After reading many works about experienced climbers, who train for climbs, bring proper equipment, travel companions, and have knowledge about the risks they are about to endure, reading “‘Shit Happens’: The Selling of Risk in Extreme Sport” by Catherine Palmer is an interesting take on extreme sports, including mountaineering, and the commodification behind them. Not only does this article outline the risk of having poorly trained “sporting neophytes” as she explains them, but the interest in extreme sports to begin with. Palmer writes “Given the centrality of specialised equipment and associated paraphernalia to adventure sports, it is not surprising that a sizeable media industry now promotes a tantalising range of state-of-the-art sporting exotica. Gloves, sunglasses, helmets, T-shirts, sandshoes, protective padding, bikes, karabiners and surf wax are all on sale for the discerning extreme buyer”(Palmer, 324). Bozeman Montana is no stranger to this “sporting exotica.” Stores like REI, Roundhouse, Schnee’s, and Chalet sports are some prime examples that sell lines of sporting gear like products from Patagonia and The North Face, which sponsors Bozeman’s very own Conrad Anker, that all go towards the commodification of extreme sports, helping the buyers buy the best gear in order to feel prepared for their next extreme adventure, despite skill level. Getting the best gear has a way of convincing the buyer they will be set in their adventure, and also gives a little bit of reliability to a buyer’s extreme sports idols that wear the same gear and achieve their goals safely and productively. As our fearless professor would say, “Thanks, Capitalism” (Maggie Greene, Most class periods).

Along with Palmer’s text about the commercialization of extreme sports, she writes on the tourism behind the sports, “Despite the relatively high levels of skill, athleticism and technical nous that are needed to master these ‘frontier challenge activities’, such pastimes are nonetheless constructed in very particular ways, so as to attract an amateur, tourist-based clientele, with little or no experience in the activity they are undertaking” (Palmer, 324). So now, not only are the athletic and skillful having difficulties in extreme sports, but now extreme sports are becoming something for tourism, for a vacation, which usually is a relaxing time for a person, is now involving extreme sports, like mountaineering, with little to no skill or training in order to participate in the event. On the first reading of class and the first class discussion, we went over the commodification of Everest, and the attainability relating more to money, class, and economic status, rather than skill level, and training time. Hiring the right crew to get a person up the mountain, and buying the right gear is expected to be enough now to help a crew mountaineer and get their adrenaline rush in extreme sports.

In my response to this, I feel as though the commodification and commercialization is sort of taking the thrill out of extreme sports and mountaineering. While the risks are high no matter who you are, or how much money you have, the ability to even attempt at what was once a great feat in life, is becoming more possible to those willing to spend money for the adventure. Palmer writes “In other words, every great disaster, it seems, if marketed correctly, can be sold for profit,” and throughout this class, with the books we have read, this is accurate on mountaineering, and extreme sports (Palmer, pg. 332).