I don't wish to sound like an idiot, but how do you teach someone to climb a mountain? Do you say "watch your step" or "don't look down" or "make sure you don't slip"?
You may surely say all of these things to a small child, in much the same way as you would acquaint them with the rudiments of life like eating veggies and brushing teeth, but one presumes it is grown up people, more than children, who wish to climb mountains, and that most of them just follow someone who has been there and got the T-shirt.
More than being a science one has to learn, this is a natural process that stems from people growing tired of the everyday chores and feeling the need to test their limits for reasons they may not even understand.
"If you battle to breathe, this is the bottled oxygen, okay?"
This week alone at least 75 climbers have conquered Everest, among them a Nepalese named Appa Sherpa who broke his own world record of 18 summits. Crikey, think about it.
Appa lives in the US and teaches people how to climb mountains. His occupation is not surprising but what does he tell them that they don't know already?
"Well folks, I find that praying helps, as well as knowing how to tie the reef knot."
Either the snow-capped Everest is shrinking with age - like me, in my wife's view - or more and more people are taking climbing lessons with brother Appa.
On Thursday he himself complained of being held up at the Hillary Step (obviously a key point on the road to the summit) because of the crowd of people ahead of him.
I grew up under the impression that Everest was off limits to mere mortals but now, midway through the annual spring climbing window, people are all over it like flies, dumping, would you believe, at least 6000kg of garbage and three bodies on its slopes in the past month alone.
It is a place that has clearly lost its mystical appeal but not its inherent danger, and more and more people obviously see it as their own personal challenge in life. It is a noble ambition because, in the world that I frequent, there is no better reason to compete than because it is there.
Tomorrow offers that challenge to the best rugby and soccer teams from Pretoria. Rather than tell the Bulls and the AmaTuks, "watch your step, fellows, don't look down", let's hold up the image of a frost bitten Appa, begoggled and begasping, commanding that we have within ourselves the ability to surprise ourselves one more time, and one more still.
The Bulls and Tuks must know that they can scale their peaks if they want, because mountains were put there for that very purpose.