Med tillstand fran Bruce sa delar jag med mig av denna utmarkta artikel. Den samanfattar mycket av det som pa senare tid varit uppe for diskussion i en rad olika tradar, inte minst fiaskot pa Shisha. Bruce ar en otroligt intressant person och mycket aktiv Himalaya klattrare, kanske en av de absolut aktivaste.
Excerpt from 'Mountaineering, Responsibility and the Future of Climbing in China", an opinion piece by Bruce Normand published in the December issue of Outside China.
Opinion Piece, Bruce Normand (Beijing, March 2009)
Mountains are beautiful, mountains are challenging, mountains are
dangerous, mountains are big business, mountains have a very strong
grip on the popular imagination in every culture and at a profound level
-- since antiquity our gods and demons have resided in them. Mountains
certainly appear with great frequency in our daily lives, their images
plastered all over our advertising as symbols of beauty, purity, pleasure,
achievement or lofty goals.
So what do mountains mean to you, as a climber or aspiring climber ?
This article starts with a short personality test:
Why do you (want to) climb ?
Because it looks cool ? -- get a new haircut.
For the risk ? -- play the stock market.
For the danger ? -- try walking down the fast lane on the highway.
For your friends ? -- play basketball with them.
To know yourself ? -- there's always reading.
To conquer your perceived weaknesses ? -- thought of bungee jumping ?
To conquer the mountain ? -- pick on someone your own size.
Because your parents don't like it ? -- see a relationship counsellor.
For your club or your country or your sponsor ? -- they might give you
superficial symbols when you succeed, but don't look for consolation when
you fail (or worse).
In fact if we are talking about climbing in a gym, all of these reasons
are fine, but please don't try to climb outside. I can be quick to
dismiss many things, and at some point in this article you should be
ready to stand up and defend your corner with the words ``this is what
climbing means to me.'' Because, ultimately, you climb for you. When
you strip away the veil of fog in the previous paragraph, you do it
because there is a goal you find worth achieving, you enjoy the process
of getting there and at the end you look in the mirror and say ``I am
satisfied with what we did.'' Only if you set the goals will you pursue
them with the determination they require and enjoy the full satisfaction
of meeting them. Only you appreciate the spiritual uplift you get from
being in the mountains and closer to nature. Of course you can try to
communicate this to your friends and family, and of course the effect
is amplified if you share the experience with a team of people you like,
but if you are not there because it is you who wants it, we probably
will not see you in the mountains again next year.
Why do I climb ? I climb for fun. I enjoy the beauty, I enjoy the
problems I set myself and the challenge of trying to solve them, I
enjoy the combination of physical and mental exercise and I appreciate
the satisfaction of having achieved something at the end of the day.
After 20 years in the game, during which I have refined my abilities
and redefined my challenges, climbing still has more than enough to
offer me that it's the way I will choose to spend my weekends and
holidays. Because it is a holiday: it's my hobby. I might be good
enough at it that I could make money from it, but I never, ever, want
to climb for a living. The moment I did that, it wouldn't be fun any
more. It would be work, I would be climbing for someone else (a sponsor,
a photograph, a number), and I would be in the mountains for the wrong
reasons. I do not want to die for the wrong reasons.
Mountaineers and Mountain Tourists
We have to come back to the last point: everyone knows mountains can
kill you, but we have to go through two more steps before we can discuss
safety. As one sage is said to have remarked, there are two types of
people: those who divide everything into two groups and those who don't.
As I watch the popular image of mountaineering, which is shaped by numbers
like ``14 8000ers,'' ``7 Summits'' and ``3 Poles,'' (Ed.'s note: you
can collect bigger numbers of stamps and baseball cards), I find I need
two categories for people in the mountains.
Mountaineers are people who grew up with a climbing ethos. They roped
up with their partners, learned their trade, set their goals, made their
judgement calls, carried their loads, broke their trails, led their share
of the pitches and shivered in their high camps. They shook hands at the
summit on a job well done, or they bailed out and went home alive to
climb another day, or they rescued themselves and their teammates when
things went badly wrong.
The new species of people storming the world's name-brand mountains do
not have this background. I liken them to marathon runners. Running a
marathon is a big physical challenge, and you can be very proud when you
achieve this goal. However, someone else sets the route for you, someone
else is waiting to give you food at regular intervals, and when the person
next to you falls over, it's not your problem to pick him or her up. The
mentality is not the same as mountaineering, but there are people who try
to justify it in the world's mountains.
Notice I am not saying that mountain tourists do not belong in the
mountains. Where there is a market there will always be suppliers, and
climbing is nothing if not an inclusive community. In fact, mountain
tourism, if done in an ecologically sound way, is an excellent boost
to the local economies of many impoverished regions, to say nothing
of giving the experience of a lifetime to thousands of people who might
otherwise be on holiday at the beach. What I am saying is that there
should be no confusing mountaineering with mountain tourism, or
mountaineers with mountain tourists. If the reader of this article goes
away with a clearer picture on this point, these words will have served
their purpose.
The uninitiated reader can certainly be excused some confusion, because
there is no clear picture coming from our mass media, which glorify
mountain tourists on the summit of Everest while ignoring the porters who
carried their four bottles of oxygen each on summit day alone. In fact this
confusion is strong in the minds of some who regard themselves as leading
practitioners, and in specialist media supposedly devoted to the interests
of climbers. Even on K2, ``The Mountaineer's Mountain'', we met people
who waited for others to fix the ropes, slept in the tents of others
without asking permission, ate the food of others, stole other peoples'
equipment at extreme risk to that person's life, and left their
``teammates'' to die. This is not the behaviour of a mountaineer. The
baseless dogma ``it's every man for himself above 8000m,'' trumpeted
alongside medically meaningless words about ``the death zone,'' is not
at all a code word for toughness -- it's a fig-leaf of self-justification
for people who chose a mountain they couldn't handle; does ``every man for
himself'' stop at not helping others already in trouble (always a media
favourite), or does it extend to stealing food, fuel and equipment to put
more, and self-reliant, climbers in trouble ? I wonder what types of
people look into the mirror and can say they are satisfied with their
achievement after doing this ...
At this point I have to preempt some words I will state more clearly
below. You are perfectly at liberty to declare that you are, or want to
be, a mountain tourist. You will have a lot of fun and some fantastic
new experiences, and will maybe come home with a great achievement under
your belt. But you should not think that you are a mountaineer because
of the summit you stood on. That said, nobody would be happier than
mountaineers themselves if your experience made you want to join their
community -- to take charge of your own planning and leading and safety.
Excerpt from 'Mountaineering, Responsibility and the Future of Climbing in China", an opinion piece by Bruce Normand published in the December issue of Outside China.
Opinion Piece, Bruce Normand (Beijing, March 2009)
Mountains are beautiful, mountains are challenging, mountains are
dangerous, mountains are big business, mountains have a very strong
grip on the popular imagination in every culture and at a profound level
-- since antiquity our gods and demons have resided in them. Mountains
certainly appear with great frequency in our daily lives, their images
plastered all over our advertising as symbols of beauty, purity, pleasure,
achievement or lofty goals.
So what do mountains mean to you, as a climber or aspiring climber ?
This article starts with a short personality test:
Why do you (want to) climb ?
Because it looks cool ? -- get a new haircut.
For the risk ? -- play the stock market.
For the danger ? -- try walking down the fast lane on the highway.
For your friends ? -- play basketball with them.
To know yourself ? -- there's always reading.
To conquer your perceived weaknesses ? -- thought of bungee jumping ?
To conquer the mountain ? -- pick on someone your own size.
Because your parents don't like it ? -- see a relationship counsellor.
For your club or your country or your sponsor ? -- they might give you
superficial symbols when you succeed, but don't look for consolation when
you fail (or worse).
In fact if we are talking about climbing in a gym, all of these reasons
are fine, but please don't try to climb outside. I can be quick to
dismiss many things, and at some point in this article you should be
ready to stand up and defend your corner with the words ``this is what
climbing means to me.'' Because, ultimately, you climb for you. When
you strip away the veil of fog in the previous paragraph, you do it
because there is a goal you find worth achieving, you enjoy the process
of getting there and at the end you look in the mirror and say ``I am
satisfied with what we did.'' Only if you set the goals will you pursue
them with the determination they require and enjoy the full satisfaction
of meeting them. Only you appreciate the spiritual uplift you get from
being in the mountains and closer to nature. Of course you can try to
communicate this to your friends and family, and of course the effect
is amplified if you share the experience with a team of people you like,
but if you are not there because it is you who wants it, we probably
will not see you in the mountains again next year.
Why do I climb ? I climb for fun. I enjoy the beauty, I enjoy the
problems I set myself and the challenge of trying to solve them, I
enjoy the combination of physical and mental exercise and I appreciate
the satisfaction of having achieved something at the end of the day.
After 20 years in the game, during which I have refined my abilities
and redefined my challenges, climbing still has more than enough to
offer me that it's the way I will choose to spend my weekends and
holidays. Because it is a holiday: it's my hobby. I might be good
enough at it that I could make money from it, but I never, ever, want
to climb for a living. The moment I did that, it wouldn't be fun any
more. It would be work, I would be climbing for someone else (a sponsor,
a photograph, a number), and I would be in the mountains for the wrong
reasons. I do not want to die for the wrong reasons.
Mountaineers and Mountain Tourists
We have to come back to the last point: everyone knows mountains can
kill you, but we have to go through two more steps before we can discuss
safety. As one sage is said to have remarked, there are two types of
people: those who divide everything into two groups and those who don't.
As I watch the popular image of mountaineering, which is shaped by numbers
like ``14 8000ers,'' ``7 Summits'' and ``3 Poles,'' (Ed.'s note: you
can collect bigger numbers of stamps and baseball cards), I find I need
two categories for people in the mountains.
Mountaineers are people who grew up with a climbing ethos. They roped
up with their partners, learned their trade, set their goals, made their
judgement calls, carried their loads, broke their trails, led their share
of the pitches and shivered in their high camps. They shook hands at the
summit on a job well done, or they bailed out and went home alive to
climb another day, or they rescued themselves and their teammates when
things went badly wrong.
The new species of people storming the world's name-brand mountains do
not have this background. I liken them to marathon runners. Running a
marathon is a big physical challenge, and you can be very proud when you
achieve this goal. However, someone else sets the route for you, someone
else is waiting to give you food at regular intervals, and when the person
next to you falls over, it's not your problem to pick him or her up. The
mentality is not the same as mountaineering, but there are people who try
to justify it in the world's mountains.
Notice I am not saying that mountain tourists do not belong in the
mountains. Where there is a market there will always be suppliers, and
climbing is nothing if not an inclusive community. In fact, mountain
tourism, if done in an ecologically sound way, is an excellent boost
to the local economies of many impoverished regions, to say nothing
of giving the experience of a lifetime to thousands of people who might
otherwise be on holiday at the beach. What I am saying is that there
should be no confusing mountaineering with mountain tourism, or
mountaineers with mountain tourists. If the reader of this article goes
away with a clearer picture on this point, these words will have served
their purpose.
The uninitiated reader can certainly be excused some confusion, because
there is no clear picture coming from our mass media, which glorify
mountain tourists on the summit of Everest while ignoring the porters who
carried their four bottles of oxygen each on summit day alone. In fact this
confusion is strong in the minds of some who regard themselves as leading
practitioners, and in specialist media supposedly devoted to the interests
of climbers. Even on K2, ``The Mountaineer's Mountain'', we met people
who waited for others to fix the ropes, slept in the tents of others
without asking permission, ate the food of others, stole other peoples'
equipment at extreme risk to that person's life, and left their
``teammates'' to die. This is not the behaviour of a mountaineer. The
baseless dogma ``it's every man for himself above 8000m,'' trumpeted
alongside medically meaningless words about ``the death zone,'' is not
at all a code word for toughness -- it's a fig-leaf of self-justification
for people who chose a mountain they couldn't handle; does ``every man for
himself'' stop at not helping others already in trouble (always a media
favourite), or does it extend to stealing food, fuel and equipment to put
more, and self-reliant, climbers in trouble ? I wonder what types of
people look into the mirror and can say they are satisfied with their
achievement after doing this ...
At this point I have to preempt some words I will state more clearly
below. You are perfectly at liberty to declare that you are, or want to
be, a mountain tourist. You will have a lot of fun and some fantastic
new experiences, and will maybe come home with a great achievement under
your belt. But you should not think that you are a mountaineer because
of the summit you stood on. That said, nobody would be happier than
mountaineers themselves if your experience made you want to join their
community -- to take charge of your own planning and leading and safety.
