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 If you think this cartoony leech is ugly, you should see the real thing. It takes a special kind of person to enjoy mountaineering. Namely, stupid. How else to explain the compulsion to climb sheer walls of ice, rock and snow just to reach the Death Zone (26,000 feet) where oxygen is too thin for survival?
Let’s look at symptoms of the Obsessive Climbing Disorder. Dumber than a leech. One climber recalled plodding through a swamp toward the mountain base: “The leeches were smarter than us” (d’ya think?) because they flourished at low altitude and hitched a free ride on the climbers’ bodies. BYO. Back in the day, BYO meant bringing your own beverage for a wild night of partying. For high-altitude climbing, it means Bring Your Oxygen. If you run out of oxygen tanks, the party's over. Bad choices for resting comfortably. In the medical tent at 20,000 ft, someone said to be “resting comfortably” may have anything from a head-splitting migraine to a fatal lung embolism. If you’re truly smarter than a leech, wave goodbye to the climbing party as they head for the Nepalese mountain base; then chill with the legendary stoners of Kathmandu. Now that’s resting comfortably. …And the idiocy goes on, from gym-wall climbers to ice climbers to suicidal high-altitude climbers. Stupid is as stupid does: it’s all laid out for your reading pleasure in The Dumb Zone: A snarky look at your obsessive climbing disorder. Available in paperback and Kindle format. Click HERE to view it at Amazon. Comments are closed.
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