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."
Peter Rowan / Tony Rice: Cold Rain and Snow
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. Ah, 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 Mountains Of The Great Blue Dream
Gillian Welch / David Rawlings: I'm Not Afraid to Die...12/29/16
Keep in mind
how fast things
pass by and are gone
--those that are now,
and those to come.
Existence flows past us
like a river:
the what
is in constant flux,
the why
has a thousand variations.
Nothing is stable,
not even what’s right here.
The infinity of past and future
gapes before us
--a chasm whose depths
we cannot see.
So it would take an idiot
to feel self-importance
or distress.
Or any indignation, either.
As if the things that irritate us lasted.
This morning the river takes a more southerly direction. The dip of the rocks is to the north, and we are rapidly running into lower formations. Unless our course changes, we shall soon run again into the granite. This gives us some anxiety. Now and then the river turns to the west, and excites hopes that are soon destroyed by another turn to the south. About nine o'clock we come to the dreaded rock. It is with no little misgiving that we see the river enter these black, hard walls. At its very entrance we have to make a portage; then we have to let down with lines past some ugly rocks.
Then we run a mile or two farther, and then the rapids below can be seen.
Emmylou Harris: Tulsa Queen
About eleven o'clock we come to a place in the river where it seems much worse than any we have yet met in all its course. A little creek comes down from the left. We land first on the right, and clamber up over the granite pinnacles for a mile or two, but cansee no way by which we can let down, and to run it would be sure destruction. After dinner we cross to examine it on the left. High above the river we can walk along on the top of the granite, which is broken off at the edge, and set with crags and pinnacles, so that it is very difficult to get a view of the river at all. In my eagerness to reach a point where I can see the roaring fall below, I go too far on the wall, and can neither advance nor retreat. I stand with one foot on a little projecting rock, and cling with my hand fixed in a tiny crevice. Finding I am caught here, suspended 400 feet above the river, into which I should fall if my footing fails, I call for help. The men come and pass me a line, but I cannot let go of the rock long enough to take hold of it. Then they bring two or three of the largest oars. All this takes time which seems very precious to me; but at last they arrive. The blade of one of the oars is pushed into a little crevice in the rock beyond me, in such a manner that they can hold me pressed against the wall. Then another is fixed in such a way that I can step on it, and thus
I am extricated.
Still another hour is spent in examining the river from this side, but no good view of it is obtained, so now we return to the side which was first examind, and the afternoon is spent in clambering among the crags and pinnacles, and carefully scanning the river again. We find that the lateral streams have washed boulders into the river, so as to forma dam, over which the water makes a broken fall of eighteen or twenty feet; then there is a rapid, beset with rocks, for two or three hundred yards, while, on the other side, points of the wall project into the river. Then there is a second fall below; how great, we cannot tell. Then there is a rapid, filled with huge rocks, for one or two hundred yards. At the bottom of it, from the right wall, a great rock projects quite halfway across the river. It has a sloping surface extending upstream, and the water, coming down with all the momentum gained in the falls and rapids above, rolls up this inclined plane may feet and tumbles over to the left. I decide that it is possible to let down over the first fall, then run near the right cliff to a point just above the second, where we can pull out into a little chute, and, having run over that in safety, we must pull with all our power across the stream, to avoid the great rock below. On my return to the boat, I announce to the men we are to run it in the morning. Then we cross the river, and go into camp for the night on some rocks, in the mouth of the little side canyon.
After supper, Captain Howland asks to have a talk with me. We walk up the little creek a short distance, and I soon find that his object is to remonstrate against my determination to proceed. He thinks that we had better abandon the river here. Talking with him, I learn that his brother, William Dunn, and himself have determined to go no farther in the boats. So we return to camp. Nothing is said to the other men.
For the last two days, our course has not been plotted. I sit down and do this now, for the purpose of finding where we are by dead reckoning. It is a clear night, and I take out the sextant for the purpose of making observations for latitude, and find that the astronomic determination agrees very nearly with that of the plot---quite as closely as might be expected, from a meridian observation on a planet. In a direct line, we must be about forty-five miles from the mouth of the Rio Virgen. If we can reach that point, we know that there are settlements up that river about twenty miles. This forty-five miles, in a direct line, will probably be eighty or ninety in the meandering line of the river. But then we know that there is comparatively open country for many miles above the mouth of the Virgen, which is our point of destination.
As soon as I determine all this, I spread my plot on the sand, and wake Howland, who is sleeping down by the river, and show him where I suppose we are, and where several Mormon settlements are situated.
We have another short talk about the morrow, and he lies down again; but for me there is no sleep. All night long, I pace up and down a little path, on a few yards of sand beach, along by the river. Is it wise to go on? I go to the boats again, to look at our rations. I feel satisfied that we can get over the danger immediately before us; what there may be below I know not. From our outlook yesterday, on the cliffs, the canyon seemed to make another great bend to the south, and this, from our experience heretofore, means more and higher granite walls. I am not sure that we can climb out of the canyon here, and, when at the top of the wall, I know enough of the country to be certain that it is a desert of rock and sand, between this and the nearest Mormon town, which, on the most direct line, must be seventy-five miles away. True, the late rains have been favorable to us, should we go out, for the probabilities are that we shall find water still standing in holes, and, at one time, I almost conclude to leave the river. But for years I have been contemplating the trip. To leave the exploration unfinished, to say that there is a part of the canyon which I cannot explore, having already almost accomplished it, is more than I am willing to acknowledge, and I determine to go on.
I wake my brother, and tell him of Howland's determination, and he promises to stay with me; then I call up Hawkins, the cook, and he makes a like promise; then Sumner, and Bradley, and Hall, and they all agree to go on.
--John Wesley Powell journal entry for August 27, 1869
This is perhaps why
Dante chooses the poet
Virgil to be his guide
in the Inferno;
in visiting a strange location,
it's always best to go
with someone who's
been there before,
and – most important of all
on a sightseeing tour of Hell
– who might also know
how to get you out again.
The canyon is wider today.
The walls rise to a vertical height
of nearly three thousand feet.
In many places the river runs under a cliff,
in great curves, forming amphitheaters, half-dome shaped.
Though the river is rapid,
we meet with
no serious obstructions,
and run twenty miles.
It is curious
how anxious we are
to make up our reckoning
every time we stop,
now that our diet
is confined to
plenty of coffee,
very little spoiled flour,
and very few dried apples.
It has come to be
a race for a dinner.
Still, we make
such fine progress,
all hands are in good cheer,
but not a moment
of daylight is lost.
--John Wesley Powell journal entry for August 24, 1869
Our way today is
again through marble walls.
Now and then, we pass,
for a short distance,
through patches of granite,
like hills thrust up
into the limestone.
At one of these places
we have to make another portage,
and, taking advantage
of the delay,
I go up a little stream,
to the north,
wading it all the way,
sometimes having to plunge
in to my neck.
In other places
I am compelled to swim across
little basins that have been
excavated at the foot
of the falls.
Along its course are many cascades and springs
gushing out from the rock on either side.
Sometimes a cottonwood tree grows over the water.
I come to one beautiful fall of more than one hundred and fifty feet,
and climb around it to the right on the broken rocks.
Still going up, I find the canyon narrowing very much,
being but fifteen or twenty feet wide.
yet the walls rise on either side
many hundreds of feet, perhaps thousands,
I can hardly tell.
In some places the stream
has not excavated its channel
down vertically
through the rocks,
but has cut obliquely
so that one wall
overhangs the other.
In other places it is
cut vertically above
and obliquely below,
or obliquely above
and vertically below,
so that it is impossible
to see out overhead.
But I can go no farther.
The time which I estimated
it would take to make
the portage has almost expired,
and I must start back
on a round trot,
wading in the creek
where I must,
and plunging through basins,
and find the men waiting for me,
and away we go on the river.
Just after lunch
we pass a stream on the right
which leaps into the Colorado
by a direct fall of more than
a hundred feet,
forming a beautiful cascade.
There is a bed
of very hard rock above,
thirty or forty feet in thickness,
and much softer beds below.
The hard beds above
project many yards
beyond the softer,
which are washed out,
forming a deep cave
behind the fall,
and the stream pours through
a narrow crevice above
into a deep pool below.
Around on the rocks,
in the cave-like chamber,
are set beautiful ferns
with delicate fronds
and enameled stalks.
The little frondlets have
their points turned down,
to form spore cases.
It has very much the appearance
of the Maiden's Hair fern,
but is much larger.
The delicate foliage
covers the rocks
all about the fountain,
and gives the chamber
great beauty.
But we have little time
to spend in admiration,
so on we go.
We make fine progress
this afternoon,
carried along
by a swift river,
and shoot over the rapids,
finding no serious obstructions.
The canyon walls, for two thousand five hundred or three thousand feet, are very regular, rising almost perpendicularly, but here and there set with narrow steps, and occasionally we can see above the broad terrace to distant cliffs.
We camp tonight in a marble cave, and find, at looking at our reckoning, that we have run twenty-two miles.
--John Wesley Powell journal entry for August 23, 1869
SCORPION RIDGE
CRYSTAL RAPID
ROYAL ARCH CREEK AT ELVES CHASM (2)
BIGHORN SKULL, SLATE CANYON
CHEYAVA FALLS
WOTANS THRONE AND VISHNU TEMPLE DISTANT
In sand I wrote my heart with rocks
Like one whose words might woo the wind
Only a pilgrim by the river's bend
Very much alone as dawnshocks
Erupted the ancient cliffs ablaze
Your choice is not to share my side
On courier clouds my love must ride
Up from this beach where I sing your praise
We start early this morning, cheered by the prospect of
a fine day, and encouraged, also, by the good run made yesterday. A quarter of a mile below camp the river turns abruptly to the left, and between camp and that point is very swift, running down in a long, broken chute, and piling up against the foot of the cliff, where it turns to the left. We try to pull across,
so as to go down on the other side, but the waters are swift, and it seems impossible for us to escape the rock below;
but, in pulling across, the bow
of the boat is turned to the farther shore, so that we are swept broadside down, and are prevented, by the rebounding waters, from striking against the wall. There we toss about for a few seconds in these billows, and are carried past the danger. Below, the river turns again to the right, the canyon is very narrow, and we see in advance but a short distance. The water, too, is very swift, and there is no landing place. From around this curve there comes a mad roar, and down we are carried, with a dizzying velocity,
to the head of another rapid. On either side, high over our heads, there are overhanging granite walls, and the sharp bends cut off our view, so that a few minutes will carry us into unknown waters. Away we go, on one long, winding chute. I stand on deck, supporting myself with a strap, fastened on either side to the gunwhale, and the boat glides rapidly, where the water is smooth, or, striking a wave, she leaps and bounds like a thing of life, and we have
a wild, exhilarating ride for ten miles, which we make in less than an hour. The excitement is so great that we forget the danger, until we hear the roar of a great fall below; then we back on our oars, and are carried slowly toward its head, and succeed in landing just above, and find that we have to make another portage. At this we are engaged until sometime after dinner.
Just here we run out of granite!
Ten miles in less than half a day, and limestone walls below. Good cheer returns; we forget the storms, and gloom, and cloud-covered canyons, and the black granite, and the raging river, and push our boats from shore in great glee.
Though we are out of the granite, the river is still swift, and we wheel about a point again to the right, and turn, so as to head back in the direction from which we come, and see the granite again, with its narrow gorge and black crags; but we meet with no more great falls, or rapids. Still, we run cautiously, and stop, from time to time, to examine some places which look bad. Yet, we make ten miles this afternoon; twenty miles, in all, today.
--John Wesley Powell journal entry for August 21, 1869
