Inner Ranges by Geoff Powter

Author:Geoff Powter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: RMB | Rocky Mountain Books
Published: 2018-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

PART IV

MOUNTAIN LITE

Like a lot of people, especially from my generation, I was introduced to – and soon aspired to – climbing through some of the most gripping and bloodily graphic epics of climbing literature: Maurice Herzog’s Annapurna, with its conflicts and bitterness and amputations; Hermann Buhl’s Nanga Parbat Pilgrimage, thick with understated sufferings; Lionel Terray’s Conquistadors of the Useless, which manages the impressive feat of being simultaneously earnest and cynical.

But like a lot of climbers from every generation, I was equally attracted by the rich vein of absurd humour we find in our climbing games. The first “how to” climbing book I read was Warren Harding’s Downward Bound, which taught me far more about how to debauch than how to climb. I loved the hysterical stories about climbers like Patey and Whillans, and I loved how many great mountain writers were at their best when they were taking the piss out of their famously noble partners. And I still think Pat Ament’s “The Black Canyon with Kor” is one of the finest pieces of mountain writing there is, simply because it represents so well the best tool one can have in the mountains – the ability to laugh, loudly and stupidly, through the very worst situations of one’s life.

I turned to humour when I first started writing about mountain life: my first three published pieces were tongue-in-cheek. I may have strayed far into gloomier parts of our games since then, but I’ve always kept it in mind that the mountains have been the place where I’ve laughed harder than anywhere else. In many ways, those times of laughter and absurdity have been the best reasons why I’ve returned, again and again, to both the mountains and to mountain writing, and I felt like I had to recognize that smiling truth here.

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