Springtime in Pennsylvania and Upcoming Book Releases

April 4, 2024April 4, 2024 / Andrew Szalay

Forbidden Kangchenjunga (All rights reserved)

I was supposed to play golf today for some team building at work, but a series of unfortunate events arose after planning this as our first round for two months. Our architect of the group had to back out since a client had to meet with him today but couldn’t meet before or after our round. Then the rain storm that started Monday was extended through the end of Wednesday. Then if was extended again through well after our tee time on this morning.

So we postponed our outing until the end of the month. Natalie reminded me that it should be warmer then, and the puddles on the course should dry up. But these golf guys (yes, sorry, they are all guys,) were willing to play in nearly any conditions except rain. Cold isn’t an issue. Frost, eh. Several of us are fine playing a ball off the pond; we know in winter, it will roll. That’s how I get my kicks around here in Peaklessburg.

Although I have done a lot of indoor gym climbing since moving to Pennsylvania, hiking has definitely won out to golf. While Pennsylvania trails are easier reach than they were from my old home in the Washington, DC area, they all look and feel a little bit the same. And they’re mostly walks, where you don’t need a backpack. If it’s longer than an hour, I usually take one for the family and me. And getting outside is better than just climbing in the gym or working on training in the garage or basement.

Well, that’s where I am at. Several new books are coming out in the next few months. Several will be nominated for the Banff Mountain Book Festival Literature Awards or the Boardman Tasker Prize at the Kendal Mountain Festival:

NEW CLIMBING BOOK RELEASES

In addition to Mimi Zieman’s Tap Dancing on Mount Everest(April 2, 2024) and Everest Inc. by Will Cockrell (April 16, 2024), which I addressed previously, there are at least six more climbing books of note that you may want to know about…

Alpine Rising: Sherpas, Baltis, and the Triumph of Local Climbers in the Greater Ranges by Bernadette McDonald — Released on February 20th, combines into one volume stories we know, stories we thought we knew, and stories that haven’t been told from the perspective of “local” climbers too many stories referred to as porters and Sherpas. I am reading it now.

The Longest Climb: A Memoir of Love, Mountaineering and Healing by Paul Pritchard — Coming out on April 16th, Pritchard tells of the aftermath of his traumatic injury and his enduring passion and affection for the mountains. I have my copy and will be reading this one shortly.

A Light through the Cracks: A Climber’s Story by Beth Rodden — In stores on May 1st. Rodden said on The Run Out podcast with Andrew Bisharat and Chris Kalous that she always knew that she would write a climbing book, but she didn’t imagine this would be the outcome. Time shaped it, and so did the trauma of being held hostage and parenthood. (Interesting to me, it is printed by Little A, an imprint from Amazon Publishing of Amazon.com.)

Fallen: George Mallory: The Man, the Myth, and the 1924 Everest Tragedy by Mick Conefrey — Also coming on May 1st, the documentary-turned author rehashes the same old, again. (No, I’m not excited. Click the link from the publisher if you want to know more.)

Mountains Before Mountaineering: The Call of the Peaks before the Modern Age by Dawn Hollis — Available on May 4th, Hollis’ book is the culmination of her PhD thesis and a remarkable and refreshing view on humanity’s view, at least in Europe, of the mountains. I have read her thesis and a manuscript and I think it is required reading for anyone trying to understand our relationship with the peaks.

Survival is Not Assured: The Life of Climber Jim Donini by Geoff Powter — It will be released on June 1st and I plan to get my own copy. This biography is of the great Donini and by an author and climbing historian I have admired for some time.

At a minimum, I will be writing up a reviews of Alpine Rising, The Longest Climb, and Mountains Before Mountaineering for you, with the latter first. I would like to read Rodden’s and Powter’s books too. I remember when Beth and the other climbers were kidnapped and have read Tommy Caldwell’s own autobiography, The Push, and the title comes from a seminal moment from both their lives, though both clearly traumatized by it, though differently.

Powter is a very informed climbing writer and has chosen a great subject in Donini. I am looking forward to seeing how it all comes together and what light it sheds on Donini’s grit and our passion and perseverance in the mountains.

OTHER BOOKS I AM READING NOW

I started listening to Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs. My organization’s leadership coach, Ross Polvara was also reading it and I wanted to read Walter Isaacson’s biography of Elon Musk, as I heard very good things from a member of our board of directors. Since the Jobs’ bio came out first, in 2011, I decided to start there. I did not know much about him beyond he was temperamental and eccentric. Isaacson does shed some light into why Jobs had such a unique lens on how the personal computer should work and how intuition may be the thing Westerners lack the most. I am about three-quarters the way through.

I am also reading, though I unintentionally took a break to focus on Alpine Rising, a memoir about a woman that grew up on Monhegan Island, off the coast of Maine, and had some complicated detours in life, only to return. The book is Flat Ass Calm: A Memoir by Amy M. McMullen. The title makes my kids giggle and be weary when they see it. We learned of the island on a vacation to Coastal Maine in 2018. People talked about it as if it were Narnia or another magical place. We decided we’d have to visit another year and planned to return in two years. The pandemic closed Maine off to us, we visited in 2021. After visiting the island’s Cathedral Woods, taking in the interesting summer sunlight in the morning, and enjoying lobster by the island’s only pier, my interest in the place only grew. I discovered the book at Sherman’s bookshop in Damariscotta. I just finally decided this spring was when I needed it in these dark and is-spring-here-yet days.

Well, it’s not raining here any more. But the puddles and flooding on the neighborhood and the golf courses would make for very soggy socks.

Well, thanks for dropping by. If you enjoyed this post, please consider joining my email list, which is the best way to get updates. (I am on Facebook too, but make sure your preferences will allow you to see my posts.) Thanks again and be well!

100 Years Since Mallory and Irvine Made their Last Climb

January 29, 2024January 30, 2024 / Andrew Szalay

Mount Everest from Tibet, 1924 (All rights reserved)

Happy New Year, everyone! (I think we can say that through the end of January. It’s a long year, after all.) And it’s the first post of the year, though barely.

Well, as if every year isn’t treated as the Year of Everest by folks other than me, here is yet another Year of Everest. But this one has a little more historical context. Historical context beats conga lines, finding frozen bodies, and learning about how much trash is still up there. Well, it’s not that Mount Everest isn’t interesting, it’s just the context. The contemporary context of commercial expeditions, and folks that are solely interested in the climb because it is highest point above sea level or the “third pole,” has been first real-world entertainment before Survivor. (Of course, if you’re trying to climb the 14 eight-thousand-meter peaks, then that’s interesting, and at a significant scale. But if you’re just aiming for the third pole and toting a camera crew with yourself every step of the way, however, I’ll follow you a little but I assure you that I will have some snide, yet professionally tempered, remarks to share.)

So why does 2024 have some historical context? It has been 100 years, this June, since George Leigh Mallory and Andrew “Sandy” Irvine made it to the summit of Everest.

Well, I doubt they made it to the summit, but I like to daydream that they did. Back in 2016, someone posted on Kairn.com, a French mountain website, an elaborate April Fool’s Day prank about Elizabeth Hawley keeping it secret that they made it to the top. It included a funny instance where the writer (I think) stumbled on something left open from one of her filing cabinets. The Hawley sees that the writer saw what she meant to hide and slams it shut and shouts at him to get out of her stuff. Some people think it was my friend Bob Schelfhout-Aubertijn, but he’ll never formally admit to it. Well, it’s not on the website any longer for us to dissect it and find clues.

BOOKS ON THE YEAR OF EVEREST

So this year, mountain publishers will be trying to use this anniversary to publish and increase sales of mountain related books. Two are actually about Mount Everest. The first is Everest, Inc. The Renegades and Rogues Who Built an Industry at the Top of the World by Will Cockrell and will be published by Simon & Shuster. It will be available on April 16, 2024. Cockrell took the viral photo I mentioned. He and the publisher are now finishing a book on the history of guided climbing on Everest and its influence on climbing. I agree that it’s a unique lens for a book, but there have been several books that all discuss commercial climbing, usually criticizing it. Commercial guiding on Everest is its own business model, and it deserves attention, but not a book. I turned down the preview.

The second book is Tap Dancing on Everest: A Young Doctor’s Unlikely Adventure by Mimi Zieman, MD, and being published by Falcon Guides. It will also be available in April, on April 2, 2024. I had no idea who Zieman was, but apparently has lived quite the creative life after becoming an OBGYN and being part of what I suspect was the 1988 Kangshung oxygenless climb on Everest. Zieman isn’t mentioned in the article I link, but from the angle, I think it will be the deep and introspective type of stuff we read for — you know, the longueurs in between the action. After some due diligence, I requested a hard copy and am in the middle of reading it now.

Dawn Hollis’ book Mountains before Mountaineering is being released this spring on May 1, 2024 by The History Press. It explains how our belief that mountains were things we avoided until sport of walking and seeking the sublime were “invented,” is not at all the case. With chapter after chapter of clear and thorough explanation, it will change how we discuss our human relationship with mountains. The publishers were aiming for 2024, Hollis told me, because of the expected consumer trend around Everest and tangentially mountains.

RUMORS AND TRUTHS

Mallory’s body discovered by Conrad Anker in May 1999. He was looking for Sandy Irvine and the camera he was believed to be carrying — and could have some photographic evidence of the summit. He and the team didn’t expect to find Mallory. Mallory’s body was face down, gripping the ground as if to stop a slide. It added to the allure of the mystery because now we found Mallory’s remains but there was nothing conclusive about whether he made it to the top. And he was below, more or less, the last point they were last seen through the mist, not under the summit. Could he have been descending? We just don’t know.

Irvine’s body — the elusive camera — has not been found. Mark Synnot’s book The Third Pole, has a curious conspiracy theory involving the a coverup, but there’s little else than hearsay to go on. It’s worth reading for that and other subjects, but even if we find Sandy Irvine, we may never learn what happened.

WHAT WE DO KNOW

My favorite book about this period of time was by David Brashears and Audrey Salked titled Last Climb: The Legendary Expeditions of George Mallory (1999*) published by National Geographic. It’s a coffee table book that is rich in photographs, maps, and artifacts found on the mountainside. Speaking in movie terms, it’s production costs might mean they’ll never make a book like this one about Mallory again. Paper is expensive and difficult to ask consumers to pay the premium for a special book like this with fold out maps and a mix of black and white and color photographs and text nestled together in one work of art.

Last Climb by Brashears and Salkeld (1999)

It was one of those books, when I discovered the climbing books that gave me sense of heritage, that I was partaking in something not novel but with tradition, even if participation wasn’t wide. It’s clear from the book, that the expedition was something special in its day, like the moon landings were in the 1960s.

I enjoy the words and the maps, but the photographs of Mallory and his companions through his life make me jump through time. The early British expeditions to Everest were well documented, and the 1924 climb where Mallory and Irvine vanished while attempting to reach the summit, at a minimum, is the one with the lack of closure. Closure, psychologists explain, is what allows us to forget success and accomplishments than what-ifs. The lack of closure with Mallory and Irvine has kept generations alert for any sign of clarity.

SHOULD WE LIGHT CANDLES?

Lastly, I have to say that this is a strange centennial commemoration. In fact I have conflicting thoughts over it (which probably makes me human.) This centennial is not the anniversary of a historic success. It’s not the anniversary of a true tragedy. Well, I am actually not sure that it’s a tragedy because they weren’t suffering on their quest and suffering is a necessary lead-up to a sorrowful ending for the heroes, at least in literature. Well, all alpinists suffer, but they’ll tell you that to actually suffer is a choice. Their higher purpose and resolve transcends it. So I suppose we, or those that choose to celebrate this event, are really reflecting on the mystique. I doubt anyone other than descended family will light any candles on June 8, 2024. Well, maybe I would, if no other reason than to make a statement than George and Sandy were important and their retelling of the story means something to me. And I wish they made it. So if not family, does that make us kin?

*Some book sellers online list Last Climb as published in 2000, but my copy clearly says 1999. There may have been a later second printing in 2000, but I am unaware of that fact.

Messner, Jurgalski, and Why Guinness’ Record Update Shouldn’t Matter to You

November 30, 2023February 10, 2024 / Andrew Szalay

Well, Guinness, I admired your work. I used to page through a paperback edition of your record books. I wasn’t looking for records that I could beat and see my name in you, rather I was reading it like the personal ads in City Paper, which was a full day of entertainment. But the records, whether it was the faster swimmer or the most covered human body with tattoos, were legitimate and credible. However, I think you messed up recently.

I’m not sure whether you’re proud of what you did or oblivious to it. You know, in unseating Reinhold Messner as the record holder for being the first to summit all fourteen 8,000-meter peaks? This all came out of a significant and legitimate research project by several people, most notably Eberhard Jurgalski, who is an old acquaintance, and a friend of a good friend of mine. No, he wasn’t working for you. He was trying to discredit the frauds that tried to emulate Messner and other credible mountaineers.

You see, some climbers in recent years have pushed the envelope of what was acceptably the top due to error or egregious attempts or “gimmes,” as we might say when putting in golf. Close enough isn’t close enough when some contemporary climbers are climbing on the backs of guides, porters, and not putting in all the work, prior to profiting form writing books and going on a lecture circuit based on the credential.

The Guinness World Records’ website entry about Messner is currently titled, “First person to climb all 8,000-m mountains without supplementary oxygen (legacy).” This headline seems correct, but I am bothered, like a lot of people about the word in parenthesis. Here is the text from entry:

Reinhold Messner (Italy), who became the first person to summit the world’s three highest mountains, is considered the greatest climber of all time. He achieved all of the 14 ascents without supplementary bottled oxygen, the last in 1986, making him the first person to climb all 8,000-m mountains without oxygen – a feat that, as of March 2017, only 14 other climbers have achieved.
Guinness World Records website, N ovember 3, 2023

Climbing has a long tradition of using the honor system and accepting claims to mountains and routes having been climbed based on the reputation of the climber. If the climber has a record of climbing accomplishments, and describes his ascent reasonably, most often the account will be accepted and added to mountaineering journals. On the other hand, someone like Frederick Cook, trying to claim he climbed Denali, he didn’t have a record and his account didn’t add up.

Messner’s credibility has been unwavering. He is loved, admired, and at the same time derided the way tennis star Djokovic is for some of his pompous and petulant behaviors. (Admittedly, Messner is usually more often misunderstood and is never petulant or tone deaf.) Messner’s critics still respect him for his 14 oxygen-less ascents that culminated in 1986. Reinhold Messner was and continues to be a pioneering influence on the mountaineering community in spirit and legend. When you’re the first to surprise the world at what the would thought was impossible, and the standards and technology change because of how you blew their mind, that’s deserving of a place in the records.

And since when did we give a dump about what the Guinness World Records say? We’re climbers. We have Alpine Journals and magazines and Instagram. We don’t have scores or ratings for what Messner did or Ed Viesturs or Nims Purja. We care who was first, how they did it in style, and we mentally keep track of how we can one up them, do their deed better, or honor them.

If anything Jurgalski identified some contemporary glory-hounds seeking attention, book deals, and conference lectures. Thanks, Eberhard, for exposing them. We’ll keep watching from here, and some of us will do you justice on the proper summit and hopefully do it in style, honor, and challenge the next climber.

Kristin Harila, Nims Purja, Jerzy Kukuzcka, and the Summit Game

May 7, 2023February 10, 2024 / Andrew Szalay

This is a short post for you. I just need to get this notion of a summit game out there. It is quintessential and underlying most climbing stories. Dawn Hollis’ book, when it comes out next year, will indirectly uncover our modern perspective better, but for now, let me point it out this way.

Kristen Harila’s announcement that she climbed Cho Oyu and thereby completed reaching the true summits of all fourteen 8,000-meter peaks in record time got me thinking about reaching the true summits. She tagged the 14 tops in 12 months and five days.

But didn’t Nims Purja climb them in six months and six days? Of course he did. Well, actually he climbed them but missed two true summits. He returned to those peaks so the time clock kept ticking. Purja’s total elapsed time was actually two years five months and 15 days, despite a lot of popular media still citing the other figure. I think the nuance over true summits is a little ridiculous, as a recreational climber, except when I start comparing and contrasting his efforts and style to others competing on speed, it was as if he hit a triple but missed stepping on first base by an inch. If you play the summit game, and these days, most climbers that aren’t focused on routes alone do, the precise summit matters.

To the best of my knowledge, Harila reached the true tops. But her climb is unique in style; heavily supported, rather than lead, and was using supplemental oxygen. Good; it’s a lower bar for the next climber to try to beat.

Personally, I think Purja and Harila are both in separate categories within different approaches to the climb. The ultimate model of purity is still Jerzy Kukuzcka. He reached all fourteen with oxygen and by new routes.

Our chosen objective is climbing can be about quality time with friends on a mountain in wilderness, testing our fitness and skills, and seeking euphoria. Most of the stories we tell are spurred by a quest for firsts, new routes, and reaching the tops. The media, most of all, loves a higher grade and a true summit. The game we play and its variations are about the top. I do it. You do too. Less than that is called failure, which is just as made up as the game we play. It’s a beautiful game, but we take for granted that what we talk about and what we are all really are seeking from our climbs is more than the top.

Re-Reading and Pre-Reading

March 12, 2023February 10, 2024 / Andrew Szalay

Going through the read (past tense) pile.

Wine critic Robert Parker had a special sink built in his home. It was two or three times deeper than an ordinary sink so he could uncork a bottle that he personally purchased, slosh a sip to sense the flavors and hints of oak or whatever quality the barrel imparted before spitting it out and taking notes.

Parker is said to have taste buds that were well above their average capabilities. Parker himself said his strong memory of wines allowed him to compare glasses to one another so he could give each one on his scale, which was a score out of 100. Of course, the critique of what he scored as excellent wines was simply what Parker preferred.

For reading and reviewing climbing books, I don’t need any special apparatus. In fact, I read in multiple different settings. Buses, trains, at desks, libraries, living room couches, cafés, and hotel or guest beds. But there was a time when I read but never took notes or considered the book with the scrutiny Parker applied to rank wine. A good seat, and ideally with a cup of coffee (or, even better, an afternoon beer,) was really all that was needed. But reading for pleasure and with a critical point of view is a little different.

There are about 20-30 books that I need to re-read in order to properly consider elevating them to be candidates for climbing classics. So I am going back to reading, swilling, and comparing them more deliberately. I pulled the hard copies of the books on my Short-Long List and put them on my desk so I can start whittling through them.

I am quite excited about re-reading them this year. These are mostly books I enjoyed, but what will we think of them in terms of being a classic of climbing literature?

I will still review a new book or two as they are released, or at least I am open to that depending on the demands on me by work and family. I may post them elsewhere first and here later, so watch my social media.

An author with a new book deal arranged invited me to review their manuscript before submitting the whole first draft to the editor. I am behind my self-made schedule, but I think I can do a chapter a day and get my comments back to the author in a week or so.

The Banff Mountain Literature Competition is allowing me to participate as a pre-reader once again. I took a two year break over 2021 and 2022. It was rough times for “both” of us; the Banff Centre even shut down and laid off the majority of its staff during part of that. The pandemic disruptions with the Habitat for Humanity affiliate I run and the changes to Wunderkind’s and Schnickelfritz’s schooling shut down many things for me too, and pre-reading was one of mine. I was worried that by turning down the invitation that I would have difficulty getting back in, but it seems I did okay by them.

Ski Slopes and Vintage Climbing Instructionals

February 19, 2023February 10, 2024 / Andrew Szalay

Smith’s 1957 Introduction to Mountaineering.

Stick season in Vermont is a period after the colorful leaves fall and before the snows take the leaves place in the branches. This winter in Pennsylvania has been one long stick season with only a brief snowfall near the Susquehanna River that landed on the pine branches and lawn during coffee but disappeared after breakfast. We returned to sticks.

Snow is important to Natalie, Wunderkind, Schnickelfritz, and me. I used to have this notion that snow reminded me of the Adirondacks or Green Mountains in winter that I romanticized a great deal while working long hours in Washington. Since the kids started playing in our new(ish) snow-filled yard when the conditions allowed, I saw that it’s about play and living in the moment. Snow is ephemeral, beautiful, and precious. So Natalie and I make sure the kids have good snow pants, coats, and boots for sledding and play before every Thanksgiving.

Ski lessons for Wunderkind and Schnickelfritz were overdue, but now that the conditions and restrictions of the pandemic have loosened, we were off to one of those little Ski-the-East hills. These little ones try tonpass themselves off as “resorts,” and boast a few rooms to remt plus a restaurant and bar. Interestingly, I never lived closer to any slope and ski lift than I do now in Lancaster, PA. I had a longer drive when I grew up in snowy Buffalo!

B photography from the PA slopes. Stick season officially, even here.

The kids took lessons and I stuck nearby. Natalie skied. We went to a bigger resort not far from DC before we had kids, but due to expecting our first, I skied, she didn’t. We’re square now.

VINTAGE CLIMBING INSTRUCTIONALS

Grit has always been a key element in climbing, and an old instructional book substituted for lessons and mentorship. Take this one, for instance, by George Alan Smith, titled Introduction to Mountaineering, published by A.S. Barnes & Co. Inc. as a new and revised edition in 1967. The first edition was out in 1957. It taught climbing as it was done in the Himalayas and David Roberts’ books of the day: With ropes, sans harness, and your boots, pre-EBs.

My friend received it as a birthday present and was kind enough to loan it to me. There are other instructionals from this era, too, and I’m curious about why so many? I’ll keep digging. In the meantime, I am grateful for my Black Diamond harness and my Evolvs.

Well, that’s it for now. Next winter, if I get skis and a seasons pass, I might be able to forget about the gym and wait patiently for the golf course to come into form.

The Suburban Mountaineer

Life undimmed through mountains and books

Notes from Peaklessburg