My summer was very busy, I went to Iceland, attempted to go to climbing camp, went on a road trip
and did other stuff. My high point was going to Iceland with a bunch of my friends and all living in an
AirBnB solo for the whole trip exploring a whole new country with just my close friends. The low point
was trying to go to climbing camp; I was all set up and ready to go but two days before I got a bad flu
and couldn't shake it before leaving for camp. My academic goals are hard to quantify but are
basically "do better than last year". If I could have any super power it would be immortality; it's really
an easy choice, I want to see everything in the world and the only way to truly have enough time to
experience everything is to live forever. I have a few things that geek me out; The first and probably
biggest is all things climbing, mostly mountaineering or Alpine climbing though, there really is
nothing cooler than trudging up the biggest things mother nature has to offer. A 747 international
flying airplane flies at ~30,000 ft Mt. Everest is 29,029 ft. It was originally calculated to be 29k
exactly, but was changed so people didn't think it was an approximation to 29,005. However every
year it grows a little as the indian and asian plates are still pushing on each other and with the recent
earthquakes in nepal its 29,029 ft. Everest however is not the most interesting climb or the "best".
The "best" is K2 (Karakorum, after its region, 2 after it being the second in its chain, this is how the
brits used to name alot of the mountains and is used today) K2 has a relative fatality rate of 25%
while Everest's is only 2%. Everest however is even safer than the 2% if you're qualified to climb it
as most fatalities now are from over commercialization of the mountain and this means rich old
people get hauled up for $50000 and die at 27,000 ft. K2 is also a heck of a lot harder to climb. This
is because it's not a typical mountain. So normally when glaciers get stuck next to mountains they
stay at the bottom and meet with the mountain at a Bergschrund (a big crevasse (not crevice) at the
top of a glacier) however K2's central glacier has sort of slumped over it a bit and rests around the
top, this leads to a very dangerous bit on the main route where a large part of the glacier overhangs
the route and can fall.
And a picture of K2:
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