I don't know if you've heard of type 2 fun. Type 1 fun is the fun that we're all familiar with - eating ice cream in the sunshine with friends, that sort of deeply pleasant thing.
Type 2 fun is when you are hurting, tired, sweaty, kind of regretting life in a lot of ways, the sort of fun where you question you decisions. But afterwards, when you're drinking a beer, your muscles are all warm and glowing, you kind of think, that wasn't so bad, that was fun. That's type 2 fun! I kind of think of it as the Stockholm syndrome of fun.
Now I think if you get into most sorts of sports deeply enough, it kind of becomes type 2 fun - running marathons, triathlons, that sort of thing - those fall deeply into the realm of type 2 fun. But I can't think of a sport that embraces type 2 fun more wholly, more unabashedly, more completely, than mountaineering.
It's hard to argue that shivering in a blizzard at the top of an icy cliff above chasms of death in the worst sorts of weather the planet has is anything more tha