NEED TO KNOW
- A man surprised his hiking-loving wife by planning a trip to Mount Everest base camp for their wedding anniversary
- However, she asked him to cancel the trip after she became concerned about safety and logistics
- “Now he’s hurt because he spent $1,600 [on the deposit] and I just insulted him basically,’ the wife wrote on Reddit
A man surprised his wife, who is a hiking enthusiast, by planning a trip to Mount Everest base camp to celebrate their wedding anniversary. But when she began doing some research on the trek and the safety risks involved, she got cold feet and asked him to cancel, leaving him hurt and “insulted.”
The wife detailed the dilemma in a post on Reddit’s “Am I the A——” forum, beginning by explaining that she and her husband are “both big travelers,” a shared interest they “connected deeply on” during their first date. But whereas he favors travel that involves “art, culture, architecture, shopping and beaches,” she really enjoys trips based around hiking.
The OP (original poster) said her husband — whom she described as “thoughtful” and someone who likes to show his love through gifts and big gestures — expressed his desire to plan and pay for their anniversary trip. One day, he shared a link to a guided hike to Everest base camp in a group chat.
“I didn’t think much of it other than casually saying, ‘yeah sure let’s do it,’ thinking he’ll probably circle back if he really wanted to do it,” she recalled, noting that her husband’s longest hike to date was “around 4-5 miles, at maybe 8000 ft elevation.” She said he’s “reasonably in shape” from regular gym sessions, but has not done anything for endurance training.
Then, last month, she found out her husband put down a $1,600 deposit for the Everest guided hike. Surprised by the steep cost, the OP began to do some research online — and that led her “down the rabbit hole of people dying on Everest (summiting, not base camp, but it’s still creepy!) and also the 1,000 folks stranded just trying to reach Everest base camp.”
The OP also grew concerned when she considered how her husband “hates camping (no showers), bad food, when his head is rained on… and also gets low blood sugar if he doesn’t eat a snack first thing in the AM.”
“The hike to EBC is a 8-9 day hike at very high elevation, in the cold, with cold pizza & fried rice, and sub-optimal showering/sleeping conditions,” she wrote.
The OP said she showed her husband videos of the difficult trek, but he was insulted.
“He took it as an affront to his planning skills and his fitness levels since he wanted to plan a trip that has personal childhood meaning to me (my parents used to collect plant samples in the Himalayas when I was a kid) and also share something romantic with me in a sport I enjoy doing,” she wrote in her post.
But, she explained, the Everest hike “is very, very, very different in terms of endurance, food logistics, and I just feel like with his preferences and physical condition we shouldn’t chance it.”
Needless to say, her rebuffing of her husband’s anniversary trip did not go over well.
“Now he’s hurt because he spent $1,600, and I just insulted him basically. I don’t really want to go after doing thorough research. Am I the asshole?” she concluded her post, seeking advice from fellow Redditors.
In the comments section, readers were quick to question several aspects of the OP’s story. One person pointed out that she essentially gave her husband the green light to book the trip when she said, “yeah sure let’s do it,” after he sent the link to the Everest hike.
“Sounds affirmative to me,” they wrote, also suggesting that training for the trek might be part of her husband’s “planning process.”
Another person chimed in: “Saying ‘Let’s do it’ was not the appropriate response and left your husband thinking this was something you wanted to do. It sounds like a great husband trying to surprise you based on what you said you wanted to do. Your response should have been more along the lines of ‘Sounds fun, let’s look into it.’ ”
Others told the OP that she was greatly “exaggerating the risk” of hiking to base camp. “It’s not summiting Everest.
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Someone else even suggested that the OP might be using her concerns about safety and her husband’s fitness level to get out of doing a trip she doesn’t actually want to take.
“I get the vibe that OP is more worried about their own ability and general disinterest in the trip than their partner’s ‘lack of cardio’ or whatever, so YTA,” that commenter wrote.
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