Firstly, I was comparing the way the companies pay staff, not the activities themselves.

Secondly, its not unreasonable at all. Sure the trip you may have done on vacation was an easy float down a class 3, but that's the equivalent of hiking a small hill an hour from your home. There are plenty of rafting expeditions that probably took way more planning and organisation and unknowns than some rich kid paying a million bucks for some company to hold their hand all the way up Everst.

...good thing he didn't do that. There's a big difference between "my rafting experience falls in line with this story, it looks like there's a bigger pattern" and "my rafting experience was like Mount Everest Sherpas".