First things first: Why?
The most common question I field is: Why?
That one-word inquiry contains an unstated underlying request: why do you climb mountains and take these risks when you have so much for which to live?
My initial answer is precisely the same as what George Mallory said of his experience:
Robert Alt leading the rope line with a heavy pack going up the headwall of Vinson Massif in Antarctica. What this picture doesn’t convey is that he desperately wants a hot shower, good scotch, and warm bed.
“If you cannot understand that there is something in man which responds to the challenge of this mountain and goes out to meet it, that the struggle is the struggle of life itself upward and forever upward, then you won't see why we go.”
“Have we vanquished an enemy? None but ourselves. Have we gained success? That word means nothing here. Have we won a kingdom? No... and yes. We have achieved an ultimate satisfaction... fulfilled a destiny... To struggle and to understand—never this last without the other; such is the law...”
Put another way, as Jon Krakauer observed in Eiger Dreams: Ventures Among Men and Mountains, “Most climbers aren't in fact deranged, they're just infected with a particularly virulent strain of the Human Condition.”
I would augment what the legends of our sport have already articulated so well, by adding: Nothing else has offered me the simultaneous combination of mental and physical challenge. For instance, I regularly run races including half and full marathons, which don’t even come close. Sure, they require discipline, training, and endurance, but only for a few hours at a time. Mountain climbing is long days followed by long days. Imagine the longest day of your life—in miserable conditions—only to wake up mere hours later cold, achy, hungry, tired, and perplexed about why you are still going up and not down to safety and comfort—and repeating it over again the next day. I can’t begin to explain the level of mental and physical exhaustion. It’s just a wholly different endeavor.
Additionally, and perhaps especially ironically, I am afraid of heights—and not just a little bit. I’m absolutely terrified. If I look down, my legs and hands alternately quiver, tremble, and shimmy as though God is vigorously shaking a martini using my limbs as ice cubes. As I continue engaging in the general suffering that is mountain climbing and contending with my particularly irksome fear of heights, I regularly wish to quit—a warm bed, decent meals, an actual bathroom, and my amazing family await if I just turn around and go home. Yet, there is no better way to learn to conquer this lingering fear and persist through misery to reach my goals. Period. So we go up…
Climbing great mountains teaches us about ourselves and exposes what we are made of. There is no place to hide up there.
Mountains train and condition us to be endurant and to persevere through adversity, which are helpful character traits to refine and apply toward innumerable contexts off the mountain.
Mountains show us how to fail and start again. And about how to course correct, resolve frustrations, and better prepare next time. Throughout the inevitable ups and downs, they teach us resilience.
If we do it right, climbing these formidable mountains makes us stronger and nobler.
Now, when something is a standard-setting goal in any industry, it is often referred to as the “Everest” of that field. Rightly so.
Earth’s tallest mountain takes a backseat to nothing and bows to absolutely no one.
It humbles the best-trained high-altitude climbers and endurance athletes.
Alpinists revere and respect it, and we take into account its unrelenting hazards.
The struggle on mountains is uncannily analogous to the larger experience of being human.
Lou Kasischke noted, “...the qualities for high altitude climbing came sharply into focus. It's all about suffering. Only about suffering. Being a patient sufferer without yielding.”
And David Breashears commented likewise that “The stresses of high-altitude climbing reveal your true character; they unmask who you really are. You no longer have all the social graces to hide behind, to play roles. You are the essence of what you are.”
Yet, despite the unpleasantness, Tenzing Norgay famously remarked, “Nothing made sense about it… Any man in his right mind would have said no. But I couldn’t say no, for in my heart I needed to go, and the pull of Everest was stronger for me than any force on Earth.”
Sir Edmund Hillary originally expressed my exact sentiment as well, “It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.”
In fact, I am quite superstitious and refrain from using the word or idea of “conquering” when referring to mountains because I have certainly never conquered any mountain, even though a few of them—unprovoked—have tried their darndest to conquer me…
