An exchange with the estimable Chas inspired me to elaborate on the previous post. I would certainly not have our readers cherish an image of me as clicking my tongue at a daredevil going to needless risk for the sake of cheap thrills. Frankly, I approve of most people who do that. It's the publicity that makes me sceptical, and the fact that he's doing his under-dressed climb on Everest, a mountain inextricable from publicity. If he were climbing Khan Tengri naked, I'd be behind him 100% as an excellent specimen worthy of much indulgence. (In fairness, high altitude mountaineering is ungodly expensive, even unclad, and many admirable loonies have to submit to some publicity to procure funding for their follies.)

No indeed, I'm all for pursuing dangerous stunts that leave the world's dreary naysayers tsking and shuffling. Take for instance the story of Spence Campbell, who swam from Orofino, Idaho to the Pacific Ocean in 1962 (hat tip: the GOAT). Capital work, capital! Or take Bill Beer and John Daggett, who got drunk one night, boasted that they were going to swim the Grand Canyon, and made good on their boast shortly thereafter (1952, if memory serves). Their publicity was pretty much involuntary and negative, and when they hiked out from Phantom Ranch to inform their familes of their life and well-being, they argued their way out of arrest thus: "We've made it this far, we're all over the papers, and if you stop us every daredevil in America will be jumping in the Colorado next week!" Fortunately, the presiding ranger saw the wisdom of the argument. That's how it's done! Raise a glass!