On the Mountains Just Walking About [Photo Essay]

A mountain climber meant the phrase
as a put-down,
but it suits me just fine.


















Climb: Move upward or mount, especially by using the hands and feet or the feet alone; ascend.

Mountain: A natural elevation of the earth’s surface having considerable mass, generally steep sides, and a height greater than that of a hill.

By those definitions, it is definitely a true statement that I love to climb mountains.

















Why, then, is the mountain climbing literature so consistently irrelevant to my interests?

Risk and Danger

“Danger for its own sake is seldom sought…. However, everybody knows that the feel or spice of risk gives an added zip to any adventure, even the mildest.” —Wilfred Noyce.

“The mountains provided an environment deliciously riven by risk.” —Robert Macfarlane.

“I accepted that danger was an essential component of the game—without it, climbing would be little different from a hundred other trifling diversions.” —Jon Krakauer.

* * *

I can’t say that I’ve never been enthralled by accounts of difficult and challenging climbs on ice- and snow-covered mountains and vertical rock or by stories of vicious storms, frostbite, close calls with death, and the actual deaths of companions. But that’s not what I do in mountains, and it’s not what happens to me.



I’m not a technical climber. I will do some hand-and-foot scrambling, but mostly I climb mountains where I can walk to the top.










I’ve climbed some fairly sizable peaks, including a number of 14,000-footers, and I’ve found my way to some pretty spectacular places and seen some stunning sights.


















Sometimes, I’ve walked a long way; sometimes the climbing’s been steep; it hasn’t all be easy. But I’ve not once flirted with death or even had a close call.


















And I’ve not found a single mountain climbing book that reflects my style of climbing.

On the Mountains Just Walking About

The British poets Robert Graves and Robert Trevelyan both tried their hand at mountain climbing when they were young. Graves went on to become a serious climber, but Trevelyan suffered a minor fall during a test climb for beginners. As Graves tells it, “He was pulled up short after a few feet by the rope of the leader, who was well belayed; but the experience disgusted him with climbing and he spent the rest of his time on the mountains just walking about.”

“On the mountains just walking about”! It’s perfect! Graves meant it as a put-down, but it captures exactly what I love to do. And it’s an image of myself that I find pleasing.

Actives and Passives

Sociologist and mountain climber Robert G. Mitchell, Jr.: “The experience of the mountains … may be found in the passive appreciation of natural beauty or in the active merging with the mountain through the dynamics of climbing.” The remainder of Mitchell’s book focuses on active climbers.

Here’s what he says about people who enjoy mountains the way I do: “To be without stress is to be eddied in the streams of life-experiences, cut off from stimuli…. Less is required of the person and less is possible. The opposite of stress is not celebration, satisfaction, or tranquility. It is a state of reduced awareness and diminished capacity.”

* * *

I do not feel that I was “eddied in the stream of life-experiences” on Mount Katahdin ...














... or “cut off from stimuli” on Mount Sneffels.










Do you think there was no celebration on Table Mountain when the Grand Teton emerged from the clouds?










Or no satisfaction with the view of Glacier Peak from Green Mountain?










It’s true that I don’t know the joy of a fine-tuned balance between difficulty and achievement. And I’ve never pushed myself to the limits of my ability and then realized the ecstasy of discovering that I still have enough left to succeed.

But I’ve been to Mountain View Crest at sunrise.










I’ve rambled in fresh snow in the Jarbidge Mountains.










I’ve been battered by the wind on Franconia Ridge ...










... and stunned by the colors around Redcloud Peak.

In Here and Out There

Whereas Actives focus on the self, on what they can accomplish or the challenges they can meet, Passives focus on openness or receptiveness. The Active is interested in what’s in here—the Passive in what’s out there. Actives are interested in “what can I do? what challenges can I meet?” Passives are more interested in “where can I go? what can I see?” Actives value danger or risk because it shuts out thoughts of everyday reality. Passives prefer to shut out everyday reality by finding a tract of wildness that’s large enough.

I try to be tolerant of Actives. I remind myself that they’re simply people with different personalities and interests than mine. But it disturbs me to see people treating nature—in John Ruskin’s words—as a gymnasium. Better a gymnasium than a dirt bike track, of course! But I can’t help feeling that something’s wrong when people appear to be assaulting nature, or attacking it, or simply moving too swiftly through it, without paying “proper” attention.

* * *

Yes, I keep track of the 14,000-foot peaks I’ve climbed.


















Yes, it delights me to be able to reach Mitchell Peak’s view of the Cirque of the Towers in a day hike.










Yes, I like the feeling of confidence that I don’t need a trail to reach a mountaintop or to find a viewpoint like the one of the Deming Glacier and Twin Sisters Mountain from Mount Baker.










But I don’t recall a single hike that’s had danger or difficulty in it that I wouldn’t have enjoyed equally as much if it had been safer or easier.

I didn’t need to lose the trail in snow and blowdown to enjoy the view of the Trinity Alps from Deadman Peak.










Nor did I have to need help to get up a cliff on Chicken-Out Ridge to enjoy Mount Borah.

Beauty and Strangeness

“For millions of people, myself included, the attraction of mountains has more to do with beauty and strangeness than with risk and loss.” —Robert Macfarlane.

An unusual statement to find in a book about mountain climbing.

What are those other attractions, having to do with beauty and strangeness, that draw so many of us to mountains?

















“Seeing is the key.” —John Jerome.

* * *

Jerome writes of people “who have an irresistible urge to seek high ground, not to have conquered it or to dissect it or to get beyond it, but simply in order to see farther from it.”










When I reflect on hikes to mountaintops, and think of what was most rewarding, the views are always high on the list. Especially the views in all directions.


























Another attraction is the process of climbing. It’s not at all true that the climbing is drudgery made worthwhile only by the views at the top.










An important part of the climb is the views along the way—the seeing-in-a-new-direction as you reach different points on your way to the top.


















There are also the changes “in biotic communities … as one goes up a mountain slope,” as Diana Kappell-Smith notes. Desert to woodland, hardwoods to conifers, conifers to tundra.














Janice Emily Bowers mentions the familiar mountaintop experience of matching landscape and map.










In 1885, Lt. John Bigelow said he learned more about the topography of southern Arizona in ten minutes of gazing from the Huachuca Mountains than he could have picked up in ten weeks of scouting.










A sense of being in a different world when you’re high in the mountains is another attraction of mountain climbing.










It’s partly a matter of having climbed into different life zones. In addition, being seldom reachable by automobile, high mountain landscapes are probably the least likely dramatic landscapes to be seen in the ordinary course of one’s life.











According to R. L. G. Irving, one of the qualities of beauty on high mountains is “the harmony of the infinitely small with the infinitely great.” Irving’s examples are a minute snowflake and a massive glacier.










I’ve photographed tiny alpine wildflowers only moments after standing on a summit with half of Colorado in view.


















Leslie Stephens treasures the detailed knowledge of a mountain that a climber acquires in contrast to an ordinary tourist.


























Stephen: “The faint blue line across the upper nevé, … the mountaineer remembers as the top of a huge chasm, thirty feet across and perhaps ten times as deep.”

To Get to Know Them Better

Stephen makes an important point, but what he says could be said equally about wild places in general. When tourists get out of their cars and walk in wild nature, they experience things they could never imagine until they did it. You don’t have to climb a mountain for that to happen.

Nevertheless, the sense that Stephen describes of knowing so much more about a mountain than I would have known if I hadn’t climbed it is certainly a major reason of mine for climbing. Indeed, my reply to the famous question, “Why do you climb mountains?” is, “To get to know them better.” But, again, I could say the same thing about any wild place. That’s why I went to the Everglades. To get to know them better. That’s why I went to Craters of the Moon. To Paintbrush Prairie. To Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. And I’ve come back from each of those places with a similar degree of abruptly accelerated knowledge.

Mountains in the Distance

In the end, what we bring home from mountains isn’t appreciably different from what we bring home from any wild place. It’s just that mountains are more dramatic than other landscapes. At least, they are for me. They get my attention in a way that few other landscapes do.

In addition, unlike most other landscapes, mountains are visible from a distance. Even in town, I might glimpse them from a shopping mall or watch cloud shadows on them while driving a freeway. Such views might trigger memories of being in the mountains or prompt the making of plans for future visits. In that way, mountains can be distant, and even urban, reminders of wildness in ways that few other landscapes can.


















So, I climb mountains to get to know them better. And, afterwards, they loom in the distance to remind me of what I’ve learned and to prompt me to keep learning.


PHOTOS

Dawn, Sunshine Pk & Wilson Pk, San Juan Mts, CO / Clearing weather, Sugarloaf Mt, Catskill Mts, NY

Risk and Danger: Grenadier Range from Snowdon Pk, CO / Mt Hood, OR / McAfee Knob, VA / Wetterhorn and Matterhorn Pks, CO / Hidden Lake, WA / Dawn, Mt Shasta, CA / Mt Thielson, Cascade Range, OR / Mt Jefferson from Sprague Lake, Cascade Range, OR / Big Tom from Mt Craig, Black Mts, NC

On the Mountains Just Walking About: View from Patterson Pk, White Cloud Mts, ID

Actives and Passives: Cannon Mt, NH / Knife Edge, Mt Katahdin, ME / Yankee Boy Basin from Mt Sneffels, CO / Grand Teton from Table Mt, WY / Glacier Pk from Green Mt, WA / Mountain View Crest, San Juan Mts, CO / Jarbidge Mts, NV / Franconia Range, White Mts, NH / Uncompahgre Pk from Redcloud Pk, CO

In Here and Out There: Horsethief Trail, San Juan Mts, CO / Long’s Pk, CO / Mt Whitney, CA / Cirque of the Towers from Mitchell Pk, Wind River Range, WY / Twin Sisters and Deming Glacier from Mt Baker, WA / Trail Gulch Lake from Deadman Pk, Trinity Alps, CA / South from Mt Borah, Lost River Mts, ID

Beauty and Strangeness: Mt Shasta from Mt McLoughlin, OR / Quandary Pk from Mt Democrat, CO / Camel's Hump, Green Mts, VT / View from Twin Pk, Wallowa Mts, OR / Lakes below Bishop Pass, Sierra Nevada, CA / Thompson Pk from Alpine Pk, Sawtooth Mts, ID / Woody Ridge Trail, Black Mts, NC / Mt Tripyramid from Mt Welch, White Mts, NH / Lake below Mt Baldy, Big Belt Mts, MT / Red pines, Owl's Head, Adirondack Mts, NY / South from South Twin, White Mts, NH / North of Carr Pk, Huachuca Mts, AZ / Kaiser Pk, Sierra Nevada, CA / Mt Hoffman, Yosemite NP, CA / Eaton Glacier from Railroad Grade, Mt Baker, WA / View from Mt Yale, CO / Alpine forget-me-nots, Mt Evans, CO / Hidden Lake Lookout, North Cascades, WA / Liberty Lake from Liberty Pk, Ruby Mts, NV / Eagletail Mts, AZ / Mt Baker, WA

To Get to Know Them Better: Rabbit Ears, Organ Mts, NM

Mountains in the Distance: Long's Pk, CO / View from Quandary Pk, CO / White Mountain Pk, White Mts, CA

(below) White Mountain Pk, White Mts, CA


SOURCES

Bowers, Janice Emily. Fear Falls Away. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1997.

Graves, Robert. "Climbing with Mallory." David Reuther and John Thorn, eds. The Armchair Mountaineer. Birmingham: Menasha Ridge Press, 1989.

Irving, R. L. G. "Solvitur in Excelsis." David Reuther and John Thorn, eds. The Armchair Mountaineer. Birmingham: Menasha Ridge Press, 1989.

Jerome, John. On Mountains. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978.

Kappel-Smith, Diana. Desert Time. Boston: Little, Brown, 1992.

Krakauer, Jon. Eiger Dreams. New York: Anchor, 1990.

Macfarlane, Robert. Mountains of the Mind. New York: Pantheon, 2003.

Mitchell, John G., Jr. Mountain Experience. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983.

Noyce, Wilfred. The Springs of Adventure. Cleveland: World Publishing Co., 1959.

Stephen, Leslie. "Regrets of a Mountaineer." David Reuther and John Thorn, eds. The Armchair Mountaineer. Birmingham: Menasha Ridge Press, 1989.