I found both of these readings from Fallen Giants and Annapurna very interesting and they captivated my attention start to finish. The first point that I found interesting came from the reading that we had to complete from Fallen Giants. This was the idea of the militarization of mountains and how the military and mountains went hand in hand many times. Before this reading we had discussed in class the idea of the military and mountains and how this also played into imperialism of mountains and nationalism with large mountains. However, with this text it became quite clear to me how intertwined the two truly were. It was an odd notion at first that grew to make more sense as I read on that with the idea of imperialism and nationalism when climbing mountains that one would perhaps have to have a military presence. In addition to this thought I found it intriguing how the mountain had a prevalence even in the second world war as a marker and an obstacle and while this section of reading was by far not the most highlighted nor the longest I still found it quite interesting.

In both of these readings and indeed in the entire class I found it very interesting how the deaths of other climbers are addressed and written. Rarely do those that survive as someone pointed out have survivors guilt and if they do they do not express it in their many texts written about mountaineering. Whether this is to enhance the overall story and make it more dramatic or because they truly did not experience this guilt I believe we shall never know. However, I believe that a part of an explanation for this could be the idea that those that climbed knew that mostly everyone truly knew the risks that they were taking and the danger that they faced. Due to this I believe many saw climbing as a danger to be once again conquered and if you died it was something to seen as sad and tragic more so it was to be seen as a soldier dying on the front lines in a battle. This is shown at least in part in the summit by mallory.

These readings also touched on the idea gender in mountaineering again especially in Social Climbing on Annapurna how the sport begins to move away from a sport dominated by uptight upper class white men doing it for recreation to a sport more open to everyone. Indeed, in these readings it appears as if mountaineering is begging to after this age become a sport of individuality rather than of the whole. By this I mean that individuals can begin to take on climbs previously denied to them due to gender or race or some other factor. While the reading is a bit out of sorts in my opinion and a little unorganized I thing it does a good job of showing this shift and showing the changing times in a sense that mountaineers were no longer based on the idea that they must be white men rather they were judged on an individual basis which is the first significant step opening up a sport by seeing the participants as individuals whom participating for the love of the sport, rather than dividing them based on some societal standard that has been in place for longer than it should have been.