Adventure is Not a Competitive Sport

“Do we really go to the tops of the world just so that we can come back and tell our friends we’re the first vegan, trilingual, biracial, multiethnic to summit Everest?”

I read a post on Instagram not too long ago the premise being that achieving a first “fill in the blank” to summit Everest is the same as a podium place in an Olympic competition. I say “fill in the blank” because as the number of summiteers have swelled over the years, thanks to the commercial expeditions that make it possible for just about anyone with time and money to achieve the summit, title claims have had to become somewhat creative. Now, I’m not in the business of telling anyone what should or should not motivate them. That’s entirely for each adventurer to determine for his or herself, but reading that post did spark contemplation on my part about what it really means to go to the edge of human existence and be a part of a community of people who make the limits of the world their passion. Do we really go to the tops of the world just so that we can come back and tell our friends we’re the first vegan, trilingual, biracial, multiethnic to summit Everest? Is being in the hills, on the oceans and over the glaciers really about one-upmanship and beating someone else to the supposed finish line? In this piece I’ve used mountaineering as an example but I believe that the principles are universal across all adventure communities.

To my mind, mountaineering is not a competitive sport. Sure, it’s wonderful to gain a first ascent or achieve something out there that no one’s ever done before, but even in achieving it, that doesn’t fit within any reasonable parameters that can make a person’s ascent comparable to any others even on the same mountain and sometimes even on the same day.

“When we step onto the top of a mountain we carry the support of tens if not hundreds of people who’ve made it possible for us to be there.”

Anyone who’s ever climbed the same mountain twice would know just how different a summit push can be from one day to the next. But more importantly, mountaineering is a culture that brings people together to achieve wonderful things for themselves and for the potential of the collective human experience. When we step onto the top of a mountain we carry the support of tens if not hundreds of people who’ve made it possible for us to be there. I don’t think anyone can ever really put into words how profound and transformative these experiences can be. It’s something that the eye of human reason simply cannot pierce. That’s how far removed the essence of mountain culture is from the nonsense of competition and titles.

The moment Sir Ed Hillary came within moments of the summit of Everest, soon to become the first man to carve steps on the roof of the world, he turned to his climbing partner Tenzing Norgay Sherpa, a son of the mountain, and he offered the first footprint on top to him. That’s the moral standard I believe defines us as a community and something that we should be proud to carry forward as people of the mountain. That is the community that I hope we continue to be. A community that extends a hand to help propel fellow explorers forward, rather than one that offers a figurative elbow to the face in the pursuit of competition and meaningless titles.