Is it worth the risk?

Reading has never been something I do for fun, until now. For English this year, I am being forced to read a certain number of pages each quarter. I finally found a book I loved and couldn't stop reading!! I just finished reading a book called "Into Thin Air" by Jon Krakauer. The book is asbout his journey climbing 29,028 feet to the highest possible location a human could stand on earth, Mount Everest. This book is filled with pages and pages of interesting facts such as the price in which it took to climb the mountain to the training it took to be prepared. After reading the book however, I realized no one is ever fully prepared. No one can prepare themselves for HACE which is a dangerous mountain sickness, frost bite, brutal weather conditions, barely any oxygen or even death. The list goes on. My question after reading about the horrible 1996 tragedy where eight climbers were killed (Krakauer managed to survive the mountain) is simply, was it worth it? To be able to say you are physically and mentally tough enough to take on the massive peaks, simply to say you were on the highest land elevation in the world, to say you battled loneliness, hunger, and sickness seems worth it to me. Though the challenge is unlike any other, I feel it would be one of the most gratifying moments to be able to say that you literally conquered the world. You climbed Mount Everest. This book was very inspiring to me and I feel like I can conquer anything my heart desires. You never know, maybe in 30 years I will be standing on top of the world at 29,028 feet.