Story Notes: Climb Every Mountain · 3:35am Jan 5th, 2018
As usual, spoilers ahead!
Source
Fair warning, this story doesn't have the CMC in it, but it is about mountain climbing.
Fran is named after Fanny Bullock Workman (1859-1925), who was a mountain climber/explorer/general bad
back in the day. She and her husband bicycled around Switzerland, France, and Italy, and in her spare time, Fanny climbed Mount Blanc, then the Jungfrau and the Matterhorn. Then they decided to go further east; their first extended bicycling trip was 2,800 miles. After that they started going for longer trips and climbing taller mountains. For example, Fanny ascended Pinnacle Peak (22, 735 feet) without modern mountaineering equipment and while wearing a skirt.
Mount Fairweather is a real mountain. It's about 15,000 feet tall, and located on the border of Alaska and British Columbia.
I got the idea for the story after hearing about Alex Honnold's free ascent of El Capitan, and I was thinking how funny it would be if he got all the way to the top and there was a family of pegasi just sitting there having afternoon tea or something.
Source--not linked directly to tumblr due to NSFW warning
And then I thought that mountain climbing probably wasn't a sport that would appeal to ponies overly much, just because any peak, no matter how challenging, could easily be reached by a pegasus.
This was originally going to be a chapter of Field Notes from Equestria, and it was actually written before I'd decided on a format for FNFE.
I considered working some kind of opening and closing bit onto it to make it work out for that . . . something along the lines of Joe asking why there aren't pony mountain climbers, and then somepony telling him this story, but I just didn't see it working out. A total re-write was an option, but then I thought why not publish it as a standalone? So that's what I did/am doing (depending on when you read this blog post 
)
Noice. One of my Iranian cousins is a mountain climber. Him an his wife go to climbing expeditions all the time. He's supposed to climb Everest or one of the Himalayas or something without using oxygen. Which, apparently, there's only a handful of people who can do that. Not sure if he's done it yet.
And now that you've written it out, you can more easily summarize and reference the events in a possible chapter of Field Notes, though I doubt Fran's adventure would be in any way historically significant or even an isolated incident.
Putting a unicorn directly behind you is a very good motivator not to slip while climbing.
4767357
Don't slip! Don't slip! Don't slip! Don't slip!
4767348
That doesn't seem like the best idea, to be honest. Although maybe with lots of conditioning it works out? All I know about mountain climbing and high altitude flight is that hypoxia is a problem.
4767357>>4767465
img0.joyreactor.cc/pics/comment/Tamurille-%D0%9A%D0%BE%D0%BC%D0%B8%D0%BA%D1%81%D1%8B-%D1%81%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BB%D0%B0%D0%BB-%D1%81%D0%B0%D0%BC-%D0%BF%D0%BE%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%B5%D0%B1%D1%8B-1686800.gif
4767354
. . . . that's actually pretty smart. I didn't think of that at all.
Sort of like what I did with Golden Prize, but in reverse.
4767845
Does anyone know the episode of this? :-)
4767920
I could look it up when I get back home.
It's photoshopped; in the original, the white pony isn't a unicorn.
4767924
Ah, okay
Looking it up would be nice of you...
4767844
That's because it's EXTREME!!!1
4767930
It's from Pinkie Pride.
derpicdn.net/img/view/2014/2/11/549582__safe_screencap_lightning+bolt_spring+melody_sprinkle+medley_twinkleshine_white+lightning_pinkie+pride_animated_animation+error_background+pony_.gif
It's also an animation error, because Lightning Bolt is supposed to be a pegasus.
4768021
Thank you
4767986
It is definitely possible:
In 1978 Reinhold Messner together with Peter Habeler climed Mount Everest without using oxygen. Two years later Messner climed Mount Everest alone without oxygen.
Messner favoures the alpine style: that is mountaineering in a self-sufficient manner, thereby carrying all of one's food, shelter, equipment, etc. as one climbs, as opposed to expedition style (or siege style) mountaineering which involves setting up a fixed line of stocked camps on the mountain which can be accessed at one's leisure. Additionally, alpine style means the refusal of fixed ropes, high-altitude porters and the use of supplemental oxygen.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpine_style
4768159 lol I know it's possible. The man was sitting next to me, telling me 'hey look, ima do this.' I'm pretty sure if he thought it was impossible, he wouldn't have said it.
4768512
I just wanted to add some additional information on that topic as others might find it interesting
4768512
To be fair, though, I've stood by people who've said "Imma do this," and they don't, because they're idiots and attempting something that can't be done, or at least can't be with their skill level.
Then again, the exact opposite has been the case on more than one occasion. One guy I used to work with told me about the rock crawler he was going to build and how he planned to make the engine, and I just laughed at him. Then, later, I found out that he was one of the top ten rock crawlers in the US, and knew exactly what he was doing.