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Comment by tyingq | Hacker News Reader

I found this:

"We took our own iron. It's not battery powered so it doesn't iron that well, but the quality of the ironing is not the point - it's where you do it."[1]

So it sounds like they just run a not-plugged-in regular iron over some fabric and call it ironing?

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/apr/25/everest.nepal

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I mean if this is true it really just calls the validity of the whole sport into question. You obviously can’t iron without heat.

It's true for every example I can find.

This photo, for example, shows a plain old plug-in iron: https://web.archive.org/web/20161017222702/http://teamsteam....

Same guy, up in a tree, with the same iron: https://web.archive.org/web/20161017223140/http://teamsteam....

From this page: https://web.archive.org/web/20160920083532/http://teamsteam....

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Ofc you can, with pressure.

Putting your trousers under the mattress and sleeping on them so that in the morning, they'll be flattened and de-wrinkled... because the lack of an iron anywhere on the base does not cancel the army regulations, and those say that the sentry must be impeccably dressed.

Conversely, I would question whether you can iron without a mountain backdrop. Really calls into question whether those crisp lines on your clothing are the result of true ironing or just pressing something hot against them.

Uh, do you think the point of the sport is to de wrinkle clothes?

Yes, of course. Non dewrinkling ironing on the peak of Mt. Everest is for casuals.

Ironing clothes -- actually getting them flat -- on a mountain peak or underwater is interesting because of the difficulty. Finding out the person isn't really ironing, but just pretending, detracts from it and takes it from "that's quite an accomplishment" to "so what?". It goes from an interesting logistical challenge to "can you take an ironing board and an iron up the mountain / into the sea with you?"

It's one of the things judged on the extreme ironing competitions: https://youtu.be/jZ6Yo0cVMP0?t=205

Looks like those guys are too lazy to rub it a bit.

You could do with hot coals. You can still get all your clothes ironed this way in many south asian countries by a street vendor.

Indeed. In a competitive sport there should be a way to evaluate result to determine standings.

If ironing is just about extra bulk of equipment not the actual product of ironing, then it's more like weight-added competition. Otherwise there needs to be some way of judging the ironing aspect, like quality, novelty, or artistic merit, in addition to the otherwise difficulty, like in figure skating, for example.

But just for fun - everything is sport. In the line of "everything and the kitchen sink", how about extreme dish-washing!

> In March 2008, a team of 72 divers simultaneously ironing underwater set a new world's record for number of people ironing underwater at once

Apparently the clothes don't need to be dry either!

That's not ironing. It's a fabric massage.

Pfft, not even a coal fired iron? Extreme my arse

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