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Rainier is awesome and a worthy endeavor for anyone but it's 14k feet vs. 28k feet and a whole other ballgame. To put it in perspective base camp for Everest is at 17k feet--well above the whole summit of Rainier. Or another way to think of it, when you get to the summit of Rainier imagine that as just the halfway point for an Everest climb.

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Yeah, but you can do Rainier with your own gear and your own plan, as opposed to having a bunch of sherpas do all the work.

Sure, you can do the same for Everest, but then you're actually in a class of elite alpinists. That's not really what we're discussing here.

Complete beginners climb Everest as their first and often last major summit. No argument about altitude can prove that it's not a beginner climb if hundred of beginners are doing it every year.

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