Yet He Goes On

No sport that I know of has spawned a literature as introspective, as probing, or ultimately as religious as mountaineering. The sport causes climbers to experience unimaginable hardships and then, at the ends of their ropes, to plumb their souls for meaning. They emerge from their excursions to the edge of unknowing with insights into their spiritual natures that transcend the possibility of mere sport. The literature is replete with tales of magic and mystery, of wild humor and terrible sadness and loss and then rebirth---all integral to the practice of climbing, all the result of protracted contact with the unseeable. A marvelous example of this class of writing is Hermann Buhl's stirring account of his 1953 solo ascent of Nanga Parbat, a 26,600-foot mountain in the Himalaya of Kashmir. In only nine pages Buhl manages to transport the reader from the depths of torment and despair to the heights of fantasy and ecstasy and, finally, to the triumph of the human spirit. As dawn breaks over the mountains we see Buhl moving steadily upward, "an undulating sea of summits" on all sides, a fine mist in the valley below. Alone and determined, he ascends past 24,000 feet, climbing hard snow and "bare, bluish iridescent ice...How often had I dreamed of this moment!" he exults.

At 25,000 feet he begins to slow. Because he carries no oxygen, his body seems paralyzed, his lungs unable to expand properly. He fears he has reached the limits of his endurance.

Yet he goes on, moving slowly across Nanga Parbat's great Silver Plateau. There is no wind. The air is fearfully dry. A scorching sun beats down on him with Saharan fire and malice. The weight of his rucksack grows intolerable. He has no choice: after stuffing a few essential items into his pockets, he abandons his pack.

Willpower alone now carries him upward. He gives no thought to the movement of his legs. He is lost in a vivid dream of home. Making the first ascent of perhaps the world's most treacherous mountain (Nanga Parbat had already claimed thirty-one lives), he believes he is climbing a friendly peak in his native Tyrol.

Late in the day he surpasses 26,000 feet. Ahead rises a steep mass of boulders, the most technically difficult section of the climb. He surmounts these somehow, then, with one final effort, drops onto all fours and drags himself to the top.

"I was not, I confess, fully conscious of the significance of that moment, nor did I have any feeling of elation at my victory. I simply felt relieved to be on top and to know that all the sweat and toil of the ascent were behind me."

As Buhl stands atop the peak, the highest creature on earth, he watches bemusedly as the sun sinks below the horizon in the west. Suddenly the air is bitterly cold. Unable to think clearly, he makes a terrible mistake: he leaves his ice axe on the summit. Now the problems compound. As he descends a steep ice slope in the murky dusk, a crampon drops from his foot. He is left "like a stork standing on the smooth hard surface." Buhl continues his harrowing descent with the aid of one crampon and a pair of ski poles.

Darkness finds him marooned on a fifty-degree slope a few hundred feet below the summit. All his bivouac equipment lies far below in his abandoned rucksack. He crawls onto a rock, then pulls on a thin sweater, his only emergency clothing. Through the long night he stands atop the rock, dancing to keep his feet from freezing.

At dawn his feet are numb, his boots glazed with ice. With surpassing care he moves down perilous slopes, unaware of the passage of time. He is not alone: throughout the day another descends with him. The two become a team. When Buhl misplaces a pair of gloves, it is his phantom companion who tells him they are lost.

The sun is again a torment. The descending climber is plagued by hunger and thirst. His mouth bleeds. He hears voices but no one comes to save him. He finds his pack and falls onto it, only to discover that he is unable to swallow the dry food. He takes a small drink, then sees two distant figures approaching.

"Oh, the joy of it. Someone was coming! I heard voices too, calling my name."

He watches the two specks below but they come no closer. At last he understands the bitter truth: his saviours are rocks on the mountainside.

Each step now requires a dozen breaths. He moves twenty or thirty yards, then collapses. His ordeal seems interminable. The sun is nearing the horizon. Buhl must reach safety soon, for he cannot survive another night in the open.

And then it is over. He staggers into the arms of a friend who has come to meet him. "He looked aged by twenty years," writes another. "His face, desiccated and deeply lined, bore the imprint of intolerable suffering." Buhl manages to mutter eight words, a simple report of his visit to the edge:

"Yesterday was the finest day of my life."

--Robert Leonard Reid

(from "Mountains Of The Great Blue Dream")

Escalante Butte from outside Cardenas Canyon (top)

outside Vishnu Canyon (middle)

Ninetyone Mile Canyon (below)