The Summit

The following review contains information about the first half of the first episode - which I do not consider to be a series spoiler. I have actual mountaineering experience, and am trained in search & rescue.

In real mountaineering, SAFETY is the TOP PRIORITY, and NO LIVING PERSON is left behind. People compete against the mountain, and NEVER against each other.

"THE SUMMIT" is erroneously couched in actual mountaineering, and infected with hypocritically self-conflicting objectives. The show should be presented as a team race, on a controlled closed course, and not disguised as a mountaineering quest.

+ Unlike "Survivor," contestants are told that this is a unified team effort, for everyone to complete the journey. That is a blatant lie.

+ Some contestants are chosen, who are obviously out of shape, plainly unable to perform in the hike or "challenges," and subject to real life threatening health emergencies. That is not legitimate competition. A better show would be the TRAINING of contestants to challenge their own personal limitations, and those who successfully train, then climb a mountain as a unified team. That would be the "Survivor" equivalent of merging the tribes.

+ Similar to "Survivor," contestants are implicitly encouraged to align in opposing "aliances," and forced to eliminate their fellow competitors. That never really happens on a mountain. By contrast, elimination happens on an Olympic competition rock climbing wall. Or even earlier, when one gives up training.

+ In my opinion, this show is offensive to the sport; and, falsely leads people to believe that they can just put on a backpack, and start walking up a mountain. That is less realistic than a cartoon.

It's such a shame that this show format has great potential, but is woefully let down by the so called host who adds nothing, and just comes across as a smug half wit. Also the challenges faced by the competitors could be much more diverse and enhance interest by incorporating basic survival tasks like shelter building, fire making and at the very least cooking food, rather than arriving to a ridiculous banquet of meals and booze. It doesn't have to rival or copy Survivor and Alone, but surely it would benefit by being more authentic and interesting by exploring some other elements of traversing this amazing environment.

I'm not sure what it is with aussie reality shows but they feel the need to stretch way too long.

This could have been a good show (albeit with a lot of seemingly random eliminations) if it was maybe hour long episodes. But no, every single challenge or discussion is dragged out till you just wanna fast forward huge chunks of it.

The scenery is awesome - that's why i picked it up. Jai seemed to be playing an emotionless character (or just didn't want to be there) which was weird - no reason he couldn't have been a bit more fun like say the aussie amazing race host.

All in all, was enjoyable enough to keep watching but i did skip chunks.

It's unbelievable that the producers could ruin this program. It had everything: physical challenges, competitions, beautiful scenery, eliminations, deceit, loads of cash, strong athletes, everything. And yet, ruin it they did. The last episodes were unwatchable for the boredom and can be fast forwarded through the weeping from letters from home, the weeping from zoom chats (do they really need zoom chats at the top of a mountain?) and the repetition of the previous scenesafter the commercials. Honestly, this program became so disappointing after the initial episodes draw you in. It's as if they wanted to incorporate every reality series ever done and failed miserably in the doing.

So the object is to try to eliminate those with strong hiking skills so lesser people can get to top of mountain and win lots of money. This was not the premise that the producers provided the audience; i.e., get to top of mountain. The Selection of people who had no idea how difficult it is to summit any substantial mountain, much less an New Zealand high summit is an insult to the audience. One can only surmise that whoever thought this would be an interesting show totally missed the boat; mostly because people who are overweight, unskilled in hiking should not have been selected to climb a really big mountain.