It was a necessary climb-down but nonetheless embarrassing.It is worth recalling the circumstances of Mr Cameron's ill-fated pledge, the only one he made during his bid for the leadership.
Rent or purchase the minimum equipment necessary to climb in most gyms: a climbing harness, climbing shoes and belay device.
His basic belief was that it is necessary to climb toward the peace summit even without the intention of reaching it.
But the figure is still well below the $370 million net worth necessary to climb on to the Forbes richest 100 list.
To reach the summit, it is necessary to climb the Bottleneck, then traverse left under the glacier's giant overhanging brow.
Winging it in front of the news cameras, he observes that, while peace is of course a desirable state of affairs, it is sometimes necessary to climb "the mountain of conflict".
The hike is of moderate difficulty, but Mr. Kick says it is not necessary to climb to the top of the mountain to catch stark views of Manhattan, about 55 miles to the south.
Last Friday, it took 22 German firefighters to rescue an American student who had felt it necessary to climb inside a giant sculpture of a vagina and got stuck.
He smiled weakly and greeted me by saying, "I believe it was Oliver Heaviside, the English physicist, who once said, 'In order to know soup, it is not necessary to climb into a pot and be boiled.' But, look, if you want to be boiled you are welcome to come inside".
So good a descriptive writer is he, that it is not necessary to climb out of the armchair to know what Steinbeck Country looks and feels and smells like: 'The sun was coming over the ridge now, glaring on the whitewash of the houses and barns, making the wet grass blaze softly.
Hillary and Tenzing had taken a few tentative breaths on the summit, but beyond this it appeared at the limits of possibility for a human being to expend the energy necessary to climb to the summit without any supplemental gas.
