Everest - What it takes to climb to the summit - it is the end result of determination and planning (& some luck)

How hard is it to reach the summit of Mount Everest? As you can see and hear in the above link to this video footage, it is very hard. This condensed, YouTube footage consists of climbers who are initially on the approach to and then subsequently reach the summit of Mount Everest. It was put together by adventurer Elia Saikaly who recently made it available online.

For more on Elia you can check out the information that is available at the end of the video.

Many people climb Everest as a way of raising attention to and/or advocating on other human interest type issues that are of a significant interest to them. On occasion organ donation has been flagged as being an issue of particular importance to an Everest climber. This was the case in 2017, when a physiotherapist from HongKong successfully summitted the mountain. As outlined in this following online post (via the link), Elton Ng Chun-ting mentions how difficult it was to actually undertake the climb and how he also developed some temporary visual disturbance whilst on the mountain. The article also contains a video which is worth watching.

What both of these posts reveal is that is takes determination, along with physical conditioning and experience in high altitude mountain climbing to reach the summit of Everest. In addition a reasonable amount of forward planning and sound decision making are both required to achieve such a goal. The element of chance (or luck) is always a factor with this type of activity, as sudden illness of any of the team members, an unforeseen equipment failure or adverse weather conditions can either alone or in combination rule out reaching the end goal of a summit attempt.