Addicted to Danger

A couple of months ago I read a book called Addicted to Danger by the famous, and one of the best high altitude climbers, Jim Wickwire. In the book he travels the world in search of the new best high, which he gets by putting himself at risk. I was thinking one day during class about climbing mountains and that’s when I remembered about how I read this book a couple of months ago. One of the questions the book had asked was “where is the line between climbing in high altitude for your own personal glory or for publicity?” As an avid climber, I feel this question is attached to any climbers back when it comes to a dangerous climb. I would consider myself “addicted to danger” because I like that thrill of being on the edge. At the same time, that addiction to danger for me also stems from sociological ideas. Some of these ideas being that climbing something so dangerous is equivalent to being a god among mortals and that idea is what drives the addiction to danger.

            In most cases with regular mountaineering that is truly just for pleasure (no sponsors, no Sherpa’s, etc.), there are little to none of these sociological pressures I think of. However when you get to higher altitude and more risk climbs, the personal glory reason for the climb can only take you so far. There is a point where outside pressures to climb an extremely dangerous mountain play in. Some of these points could be a company that sponsors a climber to climb and will pay for all expenses, pay the climber, and make the climber famous, if they are able to complete the climb. Something like that is the determining factor on whether or not a climber will come down to safety, or climb on to certain death.

            This is a short blog post on something I read which relates to sociology, and I know it is also a very confusing one. With many of my connections between my experiences or something I read/saw and sociology I feel like they can be very hard to understand in my writing. I believe that in most cases it is harder to put what you feel or what you are thinking down on paper than it is to say it out loud. That is the case with most of my blog posts and work in every class, not just sociology. I think this is a neat connection which I also think most people would not make. If this is confusing for you, then ask me to explain it in person and I’d be happy to explain it to you!

-TH

Here is a link with the "Addicted to Danger" book on amazon.com
I highly recommend reading it...
http://www.amazon.com/Addicted-Danger-Jim-Wickwire/dp/B005FOH4CS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1315290450&sr=8-1