A good friend of mine is a professional alpinist who focuses only climbing eight-thousanders with no supplementary oxygen. Through him I’ve met others and learned about this whole community. A number of people are as weird and eccentric as us here in computer-nerd circles; one is tempted to armchair-diagnose some as autistic and climbing as their fixation, so something like Green Boots or the death of peers just won’t stop them. (I envy them that their fixation gives them the physique of a Greek god and stories that can impress any listener, so they often manage to be very socially successful in spite of their quirks.)

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