Was it the “Great” Wall’s length or what it meant to China’s enemies that made the barrier great? (Andrew Mandemaker 2004)

I’ve been surprised by the amount of feedback that I’ve received from my question of who are the best climbers of all time. The comments have come from personal friends, regular readers and those of you that follow TSM on Facebook and Twitter.

I also reached out to several people asking for their list, but two of them gave me something more valuable than their opinion: I got guidance.

However, there was a down side. In giving guidance, the sense that I was assuming a daunting project only swelled after I received their thoughts.

Katie Ives and Bob Schelfhout-Aubertijn were my sources for help. Katie is the Editor-in-Chief of Alpinist and a former juror — no, not at the Piolet d’Or, thankfully — rather the Banff Mountain Book Competition. Her work and her team at Alpinist scrutinizes the accomplishments in climbing based on their place in history, style and philosophy.

In an email, Katie shared the questions that ought to considered in order to produce a credible list:

It’s hard to make lists of top ten greatest climbers–do you take into account the quality of routes vs. the quantity? Difficulty vs. style vs. remoteness? Do you look at climbers from all nations? Do you look at their routes in and of themselves or at the historical impact? Do you consider the philosophy that drove them? Or, as Alex Lowe would say, do you consider the climber having the most fun? There are obvious names of legendary mountaineers who have appeared many times in print. But what about the great climbers who haven’t made it into history books?

Okay, so there’s nothing to it.

My friend Bob is a mountaineering historian that specializes in K2 but has a broad breadth of mountaineering knowledge and natural skills suited for such research, including an excellent memory for details. Bob took some time to reply and when he did I received a memo, four pages long, single spaced and plenty of names. Before he got to his list of names, he shared his rationale for weighing true mountain climbing and alpine climbing more heavily over other styles of climbing.

For anyone that has worked on their own list (and I encourage you to write one up before my next post), you better read what Bob had to say too:

First off, and this applies to both categories, what are the criteria?  What makes a good climber or mountaineer an outstanding one?  With regards to rock climbers I would suggest it’s all about the grades they manage to successfully master, the style they apply, and the philosophy they bring into the game.  I am full of respect and stand in awe of their stunning achievements, but what appeals more to me is the versatility and the wide[r] scope that can be found in mountaineering.  In that discipline one needs more than just agility, athleticism, pure strength, or bold courage.  IMHO mountaineering is more of a craft then what we encounter in [rock]-climbing [or bouldering, let's include that one as well here].  My preference to mountaineering has got to do with that bigger scope where it is important that a participant is gaining a degree of experience in all fields of the game; rock, ice, mixed alpine, maybe even the greater ranges like the Himalaya.  On top of that, it’s more of an overall adventure, as you need knowledge about weather, and more diverse dangers awaiting you, about the effects of altitude, about cultures, languages and people.

Feel free to fill me in when you think I’m missing certain aspects, but the steady progress from a novice, to becoming an experienced one, to an exceptionally outstanding mountaineer, lies in the quality of the skills the managed to build, the length of their career, and the big leaps forward they manage to make in alpinism.  That last item is more a thing that has to do with philosophy, I think; the way they form a new view on how things can be done differently.  In my humble opinion that may very well be the most important aspect, the one defining characteristic that separates the ["merely"] good ones from the extraordinary climbers and mountaineers.

So, please forgive for making this distinction, but else I wouldn’t be in the position to answer your question as you may have expected.  As much as I respect and have big admiration for the big names in the history of [rock]-climbing, to me it’s not the same type of appreciation as I experience for great names in mountaineering.  Don’t get me wrong; the likes of Paul Preuss, John Gill, Royal Robbins, John Bachar, Jim Bridwell, Wolfgang Güllich, Kurt Albert, Alex Honnold and the brothers Iker and Eneko Pou would probably tick most or all of the boxes listed above, but with their qualities and agility, their vision and fantastic skills I consider them to be “superbly athletic rock artists”.  As such they operate in only a narrowed playing field and don’t make use of many skills and qualifications that are needed for big mountains, mixed terrain, unknown territories or geographic “blanks on the map”, nor do they need to.  Their “unknowns” are the next couple of meters of rock that they have to scale, the “unknowns” of new techniques, new methods to improve their physical and mental strength and maybe the scariest of all; courage.  Well, at least I suggested a couple of names there :-)

Mountaineering to me is [so much] more than “climbing”, so I hope the preceding didn’t come across like talking out of the back of my neck.  [No need to answer; that was a rhetorical question I just reflected on to see where I was going...].  The main reason why I did this was because I didn’t want to send you a tsunami of names; I had hoped to limit my list to three or at five persons at max, or else we’d be better off writing a new encyclopaedia about the “who’s who” of mountaineering history.

Bob’s point about the hierarchy of approaches to climbing and the objectives has to be taken into consideration, and I think that will bother some of you. I’ve got my prejudices, and you’ll probably see them in my next post on this question, where I’ll lay out a rubric for determining the best climbers of all time. After I do that, I’ll share my original list, which might be amusing to those of you playing at home.

Feel free to leave your thoughts in a comment. And, if you enjoyed this post, please consider following the Suburban Mountaineer on Facebook or Twitter.

Climbing matters, even though we work nine to five.

The Great Fred Beckey (left) and Ryan S. (Dusin Byrne 2013)

My friend Ryan posted a photo on Facebook of himself with an old man wearing a Patagonia down jacket and a simple fleece cap. I was impressed, “liked” it and the next day when a colleague who climbs dropped by my office I shared it with her on my smartphone. No reason that she should recognize Ryan or the 90-year old man, but I thought at least the older person’s name, Fred Beckey, would set off some conversation.

It didn’t.

She tried to play it off coolly, and nearly got away with it but I guessed her silence indicated something else. So I went on to tell her about him and his many first ascents in North America. We proceeded to talk about who’s who in climbing on and off for the next few days.

Our conversation over those climbers was the celebration in climbing I missed this year because of the Piolet d’Or. The 2013 Piolet d’Or was a disappointment to nearly everyone that follows the award. All seven teams nominated were awarded. Instead of bringing focus for comparison and the inevitable disagreement, the biggest criticism this year was over the jury’s indecision. They didn’t even make an arbitrary decision, which, to some degree, is necessary for the Piolet d’Or to be credible, even if the recipient declines the golden ice axe and denounces the annual ceremony as contrary to the spirit of climbing. For everyone else that simply loves climbing and admires the climbers, identifying the best brings focus by identifying role models, heroes and heroines and their style and philosophy.

By considering Fred Beckey’s climbing accomplishments, for instance, my friend and I felt closer to him and a little closer to each other because we both valued what he has done. Whether or not he is our favorite climber ever, he was certainly a hero.

So I have started on a little journey. It’s somewhat of a quest. I want to identify who are the best climbers of all time.

I’ve been pondering this question for over a month now. I developed my own list of 20 names, which I’ll share later. I reached out to several friends with knowledge of climbing greater than mine in various areas of the sport, from rock to alpinism and from around the world, and asked them who are the top five climbers of all time? I asked without sharing my list; I didn’t want anyone to be steered.

They’ve all given me answers and some I didn’t expect. What’s clear was the question was stimulating. It made me feel a little more alive, especially when someone recommended someone that I did not put on my list; what did they see that I didn’t? I had to ask whether my list was wrong. Was I looking at this from too strong of a North American prism? Were they? Do you?

I’ll fill you in on the conversation from the past month in the next few posts. Definitely check into some more on this topic on Facebook and Twitter. For now, have a good weekend and I’ll catch-up with you later…

Climbing matters, even though we work nine to five.

Cross country skiers (Kris Arnold 2011)

Someone asked about what happened with me skiing in the Stowe Derby this past February. I said I was training for it multiple times starting over a year ago and then my updates faded into silence.

The Stowe Derby is the oldest cross country ski race in North America held in Stowe, Vermont every February. It starts at the top of Mount Mansfield, Vermont’s highest point, and goes down the snow- and ice-covered toll road that visitors drive up in the warmer months. The second half of the race is virtual-straight away route through the valley into Stowe itself. Here’s the wacky twist that makes it a ton of fun: You pick whether you want to use cross country skis or downhill skis and you have to wear them throughout the race.

I didn’t enter this year. You see, Natalie and I had an agreement: If we were expecting our second child this spring, we’d put the race off for a season or two.

The arrival is coming any week now and we’re really excited.

The current, shorter reading stack (Szalay 2013)

In the meantime, I’m trying to stay ahead of a little bit of reading before the blissful mayhem of having a toddler and a newborn take-up more of my energy and steal my sleep. So I thought I would fill you in on what’s on my reading list:

Alpinist Issue 42–The rule in my house goes like this: When the quarterly literary climbing magazine arrives, give it to me and I’ll set aside the time to read it ASAP. So it often travels in my padfolio to work, in my Patagonia shoulder bag on weekends and kept on my bedstand at night. Sometimes I only read half a page, but that’s progress and enriching.

In 42, Alpinist‘s longest-serving teammember and its relatively new Editor-in-Chief, Katie Ives, dazzled me a new ways in her editor’s column, The Sharp End. It’s about the value of our books in relation to climbing. I’m mostly an armchair mountaineer nowadays, so I found it true and touching. I have reread this column several times since receiving it.

Halfway to Heaven: My White Knuckled — and Knuckle-Headed  –Quest for the Rocky Mountain High –I picked up this one by Mark Obmascik at a charity used book sale more than three years ago. This title was far from my short-list of books I was hoping to find, but it has been helping bring some much needed escapist reading these last few weeks as I finished a very intense two months (published a professional article, held two conferences and ran a board meeting, not to mention the move into the new townhome) and this has been an unexpected comic relief. It’s like Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods for Colorado’s 14ers and I highly recommend picking it up for the history and amusement.

Forget Me Not–This book was given to me by a new friend that climbs much more often than I do and has become a reader of TSM. Jennifer Lowe-Anker wrote this memoir about her life with her late husband, Alex Lowe, coping with his loss, and falling in love with Conrad Anker. It’s a very different type of climbing story, and one in a sub-genre that want to explore: Stories of love and loss in the climbing community. I haven’t officially started reading it just yet, but I’ll fill you in on more later. If you’ve read it, please save your thoughts until I’m done; I want to hear them, but later…

A List of Classic Climbing Books–In my notebook (the black-bound volume in the stack) has a running list of two sets of classic climbing books: 1) the one’s that are popularly read; and 2) the influential titles, which is essentially a narrower list plus several that are unavailable except through collectors. I’m using this to build and structure my personal library to one that suits me better. I have a wonderful hodge-podge of titles on climbing that I enjoy, but I am missing several titles that I probably ought to own because of my priority interests in climbing. You might hear more about this later.

Thanks for dropping by once again. If you enjoyed this post, please consider following the Suburban Mountaineer on Facebook or Twitter. Climbing matters, even though we work nine to five.

The first photographic image of K2 as taken by Jules Jacot-Guillermod in 1902 (Bob Schelfhout-Aubertijn / Top of the World Books)

So you’ve heard about the fiasco that pulled Wool Stick (ahem, that’s Ueli Steck, actually), Simone Moro and Jon Griffith off of Everest this past weekend. There was a dispute that turned physical around a protocol that was unique to siege-style climbing, which was in conflict with the freedom of climbing unsupported in alpine style. There was even some early speculation that there than me have theorized that the self-centered Western climbers (in general, who are usually guided clients) haven’t treated the Sherpa and other native assistants with the respect they deserve and that the Sherpa and other assistants are now lashing out, but doesn’t seem to be panning out to be the case.

Still, Chad Kellog through Facebook called the event a “show stopper.” Melissa Arnot — who played a leading role in settling the conflict — was disturbed by the events and had to regroup in order to continue guiding. Garrett Madison, a guide that played a role managing the Sherpas for a commercial expedition, has been attempting to explain both sides of the conflict. But Simone Moro claims Madison’s story was “completely false.”

It’s sad that whatever goes on around Everest is more akin these days to the adventures from the History Channel television show Ice Road Truckers than pure climbing. In pure climbing, it’s about the style and the achievement, but the journey alone might be the achievement. In the TV show, the goal is to go from point A to point B on treacherous terrain to deliver machine parts to a remote Canadian diamond mine, return and collect your reward. The promo calls it “the dash for the cash.” When you’re dashing for reward, what’s the journey worth?

I wish all of the mountains were a place where it’s just the climber and the wild. However, on Everest, its less wild (in the natural sense) because it’s the domain of the commercial guiding companies, and you have to play by their rules, whether you’re on their “expedition” or not. At least that’s how Moro, Steck and Griffith felt, I’m sure.

Mooses Tooth

It’s also a shame that the banter about Steck, Moro, Griffith and the Sherpas on Everest have dominated climbing news; this story from the Alaska Range has been more significant in terms of actual climbing: The Mooses Tooth, which rises like broad daggers on the east side of the Ruth Glacier, saw a lot of activity including the first free ascent by Scott Adamson and Pete Tapley. They also pitched a bivy that Alpinist accurately called “Dr. Suesse-esque”.

Be sure to click those links on the Mooses Tooth climb; they’re well worth your time.

Unpacking

On a gentler note, Natalie and I are unpacked and settling into our new place. It’s nice to see my gear in one pile in the basement. It’s been in an attic-like space, mostly out of site, for too long. My mountaineering library is on shelves and has also been reunited with the rest of my modest collection; its a disjointed grouping and is actually overflowing the bookcase.

Next to the bookcase is my desk set against a blank wall. I’ve been thinking about acquiring some special climbing-inspired art for years. While now may not be the right time financially while paying private school tuition, but I do like to browse and the blank space has been tempting me…

Climbing Art on K2

I would like to own my own mixed-media piece by Renan Ozturk or even a sharp, well-composed photograph by Alexander Buisse, but another piece holds a certain fascination, especially after writing that series on K2′s first photograph.

Do you remember when I talked about my acquaintance with Greg Glade? He was one of the references cited in Alpinist 37 about the first photo of K2 along with Jules Jacot-Guillarmod (the photographer) and Bob Schelfhout Aubertijn (the climbing historian and collector). Greg is the merchant.

Greg’s shop, Top of the World Books, is a unique bookstore located not far from Vermont’s Green Mountains in North America. It specializes in arctic and mountaineering books, both new and collectibles (drool), plus artifacts, historical reproductions, DVDs, and even art in the form of prints and posters.

Bob, the current owner of the Jacot-Guillarmod image of K2, has made a general print and a limited edition high-resolution print available for purchase through Greg’s shop, Top of the World Books.

This image, originally captured on delicate glass plates, was taken in haste. As you can see in the picture at the top of this post, there is some remnant equipment in the foreground on the path up the Baltoro Glacier. This was the first time the 1902 expedition probably saw the mountain. They stopped and gasped. Nothing in Europe compared. At that moment, the climbers, including Aleister Crowley, either were inspired or fearful — maybe a little of each — because they had come fully intending to, at minimum, climb higher than anyone else had ever climbed.

When you know that, you can see it in high res print of the first image of K2. Maybe it says something else to you.

It might not hang on the blank wall where I live now, but maybe at my next home. Maybe you’ll appreciate it even more than me; go check it out.

Thanks for dropping by again. If you enjoyed this post, please consider following the Suburban Mountaineer on Facebook or Twitter. Climbing matters, even though we work nine to five.

Robert Jasper ascending the Eiger’s North Face (Gore Tex 2009)

I received a really nice gift from a new acquaintance last week. As a thank you for some support I gave at work and because of our mutual interest in climbing, I received in the mail Jennifer Lowe-Anker’s memoir Forget Me Not about her life with her late husband and legendary alpinist Alex Lowe, loss and falling in love with Conrad Anker. It’s a different kind of climbing book and one I hadn’t read yet. I wanted to and now it’s on my shelf.

One of the aspects about climbing my new acquaintance and I talked about was the elitism in climbing, at least in serious climbing. The conversation was spurred on by Duane Raleigh’s piece in Rock and Ice, “The Big Freaking Deal, Ain’t Bouldering.” While anyone can take anything seriously, I’m really talking about commitment in terms of projects and their scale. Alpinism, really. One common trait about the news of an alpine climbing accomplishment, that we both recognized, is that it leaves non-climbers, even novice climbers and strictly-gym and -crag climbers, a little mystified: The story sounds impressive to them, maybe even inspiring, but they can’t relate.

Usually the mystery is from a lack of background knowledge. There is a lot of information that goes into understanding a climb — particularly why some climbs are more bigger deals than a trade route (think Denali’s West Buttress compared to Hunter’s Moonflower.) That’s unfortunate because so many business anecdotes are about climbing a mountain; most audiences usually don’t have a clue.

Knowledge–The first piece of background knowledge is mainly a matter of geography. If you don’t know where the mountain is (did you really know where the Garhwal Himalaya before reading Rock and Ice?) it’s difficult to trigger thoughts relative to its size and conditions.

Mechanics–Another matter is mechanics: One has to understanding how a climb works, especially multi-pitch climbs. And when climbers say they brought minimum gear and no sleeping bag versus a tent and a haul bag, that indicates many possibilities about the climber’s approach and likely experience. If they went light, they were taking risks by going faster and may have been doomed if hostile weather moved in before the descent was completed. If the team went heavy, they might have been able to wait out bad weather, but they likely moved much slower — possibly as long as a month, and may have returned to basecamp after completing a day’s work of setting the route.

Unknown–Respecting the challenge of heading up a wall without beta that has never been successfully completed, let alone attempted, well, it’s not easily compared to anything in this day and age. Sailing without a map and only using a sextant and a compass might be the best analogy, though sailing is rather specialized too, and I never sailed more than a large lake, so even I don’t know firsthand.

Reward–The most difficult aspect that sets the knowledgeable climber apart from the clueless is the willingness to embrace personal suffering and varying degrees loneliness. I find that with non-climbers, and non-hikers too, the notion of sacrificing comforts is an outrageous idea. Why put yourself through all that? They’ll argue it’s not worth it, though they’ll look at you with a bit of wonder and think you’ve got a screw that’s not loose, but fell out before you started your quest. It’s all about Dukkha, really; the Buddhist idea that suffering is among the first steps to enlightenment. It’s only through the journey, sans comforts, that we can embrace the world around us, let go of convention and see the world differently. It’s a type of religious experience. No wonder it has it’s own word: Alpinism.

Thanks for dropping by again. If you enjoyed this post, please consider following the Suburban Mountaineer on Facebook or Twitter. Climbing matters, even though we work nine to five.

West Face of Apocalypse Peak (Photo by Clint Helander 2013; made available by permission.)

In between responsibilities (fleeting nanoseconds, really), including coordinating an advocacy campaign at work and still unpacking from the move (yes, we’re still unpacking) I’ve been brooding about this year’s Piolet d’Or. I look forward to learning about the nominees and who they choose to honor every year. But this time, not only did I disagree with their choice, the recipients probably don’t feel as honored. I wouldn’t.

I’ll fill you in more in a moment, but there was some positive news that I’d like to tell you about first, especially if you’re as into the possibilities of climbing mountains in Alaska as I am.

Alaskan First Ascent
Clint Helander — the current expert and first ascentionist in Alaska’s Revelation Mountains — and climbing partner Jason Stuckey climbed the range’s largest unclimbed peak, Apocalypse Peak (9,345 ft./ 2,848 m.). They named their route on its 4,400 ft./ 1,341 m. West Face “A Cold Day in Hell.”

After several false starts from Talkeetna, Talkeetna Air Taxi pilot Paul Roderick found the weather window that would allow them to land in the midst of the Revelation Mountains, a sub-range of the greater Alaska Range, approximately 80 miles west of Talkeetna.

After spending two nights on the mountain, they rated the route up to WI5. The final leg included a signature Alaskan traverse with plenty of knife-edge exposure leading to the summit.

The Revelations have only recently started to be explored. In the 1960s, author and alpinist David Roberts lead the first expedition there. Roberts named most of the mountains himself, including Apocalypse Peak, which he described as “fearsome” in On the Ridge Between Life and Death.

Congratulations to Clint and Jason, and a special thanks to Clint for being generous in allowing me access to his photos.

Jason Stuckey coming up the crux pitch of A Cold Day in Hell (Clint Helander 2013; made available by permission.)

Indecisive 2013 Piolet d’Or Jury
All six nominees, save one, was a major traverse and included an ascent or descent of a previously unclimbed face. The jury, lead by British alpinist Stephan Venables, emphasized this and it’s mentioned in each press release and English-language news story. That indicates to me that the judges identified the commonalities but couldn’t, wouldn’t or refused to find what differentiated any of them. (I found several aspects.)

The jury named all six nominees recipients of the 2013 Piolet d’Or. Not just two plus an honorable mention, but all of them. They included some very impressive routes:

1. A French ascent of Kamet (7,756 m.) in India.
2. A British climb of the so-called Prow of Shiva (6,142 m.) in India.
3. A Russian team that climbed light, except an enormous food-stuffed haul bag to traverse iconic Muztagh Tower (7,284 m.) in the Karakoram.
4. An American team that tackled the southern features of Baintha Brakk (7,285 m. and a.k.a. The Ogre).
5. A noble British traverse of the Himalayas’s longest ridge on an 8,000-meter peak — the Mazeno Ridge on Nanga Parbat (8,125 m.)
6. A committing six-day Japanese ascent of the south pillar of Kyashar (6,770 m.) in Nepal.

It’s hard to disagree with the jury in that each climb is worthy of note. In fact, just reading up on the alpinists from these ascents is thoroughly fascinating. But sharing the honor of the title of 2013 Piolet d’Or winner devalues the competition.

I celebrate alpinism and climbing in general on this blog and I do so through my personal perspective; it’s subjective (though I insist it’s more often correct than incorrect). What I choose to feature — like Helander’s new climb — is about as much matter of taste as it is about respect. I select certain climbs and climbers to honor here. Why I choose one over another is up to me, and if people knew my rubric for making these pages I might get criticized. Still, I make decisions and I usually stick by them.

If I were working with Stephen Venables and rest of the 2013  jury, I would have advocated for the Mazeno Ridge traverse to be given the award outright. Of the ascents, it was the largest in scope, in length and elevation. So congratulations Sandy Allan and Rick Allen: You win my Piolet d’Cuivre.

Michael Ybarra

On a side note, I’ve been in touch with the Michael’s sister, Suzanne, about some of his work outside of climbing. People in our circles usually only remember Michael for being a charming, yet badass climber. He was also a gifted researcher and writer. He walked a line of the Suburban Mountaineering life like few contemporaries.

For those of you that work day-to-day and live an alter-ego life on expedition vacations or weekends at a crag, this might be insightful. More to come…

Thanks for dropping by again. If you enjoyed this post, please consider following the Suburban Mountaineer on Facebook or Twitter. Climbing matters, even though we work nine to five.

Antique stereo viewer (Bill Strong 2007)

I remember a great line from the Indiana Jones movies. In The Last Crusade the Jones character is lecturing to his students and he says most archeology work is done in the library and that X never marks the spot. He then proceeds to have a Hollywood-style adventure in archeology across Europe and the Holy Land which includes him finding a large roman numeral 10 to which he remarks, “X marks the spot,” and proceeds to dig.

Bob Schelfhout Aubertijn’s work was more like what Jones said to his students. (Unless he lied to me in our interviews and he really used a bull whip and a pistol in his work as a historian to obtain the stereo slides of K2.) As I explained in my previous two posts, these slides were of the very first image of K2 ever taken, replacing vague, inaccurate contours on a map with an avatar. Let me continue from where I left off…

French Ministry of Culture
It was a typo in the database of the French Ministry of Culture that held back Bob Schelfhout Aubertijn from connecting the image of K2 directly to Jacot-Guillarmod through more than his book, Six Mois dans l’Himalaya. He traced another image — a group shot of the members of the 1902 K2 expedition — to the French Ministry of Culture. They misspelled Guillarmod’s name: “GuillarmoT.” No search engine would have solved that puzzle.

There, he came across images just like those from the set of eight slides he purchased all credited to Jules Jacot-Guillarmod. He even found the actual photo image of K2 that was the template for an engraving in Six Mois. Finally, there it was: The slide in question. Of the eight slides in the purchase, Schelfhout Aubertijn was able to prove four of them were by conclusively made by Jacot-Guillarmod in 1902.

Stereoplates
The image in question was a medium we don’t use or think about today. It was on high resolution glass plates meant for a stereo viewer. Think of those toys when you were a kid: a plastic viewer you might buy at a museum or aquarium gift shop. You aim the viewer to light and look in with both eyes to see a Saturn with its rings bright and real or a shark in what looks like you could put your hand in its jaw. It did this by having two separate images bent by a lens to tease our eyes.

The original stereo viewers were far more elegant (see the image at the top). They were sometimes wooden boxes with brass or other furnishings. You slide in the dual slides and look in with a or without a light behind it so the world inside, whether it was the Taj Mahal or some other nearly mythical place. This was even more true before National Geographic magazine had a wide circulation and television and the Internet desensitized us to the exotic nature of the world a continent away.

David Roberts, the author and Harvard Mountaineering Club member, recounts when he and classmate Don Jensen spent time in Bradford Washburn’s attic office at the Boston Museum of Science looking through a stereo viewer what even then was old (though perhaps not yet given the status of being called an antique.) Roberts describes how it was an ideal way to see a mountain and consider it’s virgin possibilities for new lines. He said the images “leap into three dimensions” (Roberts, On the Ridge Between Life and Death, 78).

New Again
Schelfhout-Aubertijn’s stereo plates were not the original close-up image used to make the engraving of K2 in Six Mois dans l’Himalaya, which may have helped the Duke of the Abruzzi, but as it would turn out, had a another significance. Another research colleague of Schelfhout-Aubertijn’s arranged all the photos credited to Jacot-Guillarmod and arranged them chronologically. The photos were laid out according to the schedule of their trip. When you move past the images into the towns and into the wilderness, it became clear that Crowley, Eckenstein and Guillarmod arrived at Concordia and must have paused nearby.

K2 probably dominated their attention more than Broad Peak and the other nearby mountains. A near-perfect pyramid. Jacot-Guillarmod was eager. As a photographer on a major adventure, every great moment needed to be memorialized. In haste, he set up his Verascope Richard and exposed the plates. He didn’t move the porter stick and other items in the foreground (see below). Not to mention, as Schelfhourt-Aubertijn points out, with their gear and low sensitivity materials, “[I]t’d be foolish not to shoot several images before you got there.”

The first image of K2 as taken by Jules Jacot-Guillarmod in 1902 and recently purchased in auction by Bob Schelfhout-Aubertijn in 2011.

The other images Jacot-Guillarmod would take would be closer to the mountain. This image was the first. It shows the emotional excitement of the photographer that hoped to not only see it but had hoped to climb higher on it than anyone else, like Crowley and Eckenstein had hoped. I wonder if he knew at that moment whether it would not be possible for them.

The Cover
There has rarely been a cover of Alpinist that has been universally agreed upon among the editors. The cover of Issue 37 wasn’t any different. But the image was not only among the first but the first and so it’s place was decided; the cover it was.

Personally, I’m not sure I would have appreciated this picture of K2 so much had it not been on the cover or if Greg and Katie hadn’t introduced me to Bob himself. It was an opportunity for Bob that turned into a climbing history geek’s dream and a great mystery to be solved.

Thanks to everyone for reading this short series and to everyone that helped me tell the story!

I’ll be back soon with more to share. If you want to stay connected with updates about new posts and other climbing news, please consider following the Suburban Mountaineer on Facebook or Twitter. Happy reading and happy climbing!

Broad Peak from Concordia (Aamir Choudhry 2012)

Just before arriving downtown at work I got an email from relentlessly cheery Bob Schelfhout Aubertijn. He’s good at making a climbing-obsessed person’s day. This time he was simply spreading the news: The Polish expedition that has been working on summitting

Broad Peak in the Karakorum did it today, March 5, 2013.

I posted the news on Facebook and Twitter right away. It’s significant because of the other 8,000-meter peaks, only K2 and Nanga Parbat now remain unclimbed in winter. It’s also significant because the Poles once more are the leaders in this space, with only one first winter ascent to these highest of cold mountains to their credit thus far.

Congratulations to Maciej Berbeka, Adam Bielecki, Tomasz Kowalsk and Artur Malek. You’re in the history books. As Bernadette McDonald has pointed out, in Poland the key questions about any mountain are, when was the first ascent and when was the first ascent in winter. Now Broad Peak has a complete answer. Best of luck on the descent to them!

On a personal note, we’ve got a big snow storm coming and I’m really excited, as I consider myself snow-deprived here in Peaklessburg. If we all get the snow day I’m expecting, I’ll pretend I’m in the mountains for minute, sip some wine, spend quality time with the family and pray the power doesn’t go out.

Have a good night.

Updated March 10, 2013: Since posting this, Maciej and Tomek went missing during their the decent. There is no news about either climber.

View of the Karakorum from Concordia. K2 is the bright white peak behind a dark slope at about the first third of the panorama (Ivpavlov 2006)

This is part II of my posts on the first image of K2. Now that you understand why the photo is significant, let me tell you about how it was lost and then resurfaced.There are probably countless climbing antiques and photographs that have remarkable stories to tell if only they were well researched and featured according to their merit. In fact, I don’t think that there is a dull climbing story, only tales that are poorly told.

K2 1993
In 1993 — the same year Greg Mortenson, the now infamous author of Three Cups of Tea attempted the mountain — a climber with roots in Australia and a passion for photography set forth to reach the top as well. Bob Schelfhout Aubertijn wasn’t yet interested in the history of the mountain. He hadn’t even seen the images taken by Vittorio Sella. Without topping out, Schelfhout Aubertijn returned home and his interest in K2 turned into passion. Some may say that it’s an obsession.

Since his attempt, Schelfhout Aubertijn built an extensive library around K2′s early exploration to its contemporary climbs. To illustrate how comprehensive his compilation is, he has 13 copies of Ardito Desio’s account of the 1954 first ascent of K2 — one in English, another in Italian, German, French, Spanish, Swedish… Of all the foreign language editions in print, he is only missing the Japanese edition. Schelfhout Aubertijn is also a bit of a linguist, which allows him to glean from the interesting details and nuances between translations. With those skills and his experience on the mountain itself, he’s an extraordinary authority.

His collection is greater than just books. He also owns Fritz Weissner’s ritual robe and cap, and carabiners that have been to K2′s summit that were given to him by Anatoli Boukreev. Then there is the art, ranging from paintings to photos by Sella himself.

If you read The Suburban Mountaineer regularly you can understand what Schelfhout Aubertijn sought by climbing K2. He calls it experiencing the “true essence” in mountaineering. But clearly for him it was a beginning rather than and end.

Six Months in the Himalaya
Unfortunately, one book about K2 Schelfhout Aubertijn doesn’t own is Jacot-Guillarmod’s record of the 1902 expedition, Six Mois dans l’Himalaya. It’s rare and listed by one collector at US$2,500. This book contained the Jacot-Guillarmod’s photo — the first photo — of K2 that the Duke of the Abruzzi no doubt referred to as beta for his expedition soon afterwards.

‘Six Mois dans l’Himalaya’ by Jules Jacot-Guillarmod published in 1904.

The book fell into dated obscurity. (Aside: Other books come to this purgatory and I recently noticed that Don Mellor’s out-of-print guidebook to climbing in the Adirondacks is now fetching over US$100, though Mellor’s book seems to remain in demand.) For K2, other stories from the Duke’s expedition and Sella’s superb photographs superseded Jacot-Guillarmod’s work from his six-month visit to the Karakorum.

Inde
The images Jacot-Guillarmod took were preserved on glass stereo plates, similar to slides for a projector your teacher may have used in school before SmartBoards, except there were a pair meant to be seen through a stereo viewer. They were among several others. The collection was simply labeled “Inde”, French for India.

The private owner put them up for auction on Ebay and they caught the eye of a photographer hobbyist. That same hobbyist was Bob Schelfhout Aubertijn. The images on the eight plates were of pictures you might imagine in an old book of British India with one plate devoid of people with a foreboding landscape on the lower half and on the top half a bright shining pyramid feature. He asked the seller for a larger image than the one posted online. Unmistakably, it was K2.

Schelfhout Aubertijn bid and won the auction.

Verascope Richard
Without knowing when the images were taken or by whom, the glass plates were merely a historic curiosity. The only clue was a notation on the margin of the slide, which read, “Verascope Richard.” After some digging, Schelfhout Aubertijn found that it was a French camera company that produced cameras from 1880 to 1930. That gave the image a window of time.

In addition to keeping excellent records, Schelfhout Aubertijn also has an good memory. He immediately narrowed the field of possible photographers, considering the expeditions I mentioned in my previous post. Schelfhout Aubertijn’s memory and collections for reference were also sufficiently comprehensive enough to rule out Younghusband — he did not see K2 from the south — and the others.

Schelfhout Aubertijn’s senses went on “full alert,” when he discovered that Jacot-Guillarmod used a Verascope when he went to the next highest accessible mountain in the world, Kangchenjunga in 1905.

American Alpine Club Library
Connecting the dots turned into a game of six-degrees of separation. Schelfhout Aubertijn contacted his friend, award winning author Bernadette McDonald, because he knew she read Six Mois. Unfortunately, she didn’t have a copy and referred him to Katie Ives at Alpinist. But she had actually only seen copies of pages from the rare book, which were made available by the American Alpine Club Library. That meant a call to our mutual friend, Beth Heller, who was the librarian at that time.

Heller, with Adam McFarren, got scans of pages with photos printed in the book to Schelfhout Aubertijn. I know Heller to be extremely prompt with email and she was true to character. It wasn’t the K2 image, but they matched some of the other glass slides he had acquired — exactly.

Schelfhout Aubertijn was getting close, but there was still a giant leap to be made to arrive on the cover of Alpinist. I’ll cover that in my next post about the first K2 photograph and tell you about these stereo plates and why even Bradford Washburn loved them.

Thanks for dropping by again. If you enjoyed this post, please consider following the Suburban Mountaineer on Facebook or Twitter. Climbing matters, even though we work nine to five.

The cover and mountain profile of K2 from Alpinist 37 (courtesy Alpinist magazine)

On a subject tangetial to the topics on The Suburban Mountaineer, but quite impactful, Natalie and I are excited that our home is listed for rent and we signed a lease for a new home with more space for our family’s growing needs. We’ll miss a lot of wonderful things about our current home but the move means a dedicated space for my books and maps as well as room to finally use my hangboard. I’ll let you know how that goes after we move in a month.

Now back in December I teased a little project I was working on concerning the first photographic image of K2. I love this story that I am about to start telling because it makes me feel closer to the events that helped shape our world. It also makes the people from the past become more alive.

The story began last winter when I received the 2011-12 winter issue of Alpinist in the mail. It was issue 37. I usually pause whatever climbing literature I am reading and go through the magazine from beginning to end. 37′s feature was part I of a Mountain Profile piece on K2 (28,251 ft./8,611m.) and the image on its cover was of the mountain in what looked like sepia; clearly an antique. Inside on the table of contents page the citation given for the image said: “The south face of K2 (8611m), with a survey rod and a porter stick in the foreground. Taken during a 1902 expedition, and recently found at an auction by Bob A. Schelfhout Aubertijn, this is one of the earliest photos of K2. Jules Jacot-Guillarmod/Courtesy Bob A. Schelfhout Aubertijn/Top of the World Books.”

I knew the proprietor of Top of the World Books, Greg Glade. He actually reached out to me about something unrelated sometime before issue 37 came out. His shop is a wealthy resource of books and artifacts on mountaineering and arctic exploration. I reached out to Greg this past fall. He gave me the gist of the story, which unwrapped the reference in issue 37 a little better and he told me something the reference didn’t say; it was the very first photographic image of K2.

HIMALAYAS 1902
The Himalayas and its Karakorum Range were still mostly a mystery to the majority of westerners in 1902. While the Great Trigonometric Survey estimated the heights of many of the Himalayan greats in the 1850s, the valleys and features were largely unmapped. In fact, the first western explorer in the region was Francis Younghusband in 1886-87, when he documented the way through the range via Muztagh Pass (west of K2). But the point of that route was to give the British options for military maneuvers rather than an interest in mountain exploration.

Two other small expeditions of westerners visited the area around K2 in 1890 and 1892 but they were of little significance to exploring the mountain. However, these two expeditions were drawn there because K2 was the highest accessible mountain in the world.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, Mount Everest was shut off to foreigners. Both Nepal and Tibet denied access to all outsiders and so the mountaineers that were heading out from the Alps seeking greater challenges focused elsewhere in the greater Himalaya. Those that traveled there were relying on the Trigonometric Survey data from the 1850s and the little beta from Younghusband. The next two highest points became a fascination and both K2, the second highest mountain, and Kangchenjunga (28,169 ft./8,586 m.), the third highest mountain, were within British-controlled India.

1902 EXPEDITION
In 1902, Oscar Eckenstein and Aleister Crowley lead a small team to make the first attempt on K2. They pledged to climb higher than anyone had climbed previously in order to achieve the world altitude record. The team’s physician was also a photographer. Dr. Jules Jacot-Guillarmod took the first photographic image of K2 and it was published in his book Six Mois dans l’Himalaya (1904). After the mountain’s elevation recording by the Trigonometric Survey, this may have become the next piece of beta for future climbers. While I do not know for certain, I suspect the leader of the next expedition, the Duke of the Abruzzi, saw this book and this image. The Himalayas and K2 were beginning to be unmasked.

It’s a bit of revisionist history, but the 1902 attempt and this photo by Jacot-Guillarmod may have been a symbolic moment for the Himalayas. The blank on the map wasn’t just replaced by contour lines but an avatar or icon.

In my next post about K2′s first photograph I’ll tell you about how this image resurfaced and introduce you to an extraordinary linguist and K2 historian, Bob A. Schelfhout Aubertijn.

Thanks for dropping by again. If you enjoyed this post, please consider following the Suburban Mountaineer on Facebook or Twitter. Climbing matters, even though we work nine to five.

Sources: 1) Greg Glade, Top of the World Books; 2) Katie Ives, Alpinist; 3) Bob A. Schelfhout Aubertijn; and 4) Viesturs, Ed and David Roberts, K2, 2011.