Have staircase, will climb mountains: It is a great motto for these pandemic times as it’s just a matter of scale really

An average of over 40,000 steps is equal to the 8,848-m height of Mount Everest.

By ET Bureau | Updated: Apr 14, 2020, 08.52 AM IST

John Griffin runs up the stairs of his house during his 'Indoor Everest' challenge to raise awareness and money for the Trussell Trust, a charity that supports food banks in the United Kingdom, in Shoreham, Britain.

If people are perking themselves up during pandemic lockdowns across the world in ways as diverse as dressing up in evening finery to take the trash out to the bins or singing from terraces and balconies, the stories of people scaling Mount Everest while staying at home does not sound unlikely at all. Everything is really a matter of perception, after all.

Each would-be Edmund Hillary or Tenzing Norgay could just take out their trusty laptops and virtually trudge their way up even the most difficult ascent route, the most remote Kangshung, or East Face. But it is to their credit that the current lot of Everesters are made of sturdier stuff and have decided to do it the hard way, at least in the context of today’s virtual world — by climbing up the staircases of their respective homes, notching up an average of over 40,000 steps, equal to the 8,848-m height of Mount Everest.

‘Have staircase, will climb’ is a motto well suited to the current situation, given that one intrepid mountaineer has apparently scaled the highest peaks of England, Wales and Scotland using just one step on his porch, the seven leading to his garden and a hillock in his backyard. Given the obvious zero-carbon emission rate of this exercise and the immeasurable satisfaction of scaling great peaks, this should become a post-lockdown mountaineering staple.

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