Ben Clark was 21 years old when he told his parents he wanted to climb Mount Everest.

At the time, he would have been the second youngest American to make the summit.

I just didn't see there being a great reward versus the risk that you had to take.

That's Ben's dad, Jerry Clark. As you might expect, he and his wife weren't thrilled by the idea.

Killing yourself is a bad, but it's probably not near as bad as losing a

leg or a foot or having major frostbite issues and being disabled for the rest of your life.

Not that their son wasn't an accomplished climber by this point.

It's just, you know, this is Mount Everest. This is not a safe place.

It's an end to itself.

And I just didn't see it as a thing that would help him

promote his ability to earn a good living and move on through life at a later date.

I was wrong. I mean, he's done fine sense and it showed a great deal of character and determination and persistence to do it.

Ben didn't need his parents blessing to climb Everest.

He was an adult, old enough to vote, old enough to sign up for the military, and old enough to prove his dad wrong.

And in 2003, he made it to the top of the world's tallest mountain.

About 9 o'clock, Nepalese College.

And it was the hardest thing I think I have ever done in my life.

If you can put aside the place Mount Everest holds in global mountaineering culture, which is complicated, I think

we can acknowledge the difficulty of Ben's achievement and celebrate the drive it took him to get

him there. But what if, when Ben set out to climb Mount Everest, what if he'd been just a little bit younger?

What if he was a lot younger?

Would we still feel the same way? I didn't make you get up early, did I?

...