AUDIOBOOK
About
On the 100th anniversary of the first attempt to climb Mt Everest, Margret Grebowicz shows how and why climbing and mountaineering are still important today.
In 1923, a reporter asked George Mallory why he wanted to summit Mount Everest.
"Because it's there". Today the question "why do this?" is included in nearly every mountaineering story or interview. Meanwhile, interest in climbing is steadily on the rise, from commercial mountaineering and climbing walls in university gyms and corporate workplaces to the flood of spectacular climbing imagery in advertising, cinema, and social media. Climbing has become a theater for life on the edge, exposing the limits of human bodily performance and environmental limits. But what about the limits of desire, motivation, and goals? Is the hundred-year-old question that the reporter asked of Mallory still an expression of sincere curiosity about mountains and mountaineering or a symptom of an ever-deeper well of uncertainty about why anyone does anything at all?
In 1923, a reporter asked George Mallory why he wanted to summit Mount Everest.
"Because it's there". Today the question "why do this?" is included in nearly every mountaineering story or interview. Meanwhile, interest in climbing is steadily on the rise, from commercial mountaineering and climbing walls in university gyms and corporate workplaces to the flood of spectacular climbing imagery in advertising, cinema, and social media. Climbing has become a theater for life on the edge, exposing the limits of human bodily performance and environmental limits. But what about the limits of desire, motivation, and goals? Is the hundred-year-old question that the reporter asked of Mallory still an expression of sincere curiosity about mountains and mountaineering or a symptom of an ever-deeper well of uncertainty about why anyone does anything at all?