Read an Excerpt
Introduction
The Old Becomes New Again
It was a close, warm, breezeless summer night,
Wan, dull, and glaring, with a dripping fog
Low-hung and thick that covered all the sky;
But, undiscouraged, we began to climb
The mountainside.
–William Wordsworth, “The Prelude” (1799–1805)
Physical exploration of the world was growing rapidly during the Romantic Period, the time of Wordsworth. Early mountaineers were upper class and well educated: poets, photographers, geologists, painters, and natural historians.
In 1895 the Englishman and alpinist Albert Mummery and four men undertook the first attempt to climb one of the Himalaya’s giant peaks, the 26,660-foot (8,126-meter) high Nanga Parbat. Mummery and two of his men lost their lives in an avalanche during the attempt. Thus climbing entered the twentieth century with artistic grace tainted by extreme tragedy; this began the greatest period of growth in alpinism, particularly in the Alps.
Technical standards rose rapidly. In 1906, 5.9 was first climbed in the Elbe Sandstone Mountains. Around this same time Austrian Paul Preuss trained himself to do one-armed pull-ups and climbed (and down climbed) alpine rock routes in the Dolomites to a modern grade of 5.8, solo and in hobnailed boots. By 1922 the top grade was 5.10d. Climbers of the time climbed many beautiful, difficult routes in the mountains. To modern climbers, they seem to have been driven by an innate curiosity to ascend, explore, and observe what would unfold in the process.
The great wars twisted everything; the conquest of the world’s fourteen highest peaks after World War II became surrogate battlegrounds to reinforce superiority, or symbolize rebirth, depending on whether your country had won or lost: Annapurna to the French, Everest to the British, Nanga Parbat to the Germans, K2 to the Italians. Ascent was transformed into conquest; summits became symbols of nationalistic pride. The climbing of mountains was changed forever. This ended symbolically in 1980 when Reinhold Messner was asked why he did not carry his country’s flag to the top of Everest, and he replied: “I did not go up for Italy, nor for South Tirol. I went up for myself.” Though his comment angered many at the time, the line was drawn.
In the information age all must be measured. For climbing, an emphasis on difficulty and speed emerged. Hardest, highest, fastest. In the age of social media all must be shared. The resulting cocktail of cameras, danger, and testosterone are all too often tragic. Rarely graceful.
The new alpinism comes full circle as small teams of fit, trained athletes emulate Mummery, aspire to Preuss, climb like the young Messner. Because those pioneers knew that alpinism—indeed all mindful pursuits—is at its most simple level, the sum of your daily choices and daily practices. Progress is entirely personal. The spirit of climbing does not lie in outcomes—lists, times, your conquests. You do keep those; you will always know which mountains you have climbed, which you have not. What you can climb is a manifestation of the current, temporary, state of your whole self. You can’t fake a sub-four-minute mile just as you can’t pretend to do an asana. Ascent too is an expression of many skills developed, refined, mastered.
Training is the most important vehicle for preparation. Constant practice begets examination and refinement of technique as well as fitness. It is not our natural tendency to value struggle over success, a worldview that climbing sternly enforces. Embracing struggle for its own sake is an important step on your path. Incremental vacillations in your self—your physical and mental selves—are exquisitely revealed in practicing ascent. There is no end to your progress or your process. For the two of us the pursuit of climbing mountains has been among the most powerful personal experiences we have known. Nothing else has come close to the blunt power of climbing to inform us about ourselves.
We don’t presume to tell anyone what the new alpinism will actually become; no one can know this. But we do think that we have earned the perspective to point in the right general direction: Structured, progressive training will be a big component, perhaps define, the future of alpine climbing. But not because it will help you climb harder, faster—though it will. Training prepares your body and, most important, your mind for ascent through consistent, hard, disciplined practice.
Go simply, train smart, climb well.
