Mountaineering

Mountaineering...the freedom of the hills.

It's as simple as that. Mountaineering is freedom.

Freedom to test your mettle, your courage, your strength - not just physical, but just as importantly, mental.
Freedom to test yourself against the elements.
Freedom because your existance is stripped down very neatly - you eat, drink, rest and climb.
It is about you. It is about the mountain.

This 'purity' is especially evident in modern alpinism, in which the challenge is how quick and light one can go. The focus today is on how much one can pare down one's backpack, versus the risk of leaving out that tent, that stove, those extra food supplies, the extra fuel. How much can you cut out before you make the risk unacceptable?

This is in direct contrast with the traditional version of mountaineering - massive expeditions in which large teams of climbers (including porters e.g. Sherpas in the Himalayas) ascend and descend various sections of the mountain repeatedly, establishing different camps at different levels, fixing ropes to act as 'vertical highways' of sorts, ferrying supplies from one camp to another.

Regardless, time has always been of the essence in mountaineering. Most mountains have a certain season of the year whereby success is closest within reach - if you miss out on that window of opportunity, you might as well go home. Questions that mountaineers ask themselves are: What is the turnaround time*?  If I am caught out in the elements - how fast can I descend? Can I navigate efficiently and lead my team up the right route on the cliff-face? Am I using my equipment well - those ice-screws, snow stakes, quickdraws, rope - but not overusing, which would slow me down?

In mountaineering there often are judgement calls to be made. Can you assess the current weather and how it is likely to change? Can you estimate that by a certain time the sun's warmth would make this area impossible to cross due to the hard snow melting into a slushy mess? Is that a proper bridge across the crevasse or is it just made of snow, as stable as a waking dream and ready to disappear like a puff of powder?

This is because mountaineering, adventure pursuit as it is, still holds this principle as true: ascending is optional but descending is not.


*Turnaround time: a time and distance goal that, if not reached, would mean that one would turn back regardless of where one was at on the mountain, because to ignore it would put one at risk of being in peril - e.g. dusk and the night descending while one is at the wrong part of the mountain.

On Ball Pass looking towards the Tasman glacier, Mt Cook National Park, New Zealand, 2009.