Recreating the vertical

Abstract

Asked, a year before his death in 1922, why it was important to climb Mount Everest, the climber and writer George Mallory famously replied: 'Because it is there'. Mallory's intention was to stress the fact that, though the systematic climbing of mountains emerged within explicitly scientific paradigms (Schama 1995), science was not the point of mountaineering. Rather, its main point lay in exploring a meaningful response to the inviting 'there-ness' of landforms that were previously viewed as lying, like medieval forests, beyond the frontier of truly human being. In the immediate aftermath of the French Revolution, such thinking led to the cultivation of specific bodily techniques (Mauss 1934) for climbing mountains and to the parallel development of the material technology required to surmount steep snow, ice and rock. Today, base camp for a distinctly anthropological approach to mountaineering (rock-climbing being one of its offshoots) is the premise that the inviting 'there-ness' of mountains and the technical response of modem actors to this symbolic charge is historically generated and culturally embedded (Ortner 1999, MacFarlane 2004). Three questions suggest themselves. Firstly, what, in modem times, is the cultural nature of this compelling 'there-ness'? Secondly, how do climbing practices technically and culturally elaborate its evocative, if elusive, meaning? And, thirdly, why is it important to ask why? Indeed, should anthropologists even take time out from studying 'matters of life and death' (such as ethnicity, economy, religion or new forms of reproductive technology) to examine a traditionally marginal, if now rapidly growing, pastime? The counter-cultural and the mainstream Rock-climbing began to be distinguished from mountaineering as a specialized sport or 'activity' towards the end of the 19th century. It shared with the latter a passion for grapp ing with forms and degrees of the vertical in natural si uations and a reliance on similar technology. Nowadays rock-climbing equipment consists of ropes, helmets, harnesses, sma l ballet shoe-like rock boots and a rack of metallic protective 'gear' made up of karabiners, 'friends' and 'rocks', as well as fabric slings and 'quick-draws', all of which are either temporarily slotted into cracks in the rock by 'leaders' and taken out by 'seconds', or draped over 'spikes', pinnacles or 'bollards' of rock and then remov . (Alternatively, in 'sports climbing', leaders clip karabiners and rope into metal pegs or bolts, drilled and driven permanently into the rock.) Friction devices and anchors are held by the 'second' so that an active, 'lead' climber can be held without effort in the event of a fall; thus, provided that the equipment is in good operational condition an arranged correctly, and given enough cracks (courtesy of natural weathering), a system of 'protection' can be organized that, relative to high-altitude snow and ice climbing, confers reasonable levels of safety. Indeed, because of the relatively high levels of safety, because they are not normally affected by altitude, and because they wear footwear that adds friction, stays on the tiniest of ledges and toe-pokes the smallest of 'pockets' of rock, rock-climbers can make far more gymnastic 'moves' on uch smaller 'holds' than can high-altitude mountaineers (whose feet are shod with big, tough, insulated