Hmm. Climbing is a strange hobby. I've been to a lot of the places they mention, climbing hotspots, famous natural landmarks etc, but I've never had the slightest desire to do more than bouldering and hiking. Climbing and base jumping transcend risk and add no value. Last Sunday morning, from the midway point of a day-hike, at a gorgeous vantage point about 1500 feet above Yosemite Valley, I watched as Dean Potter's body bag was helicoptered toward Mariposa. I don't get it. I couldn't ever become involved in a pastime in which taking every conceivable safety precaution wasn't always enough. Climbing just isn't a good sport.
That's why I found this passage particularly interesting: Setting aside the fact that putting yourself in danger because 'death is random' is terrible reasoning,
I do understand that need to feel alive. Don't we all have that from time to time?When I spoke to her, nearly 10 months after her son’s death, I said that I thought I’d probably be angry at climbing, at climbers, at the whole world of outdoor adventure. But she isn’t, she said. She deals with death every day in the hospital. “I’ve seen it happen a million times,” she told me. “And it happens so randomly. It can happen when you’re crossing the street and it can happen in Peru. So you might as well live, you know?”