The Naked Mountaineer: Misadventures of an Alpine Traveler
248
The Naked Mountaineer: Misadventures of an Alpine Traveler
248eBook
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Overview
The Naked Mountaineer recounts a series of solo journeys to some of the world’s most exotic peaks in places such as Switzerland, Japan, and Borneo. However, it is far from the typical heroic mountain-expedition book. Although Steve Sieberson did reach many summits, in most cases his travels were more memorable for what he encountered along the way than for the actual climbing. His real adventures involved peculiar people, strange foods, and tropical diseases, rather than pitons, ice axes, and carabiners. On the Matterhorn he met an English alpinist who reveled in naked selfies, he stumbled into a cockfight in a Balinese village, and on a volcano in Italy he was mistaken for a famous singer by an insistent fan.
The Naked Mountaineer offers mountain-themed travel stories with a wide-eyed view of the world, while presenting irreverent commentary on climbers and their peculiar sport. These are rollicking tales, filled with the unexpected.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780803286511 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Nebraska |
| Publication date: | 10/01/2014 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 248 |
| File size: | 522 KB |
About the Author
Steve Sieberson began his mountaineering career in the late 1970s in Washington State and eventually became a climb leader for one of the country’s premier outdoor organizations, the Mountaineers. He spent sixteen years as a member of Seattle Mountain Rescue, practiced international law in Seattle for twenty-five years, and is now a professor of law at Creighton University in Omaha.
Lou Whittaker is the dean of American mountaineering and the country’s foremost professional mountaineering guide.
Read an Excerpt
The Naked Mountaineer
Misadventures of an Alpine Traveler
By Steve Sieberson
UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA PRESS
Copyright © 2014 Steve SiebersonAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8032-8651-1
CHAPTER 1
The Naked Mountaineer
Matterhorn, Switzerland, 14,692'
My plan to climb the Matterhorn was hatched when I was eleven, on the heels of my Colorado vacation. In short order I had exhausted the public library's supply of mountain literature, and Mrs. Thompson, the librarian, suggested that I buy a copy of The Age of Mountaineering by James Ramsey Ullman. The 1954 book was a comprehensive history of climbing. Mrs. Thompson said she couldn't justify acquiring it for the library because I was likely the only patron who would ever read it. And so I saved up and proudly purchased my first hardcover book, for three dollars. I still have it more than fifty years later.
Ullman's third chapter is titled "A Mountain and a Man," and it recounts how an Englishman named Edward Whymper, along with several Swiss guides, became the first to climb the Matterhorn. Their spectacular success was spoiled by a fatal accident on the descent, and Ullman emphasizes the personal aspects of the incident—a mountain and a man. The book's stark photo of the Matterhorn bears the caption "That Awful Mountain," and I was mesmerized by the image.
Then, in late 1959 Walt Disney released the film Third Man on the Mountain, taken from a fictional story written by Ullman. It is the tale of a Swiss boy named Rudi, who is determined to become a mountain guide despite the opposition of his family. After many ups and downs, so to speak, he assists in the first climb of the Matterhorn and becomes a hero. Disney's weekly television show relentlessly promoted the movie, and clips from the film were blended with behind-the-scenes vignettes of the actors being trained in climbing techniques.
For months I pestered my parents to take me to see the film, although I was well aware that our Dutch Reformed church prohibited going to movies. The future lawyer in me argued that we had already crossed the line, because six months earlier we had been to Around the World in 80 Days while on vacation in Michigan. Aunt Betty had convinced my mother that it was more of a travelogue than a typical Hollywood film. This, I contended, was precedent—we couldn't consider all movies as evil. Besides, it was Disney, and we watched his show on television. My parents eventually gave in and drove me to the Orpheum in Sioux City. As an impressionable boy already interested in mountain climbing, I was overwhelmed. I felt that the movie had been made especially for me, the conqueror of Mount El-pee-el-cee. This was my story. I was Rudi, and the Matterhorn was my mountain.
Six years later I suggested to my high school class that the theme for our junior-senior banquet (we didn't have a prom, because dancing was forbidden) should be an evening in Switzerland. Surprisingly, they agreed, and "Over the Alps" was born. We painted mountain murals and decorated the gymnasium with fresh-cut evergreen trees that my friends and I had liberated in dead of night from the local cemetery. When the source was later discovered, we had to confess our sins to the Burial Association and then make amends by raking leaves around the tombstones.
The most remarkable feature of the banquet was the fact that we were allowed to screen a movie after the meal. Someone had discovered a nifty loophole in our stringent Calvinism, namely, that the Church did not consider the medium of film to be evil per se. The actual sin (and one that my friends and I had begun to commit regularly) was patronizing a public theater. Apparently the church elders objected to overpriced popcorn and sticky floors, and God knows how the non-Christian people might be carrying on in the back row. Nevertheless, showing a G-rated movie—even a secular one—was acceptable as long as it took place in the school gym. Imagine, then, my satisfaction on that spring evening to find myself at Western Christian High School running the projector for Third Man on the Mountain. As I recall, I also did some serious making out with Miss J later that night, but it was not as special as introducing my classmates to the Matterhorn.
Sixteen years later I had taken a two-year position at a bank in Amsterdam, and I could plan a vacation anywhere in Europe. There was never any doubt in my mind that I would go to Switzerland and climb the Matterhorn.
I had naively hoped to find the Zermatt of Walt Disney, a hamlet of simple shepherd huts in green pastures, along with gabled chalets festooned with flower boxes. What I found, instead, were blocks of multi-story apartment houses. The quaint general store had been replaced with a jeans fashion shop, a Christian Dior showroom, and dozens of other boutiques. The cozy inn of the movie had given way to the Ambassador Hotel and restaurants like the Great Swiss Food Disaster Spaghetti Factory. It felt like Disney, but it was the Anaheim version.
Zermatt's main street was teaming with people, most of them in color-coordinated hiking clothes. Their boots and rucksacks were spotless, and a suspiciously large number carried shiny new ice axes. In my army surplus wool pants and thrift shop sweater, and with my well-worn equipment, I was clearly out of place. I was geared for the backcountry in an urbanized playground for the fashionable. With no money to do a makeover, I felt sorry for myself.
My mood changed when I looked up and saw the mountain. The fang of rock soared into a cloudless sky—the Matterhorn in its classic pose, the one on the travel posters and the Alpen muesli box. On the left was the smooth, ever steepening East Face, its rock catching the full warmth of the morning sun, its patches of snow scattering the light. On the right lay the shadowed and sheer North Face, with its massive curtains of ice, utterly cold, uninviting, and sinister. Between the two walls ran the Hornli Ridge, a thin line that leaps upward in graceful sweeps until just below the summit block, where it hooks sharply to the left and gives the mountain its unique and menacing appearance. That was the ridge I was going to climb.
Somewhere in the middle of the tourist trap I located the guides' office, whose modest storefront resembled a small-town insurance agency. It was all but lost among its hip neighbors. The building's principal sign mentioned gondola tickets and information, and it was only on my second pass-by that I saw the word Bergführerbüro. A small entry led into a plain room, containing only a table, two chairs, and Herr Kronig. The old man looked up, and I blurted out, "I've come to climb the Matterhorn."
"Well, good," he replied. "Have you climbed before?" I said that I had, and he told me that he would have a guide for me the next morning. It was that simple.
When I returned the following day, Kronig told me that I would be climbing with Hermann Perren. I should meet him at the Hotel Belvedere, a climbers' hostel on the Hornli Ridge. That afternoon my ascent began with a gondola ride that passed over streams and pastures straight out of Heidi. Then a second gondola and a third, ending high above Zermatt at Schwarzsee, a guesthouse and restaurant on a promontory at 8,471 feet. From that point a trail ascends another 2,000 feet to the Belvedere.
It was late afternoon, and no one else seemed to be hiking up, except for two young Frenchmen with long baguettes protruding from their bulging backpacks. They passed me, practically on the run and apparently sustaining their pace by cursing at each other constantly. Farther along I began to meet people coming down. Most were day-hikers who grunted "Guten Tag" or "Bonjour." When two men greeted me in English, I stopped to chat.
They were Australian, and they had climbed the Matterhorn by themselves that morning, following behind some guided parties. On the way down they were on their own most of the time and had frequently gotten off course. Several times they had wandered onto terrain far beyond their abilities, and the exposure had unnerved them. They kept searching for the correct route, and meanwhile guides and their clients came zipping by. While their ascent took four hours, the Aussies needed seven to get back to the Belvedere. They were exhausted, exasperated, and anxious to get off the bloody mountain. After describing their experience, they admitted, "We shoulduv hoired a goide."
The ridge steepened, and a few of the switchbacks were icy. The exposure below the trail was increasing as well. That evening I learned that only a few days earlier one of the kitchen helpers at the Belvedere had stepped over the edge of the path and had fallen to his death.
The four-story Belvedere, at 10,696 feet, was so weathered that its stucco walls and shuttered windows looked as if they had never been painted. From its terrace, which was simply a level patch of ground with a flea market collection of chairs and tables, I stepped directly into the hotel's great room. It was a large, wood-paneled dining hall furnished with picnic tables, benches, and a Franklin stove. Several mountain posters adorned the walls, and above a sign-in desk was a random display of business cards, advertisements, and newspaper clippings. A judo instructor from the Netherlands had passed through, as well as a car salesman from Lyon. The family of a Southern Baptist minister had posted his obituary, which explained that he had been killed on this mountain. A picture of two smiling teenage boys was tacked nearby, and someone had drawn a cross above the head of each.
The room was nearly filled to capacity. Fifty people sat drinking tea or beer and enthusiastically conversing in a variety of languages. It was almost dinnertime, so the manager quickly signed me in and showed me to a bunk room. As we returned to the mess hall, we passed through the kitchen, and I noticed that there was a table in its back corner. A dozen men sat there eating, and in contrast to the chattering throng in the main room, they were as solemn as the consistory of a Dutch Reformed church. They looked weary and bored, and they spoke in low tones in a strange-sounding German. They were scruffy, with tousled hair, faces weatherworn, and clothes that needed washing. I asked the manager why these people were segregated from the other guests.
"They are the guides," he responded. So these were the legendary men who not only led visitors up this peak, but as citizens of Zermatt, they actually owned the mountain. They looked and behaved as they did because, sitting together as cousins and neighbors, they didn't have to impress anyone. They had no need to regale each other with tales of their exploits, nor did they share the recreational climber's penchant for discussing equipment. They ate quietly because they were at home.
Oddly, there was one man at the guides' table who looked nothing like his companions. His clothes were new and fashionable. His skin was fair, his graying hair long and neatly combed. His silver sideburns flowed out and swept back like the mane of a lion. Although he sat with the locals, he was obviously not one of them. Rather, he resembled a baron out inspecting his lands, the lord of the manor at a yearly meeting with his tenant farmers. The manager saw me staring and explained, "That's the English gentleman who has come here with his personal guide." Now the Matterhorn triptych had been revealed in full: at the center the mountain; on the left the Zermatt guides; and on the right their patron.
Mountain dreams. Climbers and guides. What a strange world for an Iowa boy—and for everyone else at the Hotel Belvedere, when you think of it. There is nothing natural about inserting yourself into a vertical environment, and in the span of human existence, mountaineering is a very recent development.
The idea of climbing for sport began in 1760, when a scientist from Geneva visited the French mountain village of Chamonix to further his research on glaciers. Horace-Bénédict de Saussure was struck by the towering presence of Mont Blanc, at 15,782 feet the highest peak in Western Europe. Many visitors before him had been similarly impressed, but Saussure became possessed of an unprecedented idea—that the mountain should be climbed. Remarkably, until that moment the notion of ascending to the top of a rugged peak just for the challenge of it had never occurred to anyone. Throughout human history mountain ranges had been seen as barriers, and individual peaks had been feared as the home of gods or demons. Travelers had negotiated mountain passes but had seen no reason to strive for the summits. Moses had climbed Mount Sinai, but he had done so in response to a divine summons.
After years of thinking and dreaming, Saussure ventured onto the slopes of Mont Blanc, and he persuaded others to join in. Many attempts were rebuffed until 1786, when two men of Chamonix—a physician named Michel Gabriel Paccard and a crystal hunter named Jacques Balmat—reached the lofty summit after two arduous days on snow and ice. Back in the village they were received as conquering heroes, but the real fame would attach to Saussure himself when he ascended the mountain the following year. He was known throughout Europe, and it was he who captured the public's imagination with this new form of adventure. The catch, however, was that if anyone wanted to follow in Saussure's footsteps, they needed to be taught the necessary climbing skills. They needed someone to show the way.
The profession of mountain guiding began when a stranger entered an alpine hamlet and inquired whether anyone there was familiar with a particular valley or peak. A local shepherd or hunter who knew the terrain might step forward and agree to accompany the visitor. Later another foreigner might come for several weeks and hire someone to lead a series of excursions. Over time the villagers became skilled alpinists, and they would actively promote their services. Their neighbors would take travelers into their homes and provide them with meals and supplies. Eventually, in places like Zermatt a mountain tourism industry took shape.
During the seventy-five years after Paccard and Balmat's ascent of Mont Blanc, countless other European peaks felt the tread of hobnailed boots, and the most ardent members of the new climbing fraternity were the English. This might seem strange, because the United Kingdom has no great mountain ranges and most British people spend their lives in misty lowlands. The Industrial Revolution, however, had created a new upper-middle class with leisure time, and these nouveaux riches were eager to travel. Furthermore, recently built railroads offered easier access to remote places, and so the English came to the Continent in droves.
In addition to the Grand Tour of France and Italy, many of the English travelers visited Switzerland, and the more daring ventured onto the peaks. Their explorations culminated in what came to be known as the "Golden Age of Mountaineering," the period from 1854 to 1865, when experience and technical advances in equipment enabled climbers to muscle their way to nearly every mountaintop in the Alps. Of the thirty-nine most significant summits conquered in the final wave, thirty-one were attained by English amateurs and their local guides.
More than a century had passed since the Golden Age, but the Coiffured Englishman had come to carry on a hallowed tradition—retaining a professional guide to lead him up a Swiss mountain. Many of us at the Belvedere that evening were privileged to be doing the same.
Returning to the dining hall, I located a place to sit and found myself across from an American named Prindle. He explained that he was on a business trip to Europe and was attempting the Matterhorn for the second time. Fifteen years earlier he had actually made it to the summit, but he was so exhausted that he had been robbed of any pleasure and indeed of any positive memories of the climb. Being Prindled is a phenomenon well known among mountaineers, marathoners, and others who engage in drawn-out, physically demanding activities. A Seattle variation is the Mount Rainier "summit special," in which all members of a rope team kneel down in the snow and mark their success with ensemble vomiting. Now, Prindle said, he was more fit and better prepared, so he hoped to enjoy the Matterhorn.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Naked Mountaineer by Steve Sieberson. Copyright © 2014 Steve Sieberson. Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA PRESS.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Foreword by Lou Whittaker,Preface,
Acknowledgments,
Prologue: Where Climbers Are Made,
1. The Naked Mountaineer: Matterhorn, Switzerland, 14,692',
2. Pitching the Horseshoe: Snowdon, Wales, 3,560',
3. The Unorthodox Climber: Mount Athos, Greece, 6,670',
4. Climbing Backward: Gorge of Samaria, Greece,
5. No Gods but Me: Mount Olympus, Greece, 9,570', and Mount Olympus, Washington, 7,965',
6. Crawling for Sushi: Mount Fuji, Japan, 12,388',
7. Knickers in a Twist: Mount Vesuvius, Italy, 4,200',
8. Twin Peaks in Paradise: Gunung Agung, Bali, Indonesia, 10,308',
9. Expedition to Nowhere: Carstensz Pyramid, Papua, Indonesia, 16,024',
10. The Mountaineer Unplugged: Mount Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia, 13,435',
11. Northern Exposure: Galdhøpiggen, Norway, 8,100',
12. So the Last Shall Be First: Mount St. Helens, Washington, 9,677' and 8,363',
Epilogue: The Sirens' Call,