Hah! You didn't see the clear cases of linkbait I rejected. There's plenty of people whose comments were more based in snobbishness than anything else, of the "I was into X before X was popular" or "No one does X anymore, it's too crowded" varieties.

But honestly, it isn't that hard to find people who weren't mountaineers who decided to climb Everest. In http://reachingbeyondtheclouds.com/?page_id=18 , "I became drawn to climb that mountain: the beauty, the challenge. Please realize that at the time I had climbed only Mt. Kilimanjaro and was no mountaineer." Due to medical reasons, "I had do it as soon as possible. ... I had to climb as many mountains as I could in a short amount of time." She started training in 2006 and was at the top of Everest on 2010. She only lists a few mountains that she summited before then.

http://mirandaluby.writersresidence.com/samples/on-top-of-th... describes someone whose "first ascent, up [Kilimanjaro], happened purely on a whim." Some time later, after experience 'backpacking at a high altitude for weeks', Simon "decided to give Aconcagua a go to see if I would get sick again", and then going through the tallest peaks for each continent. "Between expeditions, he kept his day job as an anaesthetist, and outside of work hours trained by running and riding" .. that is, not by climbing a large number of other mountains.

http://www.avagacser.com/ViewContent.aspx?mode=v&mediaID=23 describes Medvetz who, a year after a near fatal motorcycle accident which left him temporarily wheelchair bound "That's when I just decided ... I'm gonna climb Everest." "I lived in the Himalayas for about six months in villages and all around the Everest region," Medvetz explains. "I climbed all the smaller peaks around Everest, just training and preparing for it." I don't see evidence that he climbed even a hundred challenging mountains before trying Everest.

As it turns out, the group he went with was being filmed for the Discovery Channel. That, combined with other factors, let him to start a foundation to help wounded veterans do things like climb Everest. One of these in the near future is at http://theheroesproject.org/2013/11/sgt-thomas-charles-linvi... . I see no evidence that Linville has any mountaineering experience.

I found these with very little effort. While it's true that these people are physically fit, and have some training, it's pretty obvious that they are not highly experienced mountaineers who worked up to the Everest challenge by doing even a score of other technically difficult peaks first. Thus, it suggests that the anecdotal evidence from those "infotainment" articles has some basis in fact.

Does that satisfy you? ;)

There's another interesting wrinkle. Attempting to summit Everest unprepared is not a modern thing. Consider Maurice Wilson's 1934 attempt, based on little more than fasting and prayer. Or the 1962 attempt by Woodrow Wilson Sayre and 3 colleagues, described by Sayre in "Four Against Everest." One review says "This is a true, almost unbelievable story of a daring attempt by four amateur mountaineers - a college professor, a school teacher, a lawyer, and a geology student - to climb the highest peak in the world!"

A more correct analysis might look to see if the percentage of attempts by inexperienced has increased over the decades.