Alpine Warriors by Bernadette McDonald

Author:Bernadette McDonald
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
ISBN: 9781771601108
Publisher: RMB | Rocky Mountain Books
Published: 2015-09-20T22:00:00+00:00

TWELVE

Seismic Shift

ALTHOUGH YUGOSLAVIAN CLIMBERS ENTERED THE Himalayan arena late, the international climbing community was stunned by their accomplishments on Makalu and Everest and awed by their near successes on the South Faces of Dhaulagiri and Lhotse. There were many more: Kangbachen, Trisul, Cho Oyu, Shishapangma, Gaurishankar South Summit, Annapurna, Gangapurna, Yalung Kang, Ama Dablam, Lhotse Shar – the list of ascents went on and on. As their triumphs accumulated, confidence grew. So did national pride.

As head of the expeditions commission of the Alpine Association from 1979 to 2014, Tone Škarja – the man who led the 1979 Everest West Ridge expedition – was a powerful individual in the climbing community. Although he had first accepted the leadership torch from Aleš Kunaver with reluctance, he eventually carried it with dogged determination. He tapped into national pride and squeezed precious financial support from the central government for expeditions. Not surprisingly, he had the final say on which expeditions were funded and who was on them. Tone was a savvy manipulator of the old-boys’-network style of getting things done. Yugoslavia’s political system may have been called socialist, but it was actually a network of contacts. Tone aspired to some kind of national climbing legacy, and although Yugoslavian climbers had yet to climb all the eight-thousanders, he knew they were well equipped to do so; it was simply a matter of checking them off. The eight-thousanders undertaking took 20 years and included a combination of normal routes, new routes, alpine-style ascents and ski descents. He led an entire generation of expeditions, but his tenure was full of turbulence. Still, despite severe criticism of some of his priorities, the results are remarkable.

Tone Škarja faced many challenges in his years as a leader: funding issues, political wrangling with the Belgrade bosses, and the conflicting goals of the top Slovenian climbers. His greatest test was navigating the sea change in attitude among the alpinists who depended on him for funding. For at the height of his eight-thousanders program in the late 1980s, many young Slovenian climbers had aspirations other than chasing eight-thousanders: difficult routes, small teams, individual rather than national goals. The concept of leadership was changing, too. Modern alpinists weren’t interested in taking orders or joining large, unwieldy teams. They wanted independence. They preferred nimble, lightweight expeditions with three or four climbers. Marko Prezelj’s advocacy for this approach was known far and wide, not only within Slovenia. “Style matters” was the mantra of this elitist alpinist, who railed against anything commercial, public or “impure.”

There were already a few early signals of a more individualistic attitude back in 1921 when disgruntled young Slovenian climbers went off and started the Touring Club Skala, grumbling about “style.” They were interested in personal goals and difficult lines rather than nationalist objectives. And there were many more-recent examples of the attitudinal shift: Franček Knez abandoning the Everest team in 1979 to wander off and do a first ascent on neighbouring Khumbutse; Šrauf taking a small team to Dhaulagiri’s South Face in 1981 instead of joining the Lhotse team.

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