Word: climbers
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Thirty expeditions of various sizes and degrees of competence were somewhere on the mountain at the time. Ten of these were commercial ventures, run by professional adventure-travel guides, whose clients, some experienced climbers and some not, paid as much as $65,000 or $70,000 a head to be led up the world's highest peak. "With enough determination, any bloody idiot can get up this hill," said New Zealander Rob Hall, a respected climber who headed Adventure Consultants, the best-known of the guiding outfits. Hall added, in a comment that was to echo mournfully, "The trick...
...rivalry of the guiding outfits encouraged recklessness. Hall's successful Adventure Consultants was being crowded by newer ventures, notably the Mountain Madness service of Scott Fischer, a skilled American climber. There was powerful pressure for them to ignore their turnaround times, beyond which it was foolish to continue heading upward. Fischer told Krakauer that if Pittman reached the summit, she was certain to boast about it on New York talk shows...
...humor in the second skit, "Variations on the Death of Trotsky," is much more blatant. Like "Sure Thing," "Trotsky" offers numerous interpretations of the same scene: in this case, the moments before Trotsky's death. Throughout the skit, Trotsky (John Driscoll '99) has a mountain climber's ax sticking out of his skull, although he doesn't realize until Mrs. Trotsky (Elena Schneider '99) points it out. Although "Variations on the Death of Trotsky" isn't as witty or keenly observant as "Sure Thing," it's hard to resist lines like "maybe he was just hot-to-Trotsky." Driscoll...
...director Alan Parker and the flesh of Madonna. The take is dense and studious, an aptly conservative adaptation of a pop classic; it lets the score seduce and the star shine. Madonna, who is up to the vocal demands of the role, makes Eva--sexual predator, social climber, queen of the Argentine, would-be saint--an appealing character in a cautionary fable. The moral: celebrity needs suffering and early death as its price and consummation...
Ferris was also an accomplished mountain climber who served as director of the American Alpine Club. He was part of the first team to climb the second-highest peak in North America, Mt. St. Elias...