Despite its free-spirited adherents, the professional climbing community can be contentious and highly competitive.
"Within the professional climbing community, the idea of climbing Everest with oxygen is viewed as pedestrian.
After the climb, Bonatti, thirty-five athehe time, abruptly retired from professional climbing, and became a journalist.
It has nothing to do with an imagined antagonism from a "professional" climbing community towards an "outsider", as Burkeman implies.
If the roof develops a leak, call a professional; climbing on a wet, icy or snow-covered roof "is a recipe for disaster," he said.
Still, the professional climbing game can be a mercenary one, requiring fealty to sponsors and some self-glorification, which can undercut the elegance of the feats themselves.
Zack Smith, a climbing partner of Ozturk's and a world-class Alpinist in his own right, said he had rejected the trappings of professional climbing, sponsorship and documentation of his climbs.
"Phyllis Schlafly's formula for the better life, then, is based on marrying a rich professional, climbing the pedestal to lady of leisure and pulling up the rope ladder behind her," Ms. Sheehy wrote in The New York Times in 1980.
He disdains ski areas ("They're golf courses"), the idea of professional climbing ("I just don't like the whole paid-climber thing"), and the proliferation of extreme sports as programming and marketing ("Red Bull's in the snuff-film business").
Alternatively, the Wengernalpbahn shuttles visitors up the opposite side of the valley to Kleine Scheidegg for views of the notorious North Face of the Eiger peak – one of hardest professional climbs in the Alps – before connecting to the Jungfraubahn train.
