I’ve climbed a few mountains, including Mounts Baker (10,781) & Rainier (14,411).
And now I want to try out Everest (29.029). Sure, it’s more than twice the height of anything I’ve tried, and that hundreds have died in the attempt, but it’s my kind of thing, a straight-ahead venture of just putting one foot in front of the other. It’s a simple thing. Just go up. 
Until the air is so thin that I might dream of being something else, maybe even touch the face of the gods. I’ll start with New Hampshire’s Mount Lafayette and take it from there.
Tag Archives: Mount Everest
Cold Weather Tips
As Robert William Service wrote in The Cremation of Sam McGee: It’s the cursèd cold, and it’s got right hold till I’m chilled clean through to the bone. 
It starts at your fingertips and toes. It grips your face and neck. Breathing hurts. It creeps up from your extremities into your inner thighs, your armpits, into your core. You have to keep moving. And it still gets in. You think about what it would be like to die of exposure, such as the 129 men on the Franklin Expedition did in 1846.
Three Arctic Graves
Or frozen in the Death Zone near the summit of Mount Everest.
The trick is to wear layers.
Avoid snow camping.
And just don’t expose your flesh.