Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
innovative and saleable products was an essential part of almost every Himalayan
expedition. From the manufacturer's point of view, the development of lightweight
equipment was often somewhere between an act of faith and a sign of friendship.
The right people and good gear meant nothing unless you were properly accli-
matised for high-altitude climbing. Alex was clear that for most climbers this could
only be achieved as the culmination of years, if not decades, of time spent in the
mountains. He believed that good performance at high altitude was not simply a
matter of the body physically adapting. The mind also had to adapt. It had to learn
to accept everything encountered on the mountain as perfectly normal, including
extreme danger. This, he argued, could only be achieved after thousands of hours
of living in that environment. There were no short cuts to mountain success. You
needed to be 'time served'. He hounded one teammate on Shisha Pangma until he
agreed to drop all thoughts of going onto the mountain with the rest of them.
'Fundamentally, Nick has not logged enough hours slogging through Scottish
bogs in winter blizzards, lumbering through the frantic, non-stop twenty-four-
hour exhaustion of the Alps … like a pack of pursued wolves with a badly wounded
mate, the experienced climbers smelt the inevitable.'
Climbers have long debated whether mountaineering is a lifestyle or a sport. In
the 1950s, it was more of a lifestyle, in part because there was little chance of mak-
ing a living from it and, in part, because it demanded so much of your life to serve
a full apprenticeship. Alex certainly served a full apprenticeship. Before the wide-
spread popularity of climbing walls, sport climbing and commercial mountain
tourism, the formula for an apprenticeship in Britain more or less followed the se-
quence set out below. (For North America, replace the Alps with Rockies, Sierras,
Cascades or Tetons.)
1. Walk in the hills and dales - observe mad people climbing rocks.
2. Read books about climbing, get inspired.
3. Decide you are also mad, and find someone with whom to go climb a rock.
4. Climb ice in winter, get thoroughly miserable and thoroughly hooked.
5. Go to the Alps in summer, learn to function in thin air, to move fast.
6. Climb in the Alps in winter, have miserable epics and taste the joy of hard
fought success.
If, after five to ten years, you were still alive and climbing, you graduated to the
Greater Ranges. That was where being 'time served' mattered most. (Scottish
