Man(kind) VS. Mountain
87
Americans, with the special cis-Atlantic twist they gave their exploits, rivaled
the British: Archdeacon Hudson Stuck conquering Alaska’s formidable Mt.
McKinley (20,500 ft.), Thoreau on the craggy rocks of Katahdin, Clarence King
in the Sierra Nevadas, and John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club, from
Yosemite to Alaska. These few iconic figures among hundreds of climbers,
countless numbers of weekend viewers.
The United States not only furnished numerous examples; it bade well
even to surpass the British in appreciating mountains. Here was created
Yellowstone, the first national park in 1872, one short year after Stephens’s
bestseller, soon to be followed, one by one, with a baker’s dozen of new
reserves—Yosemite, Rainier, Glacier, Rocky Mountain, Cascades, Lassen,
etc.—overwhelmingly devoted to preserving unique mountainous areas. As
Thoreau put it, “In wildness is the preservation of the world" ("Walking'’).
The final stage, growing stronger and stronger as the twentieth-century
spun out its years, was, for all intents and purposes, purely secular. Mountains
now exist to be visited and climbed by the tourists (the less lofty or difficult
examples), the unconquered few to be attacked by solo climbers all the way up
to large expeditions with leaders, porters, and endless paraphernalia.
There is actually something more going on than simple exaltation in
achieving a climb, under pleasant circumstances (friendly companions, food to
be appreciated by the cold and weary, the cozy bivouac, dangerous pitches
successfully ascended, with the added bonus of incomparably beautiful
surroundings [remember, the public now appreciates mountain beauty]).
There is competition, challenge, getting higher, faster, more
dangerously—“danger” being the operative word—the extreme sport
phenomenon. Cf. a recent movie, Vertical Limit: The athlete (no longer a mere
amateur scrambler or climber) assuages his ego, displays his machismo by
taking extreme, life-threatening, soul-wrenching chances. Somehow just
surviving proves the better person.
This stretching of the envelope is more than a desire to excel, even to
conquer the unconquerable. It may be exemplified by contrasting George
Mallory’s three attempts in the 1920s to get to the top of Mt. Everest. No one
tried harder; indeed, he and his fellow climber, Andrew Irvine, lost their lives on
the highest pitches. But he was a poetic dreamer, an English teacher and idealist,
no professional or semi-professional mountaineer. Once asked why climbing
Everest was such an obsession with him, he famously replied, "Because it is
there,” a subtle answer open to more than one interpretation (Unsworth 100).
Contrast his answer with that of Sir Edmund Hillary, the New Zealand
beekeeper who, with the Nepalese sherpa Tensing Norgay, finally reached the
top thirty years later (1953): "We knocked the bastard off!” (Unsworth 337)
He’s facing an animistic mountain antagonist actively trying to thwart him. This
is an assault, no longer just a climb.
Obviously this phenomenon does not exhibit itself in mountaineering
alone. It is part of a tougher view of life itself, in keeping v