Mountaineering: A Personal History

Memory of climbing is often dulled by the passage of time. The moments which endure in memory must have special qualities -- of beauty, supreme effort or fatigue, uncertainty, unusual apprehension and fear, long hours of hunger or thirst, cold, wind. and cloud, loneliness. I have often found the child within me recoiling with fear and apprehension at the sight of an immense wall of steep ice and snow, a fantastic arete of rock, a looming overhang, the descending grey of storm high on a face -- in short, at the sight of the superhuman, the unknown, the elements beyond one’s control. My reaction has always been to look, breathe deeply, collect my experience, then move ahead with caution. This reaction is accompanied by deep, powerful sensations of excitement, exhilaration, and of love for beauty, for the exercise of strength and endurance, for the momentary possibility of becoming one with the gods. The child stares in terror and admiration -- and opts to join his heroes. What moments for the infant within one! What moments for the man to test his ability, strength, and nerve!

This book records my climbs and experiences in the mountains, which began sixty four years ago. The climbs I describe are not those of a virtuoso climber but of a mountaineer who passed through many stages of experience and competence. They should be of interest to the mountaineer in the United States, to the beginning climber, and to the rock and snow expert who is ambitious to climb the great peaks of the French Alps. I believe that my observations on technique, training, misadventures, and mistakes should be illuminating to all climbers and particularly to the amateur. I have tried to be candid about my errors and limitations, so that others may learn. As the following accounts will show, one can maintain strength, endurance, and agility, and even surpass one’s early achievements by proper training and practice well into middle age and beyond.

The accounts of nearly all of the climbs, starting in 1963 when I started to keep detailed writings and records, were written at most a few days after the climbs. I have utilized the best-known words or phrases -- usually French but more or less incorporated into the English language -- to describe the technical aspects of mountain climbing, the equipment, the terrain itself, the names of peaks, ridges, chimneys. In addition, I have used ratings from either the French or American tradition to classify a climb, or part of a climb, according to difficulty. The rating sytems are given in the Appendix.