan Plateau is a barrier for alpinists. Therefore, in the thousands of years of human history, no one had ever tried to climb Mount Everest until 1924. George Mallory and Andrew Irvine are the first alpinists to have a try to climb Mount Everest. In the afternoon of June 8th 1924, the pioneers of Mount Everest Climber disappeared in the cloudy and foggy weather; no one had ever seen them alive again after that day. Eighty four years has passed and the number of climbers on Mount Everest did not decrease at all, neither has the danger of mountaineering. In “Adventures Change. Danger Does Not,” Alan Cowell (2006) says, “according to mountaineering Web sites, 500 people reached the summit, bringing the total in 53years to about 3,000. In that period, about 200 climbers have died” (p.1). Currently, it is not very hard to find news of alpinist deaths.

Why are people still eager to climb Mount Everest even though they are aware of the dangers and deaths on the mountain? Are they really foolish enough to climb the mountain under great costs and possibilities of abandoning their friends and families? Although climbing Mount Everest is a dangerous sport, people are still pursuing it for...