Mountaineering

You like mountain climbing.

On the face of it, mountaineering is just plain stupid. Like free-diving and BASE jumping, one could argue that it's little more than socially-sanctioned Russian roulette. Consider Annapurna in the Himalayas: this 8,091 metre monster has a fatality to summit ratio in excess of 40%, which basically means that for every 10 people who've enjoyed the view from the top, four people have died trying to get there.

You have to wonder: as people are plummeting down cliff faces, suffocating in avalanches, being crushed beneath seracs, or just plain old freezing to death, do they ever think to themselves, "Why couldn't I just play chess?"

But we all know the answer: because chess isn't mountain climbing. Listen, I'm not going to bash chess. Being a grand master at that ancient game is its own special brand of cool. But climbing K2 isn't cool, it's bad-ass. It's also not Russian roulette. You see, roulette is all chance. Mountaineering has a big element of chance, sure, but the random factor can be mitigated - some times - by the skill, fitness and just plain old drive to survive of the climber.

Climbing 8,000 metre peaks is like playing chess while running a marathon and being sprayed constantly with ice water, never knowing when a dumpster full of bricks may fall from the sky or a sinkhole drop out beneath your feet. And when shit goes south in the high-altitude death zone - when ropes break, blizzards hit, and oxygen tanks run dry - it becomes a near-peerless test of human endurance.