Has Anyone Really Summited the World s 14 Highest Mountains? – The New York Times

There is a summit. And then there is everything below it.

Can close ever be good enough?

Revelations from a team of respected researchers have thrust that question into the open like never before, putting special attention on the world s highest mountains and most acclaimed climbers.

By asking a simple-sounding question What is the summit? the researchers are raising doubts about past accomplishments and raising standards for future ones.

Maybe they are making us all reconsider just what it means to reach the top.

via www.nytimes.com

Personally I think close is good enough, but I haven’t climbed an 8000 meter peak and now probably never will. I like staying alive on the flatlands just enough.

Ed Viesturs, about whom this article begins, is BTW a true super human. I once saw a film of him climbing up the last 100 meters or so up the China face of Everest. He looked like he was swimming up the glacier, moving that smoothly and fast. This was without oxygen. To say the man is a beast does not begin to capture it.