In mid-May, a 33-year-old Canadian woman – Shriya Shah-Klorfine – died on the side of Mount Everest. She had reached the summit two days earlier, but succumbed – along with three other climbers – to ‘exhaustion and altitude sickness’ during the descent. Since the first expedition up Everest in 1922, a total of 210 people have died there. I am sure people have perished in attempts to climb other mountains as well, but thousands more reach their snowy peaks and live to tell the tale (and/or go on to scale others). So – why do they do it? Apparently Shriya Shah-Klorfine had flown over Mount Everest in a helicopter when she was nine years old, and had dreamed of climbing it ever since. It’s certainly not something I’d ever consider doing, but to each his (or her) own, I suppose.
People undertake activities like climbing mountains, jumping out of…
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Alco the Visioneer 