Talking about Kili being "easy", the Boston Bruin's Norris Trophy winning defenseman Zdeno Chara bailed about 1,000' short of the summit last summer. The NHL Network televised a documentary on expedition. There was no mention of AMS problems.
I'm sure Herschel Walker could have day hiked it.
wb, guess that says quite a bit about Jordon since he was 9 when he did Kili! And I was careful to quailify that "tame" comment as being in relative difficulty to the more technical of the 7 Summits. Actually, none of the 7S are really technical - they're all walk-ups of varying class 1-3 difficulty except Everest's Hillary Step, and that section has had fixed ladders for a number of years. Take the sherpas out of the picture for Everest - and their fixed lines - and I bet the summits each year would drop 80% or more - and the fatalities would skyrocket. Hillary had Tenzig Norgay. Mallory and Irvine went solo. 'Nuff said.
Anyway, except for that little Aussie afternoon stroll (no offense wagga), any of the low-end 7S would kick our butts pretty good, even though none of them have the technical intensity of a K2 or Annapurna. The Vinson Massif is actually the lowest of the 7S (not counting Kosciuzko) at 16K' but, needless to say, it's just a bit chillier in Antarctica at that elevation than it would be here. Also, the extreme latitude makes the O2 content more like climbing a 20,000-plus peak (similar effect at Denali).
And since you brought Herschel into this, and thereby Georgia, bet'cha didn't know that the Vinson Massif was named after Carl Vinson, a Georgia senator who was an early proponent of Antarctic exploration. That'll win you a ton of bar bets!
