Haruki Murakami did the running community a service with his book What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. The mountaineering community hasn’t such a wonderful collection of meditations, so I’ll scrap something together.
The Physical Exertion
I think we can all agree that running, swimming, cycling and lifting count as physical exertion. I’ve done these activities, trying to push myself hard in each one – none of them compare to the exertion felt when climbing mountains. Running sucks, especially when you are going as hard as you can for long periods of time, but at least you are doing it at an altitude in which you are accustomed. And, thankfully, you can just… stop… and the run is over. Having that in the back of your mind is comforting.
The physical exertion in mountaineering is foreign. Every step hurts, and I’ll find myself in zone 5 while going at a pace of < 1 mile per hour. My feet hurt, my arms hurt, my shoulders hurt, I can barely lift my leg for another step, and I am huffing and puffing against the snow, seeing my breath melt a few snowflakes in front of me. It is a special kind of self inflicted bodily torture.
Putting aside the pitifully slow pace that places me in zone 5 and the full body aching, the most salient feeling is that my breathing is in vain. I take two steps, then need to take a break, breathing as fast as I would if I were sprinting a mile. It doesn’t feel rejuvenating, though, just necessary. It takes long for the breathing to slow, and only after tens of seconds does it feel nonviolent. Every time I’m on a mountain, I am relentlessly gasping for air, hoping the next breath will ease the pain, yet it doesn’t. It’s like I’ve become tolerant to oxygen and am searching for the pleasure of the first hit.
The Pain
Yes, the physical exertion will cause pain, but that is a manageable pain that exercise enthusiasts crave. The pain in mountaineering is less enjoyable, at least in the moment. “Make friends with pain and you’ll never be alone,” they say, mountaineering pain is a bit hard to have a conversation with.
My shoulders ache from the heavy pack on my back. My face burns from the snow getting blown into it, despite best efforts to completely cover it. My feet start to bleed after a few hours of walking in my blister factories (boots). Often, when I am descending after a long climb, I try to tell myself that my feet aren’t real and that I am indeed not feeling any pain. This doesn’t work, of course, but it never hurts to try.
Nothing about the experience, while I am experiencing it, is enjoyable, nothing. All it is is pain. Breathing as hard as I do at the end of a marathon, with a bag of lead on my back trying to pull me back down towards the base, cold hands, a cold face, and bleeding feet. It sucks, in every sense of the word. Without fail, when I’m standing on the side of a mountain feeling this I always ask myself “why the hell am I doing this?” It always hurts more than I thought it would, and last longer than I thought it would. Yet for some reason I return to it, like a mother wanting another kid a few weeks after childbirth.
The Beauty
The views (when not in a whiteout) are literally breath-taking. In a photo, the beauty is not different from a picture taken from a gondola, or a car. The views on a mountain that I’ve climbed myself, though, are hauntingly spectacular.
Every step I took to reach the summit was earned. I paid for this view with my blood and sweat. The difference is akin to the car your parents let you use when you were a kid compared to the first car that you bought. Tourists are given views, mountaineers buy them.
The Failure
Nothing does a better job of bringing my ego back down to earth than a mountain. I set these ambitious goals, forgetting about the pain I experienced on my last adventure. When I set out to achieve these goals, I am rudely reminded of just how challenging they are, and I am often forced to return to my car empty handed. “That hurt much more than I thought it would.”
Most times, I fail to summit a mountain from lack of fitness or lack of acclimatization. I failed on Pico de Orizaba because I got a piercing headache, the beginnings of what I thought would be intense altitude sickness. I failed on Mt St Helens from lack of fitness (I couldn’t make it up before sunset). These failures are easy to cope with – I wasn’t prepared enough, next time I can come back with better fitness, and acclimatize, and I’ll be ok.
Sometimes, though, it is due to the mountain telling me “No.” High altitude weather can be vicious. Winds have knocked me over before, I’ve been frostbitten on my cheek, and so cold that I was sure I was going to lose a foot. I’ve also been unable to see more than just a few feet in front of me in a whiteout. Like someone looking out into the ocean, I feel small and vulnerable in moments like this. It is a reminder that not everything can be controlled.
The Exposure
Living in New York City with a reasonable job, despite what many say, is a very coddled existence. 24/7 bodegas are on every corner, subways can take you wherever you want for just under $3, and there is a service for just about everything. Food is always available and you’ll be warm in the winter and cool in the summer.
The jump from NYC to the side of a mountain is stark. I go from being just another citizen in the largest city in America to being entirely alone. As Casey Neistat once said about Aconcagua “You are on your own.” All the food I have is on my back, all the water I have is on my back, all the shelter I have is on my back, and every step I take, is just another step I’ll have to take back. No one truly knows where I am, and the only person that can get me out of my situation is me.
However jarring it is to realize this when in so much pain, it provides a sense of purpose and strength. When so exposed, my mind doesn’t race, I don’t worry about my career or my place in the world, I can only think about two things: how can I ascend? Or how can I get out of here? “Nothing focuses the mind like an impending hanging.” Mountaineering can replicate this focus.
Feelings of such deep focus, what many call a “flow state”, keep bringing me back to the mountains. I remember being in the Pearly Gates of Mount Hood, with my ax fixed to a rock and my crampon in the ice, staring at my footing making sure it was secure, praying to every god that I don’t fall, like it was 5 minutes ago. I’ve felt the “flow state” in school and at work, but nothing comes close to the flow state I am in when I am wondering if falling would kill me.
The Adventure
Driving a rental car through the unpaved roads of Mexico, driving a rental car up snowy Oregon roads, speaking in Spanish to park rangers about the weather at the next high camp, seeing stray dogs in a small Mexican town at the foot of a mountain, getting stopped for my papers on the road in Argentina. The list of “adventurous moments” is endless.
Taking on mountaineering as a hobby has provided adventure for me in a way that nothing else could. It reminds me of the finitude of existence and reinvigorates my lust for life. And, like with beauty, I was the adventurer, not an adventure voyeur.
Type 2 Fun
Fun can be divided into two types. Fun that is fun in the moment, and fun that is only fun after it is done. These are Type 1 Fun and Type 2 Fun, respectively. Type 1 fun would consist of drinking with friends and driving a racecar. Type 2 fun can be running a marathon, writing a book, or working very hard on something at work. Mountaineering is peak type 2 fun.
Everything about mountaineering is hard and painful. When I’m doing it, the only time I feel any sense of relief is when I get to sit down and eat my pop tart and look over at the ground below me. I hate (despise, loathe, disdain) mountains when I’m on them, but yearn for them when they’re gone.
Type 1 fun is fickle and fleeting, type 2 fun is powerful and lingering. The existence of type 2 fun reveals to me the innate desire in humans to do hard things, to feel proud of the things they’ve done. One just has to have the power to resist the type 1 fun to ever achieve the pleasure of type 2 fun. After every mountaineering adventure I tell myself to use my phone less, to eliminate impulsive pleasure from my life, because the intense wave of type 2 fun that comes after I return to my car is worth so much more than the fun of watching a funny movie or eating a pop tart. With each trip, I get a little bit better at resisting type 1 fun, but then I slowly get weaker and weaker, giving in to temptation, until it is time for another mountain to beat me up.
Teddy Holappa 