To climb in this fashion a climber will hammer a peg (or "piton") into a crack, wedge chocks – pieces of metal of various sizes and shapes – into it or place a skyhook (a very small grappling hook) over flakes of rock and edges.
A lightweight set of nylon rungs is then clipped with a carabiner and the climber will move high enough up the rungs to place another piece.
And even Lionel Logue, the speech therapist who cuts through so much of the monarchy's pomposity, is a hideous social climber who subtly becomes more and more obnoxious and complacent the more access he gets to the king.
First, the pseudonymous climber Mustang Wanted repainted a Soviet star on one of Moscow's Stalin-era Seven Sisters skyscrapers in Ukrainian colours and topped it with a flag, to the delight of Pussy Riot.
Osman was a climber and Base jumper who died in 1998, shortly after being arrested by the park service and spending time in jail.
"It was really ugly," says Cedar Wright, a Boulder-based professional climber and close friend of Potter's, who posted a tribute shortly after the news broke.
Jim Davidson, an American climber among those trapped at camp one, was one of the first to be evacuated and updated his Facebook page by satellite phone.
In an interview with climber Jimmy Chin last spring, Potter explained he had become more committed to flying safely as he lost friends to the sport.
One climber, Alex Gavan, tweeted that he had to run for his life after an avalanche struck Everest's base camp and reported that many had died and many more were badly injured.
Similar contempt appeared this week after the death of Dean Potter, a pioneering rock climber who had been Base jumping for over a decade, and who had devoted his life to turning a childhood nightmare about falling into a dream of flying.
Each climber needs at least two litres a day and ideally three.
