Want to know a wild Mount Everest fact that blows my mind every time I think of it? Green Boots.

Green Boots was the name given to a corpse that was located near a cave along the mountain's northeastern ridge route. The corpse was named Green Boots because, as you can guess, it wore green boots. It was also named Green Boots because no one has confirmed the corpse's identity. Green Boots, you see, has been there for at least a decade—first spotted in 2001 before disappearing in 2014, probably buried thanks to that year's disastrous avalanche. Green Boots, to me, is a perfect representation of what Everest is to me. Everest is shit so hardcore that you could die trying to climb it, and not only would people not recover your corpse, but they would make you a landmark.

The Real-Life Diet of a Mountain-Climbing National Geographic Photographer GQ takes a look at what Professional athletes don't get to the top by accident. It takes superhuman levels of time, dedication, and focus—and that includes paying attention to what they put in their bellies. In this series,takes a look at what pro athletes in different sports eat on a daily basis to perform at their best. Here's a look at the diet of adventurer Cory Richards

For this reason alone, I probably would not climb Mount Everest. It simply does not sound like A Good Idea. But then I got an email with the subject line SUMMIT MT. EVEREST WITH SÓLFAR, which I almost deleted before I saw "[VR DEMO]" in the subject line and thought, Oh. Virtual Reality. I can do that. But who is Sólfar, and why does he want to do this with me?

Sólfar, it turns out, is not a person but a studio based in Iceland and specializing in VR games and experiences. VR, apparently, is supposed to be a big deal this year, with Facebook's Oculus, Sony's PlayStation VR, and HTC's Vive headsets all expected to release sometime this spring. While a few setups currently exist—like Samsung's Gear VR, which is a headset you can just clip a Galaxy Note phone into, for example—for much of the past year or two, VR has been almost entirely the purview of programmers and exhibitors, a thing you stand in line for at flashy events or read about in stories like this one. No one knows how much traction it will get in the Real World, because the doodads have not really hit the market yet, and no one has thought to ask anyone if they want to strap goofy headsets to their face on a regular basis.

So I met with Petur Thorarinsson, a member of the Sólfar team in town exclusively for showing off VR Everest. Which makes him a VR Sherpa, I guess.

The HTC Vive, Controllers, and Lighthouse sensors.

For this particular experience, Thorarinsson has me using the HTC Vive, a setup that differs from others by using sensors called Lighthouses that you mount in opposing corners of a room to effectively construct a fenced-in area for you to have VR party times in. In the conference room we're in, we have about eight by ten feet—not a whole lot of space, but enough for me to awkwardly pace around.