Social Climbing on Annapurna: Gender in High-altitude Mountaineering Narratives

Abstract

SINCE 1950, ANNAPURNA has been known in climbing circles as one of world's most dangerous mountains to climb. At 8091 metres in what was once a little-known part of Nepal, Annapurna is accessed from north by a valley that was unmapped and unknown even by villagers of Pokhara, its nearest town. It is swept constantly by avalanches in north. Its south face has largest and most difficult big-wall ice cliff in Himalayas. Thus, although its name means the Provider or Goddess of Harvests in Sanskrit, hazards associated with Annapurna still make it a difficult mountain to see up close, much less climb. Although it is tenth highest mountain in world and first mountain above 8000 metres to be successfully climbed, Annapurna is also not as well known to general public as Mount Everest simply because it is not highest mountain in world. But to mountain climbers, Annapurna is site of some of greatest achievements in high-altitude mountaineering. According to Reinhold Messner in Annapurna: so Years of Expeditions in Death Zone, Annapurna has never become a fashionable mountain to climb but it remains a credible goal for climbers who wish to push limits of climbing (150) because it is more difficult to climb than Everest or other easy eight-thousanders (149). Even today, it is still considered to be too dangerous and difficult a mountain for those with minimal experience to attempt. Unlike Everest or other less technically-demanding high mountains, Annapurna is also seen by professional climbers as a pure mountain unsullied by alpine tourism. Perhaps for this reason, Annapurna has also been subject of some of best-known expedition narratives in world which have detailed some of turning points in history of high-altitude mountaineering itself. Because it is not Everest, with its status as world's highest mountain, Annapurna is an excellent site to begin an examination of ways in which that history is informed by another narrative thread: a history of gender in high-altitude mountaineering accounts that surfaces in these narratives but is rarely discussed directly within them. In this paper, I examine politics of gender in texts where it is not possible to speak openly about gender at all. I look at accounts of climbing Annapurna as complex formulations of identity, and especially of gendered identity, which were not created by theorists, philosophers, artists, career activists, or even professional writers. Like activity of mountain climbing itself, many of these texts nevertheless have helped to shape what developed world thinks about nature, bodies, history, and heroism. What it means to be a man or a woman in harsh circumstances is central to all of these concerns. And, yet, there has never been scholarship which has treated accounts of expedition mountaineers as rhetorical and which deals with gender as a social construction which men and women must negotiate, although there are a growing number of critical works which do deal with politics of masculinity, imperialism, and racism in mountaineering more generally. These narratives about climbing Annapurna can, therefore, provide a test case for looking at how gender issues emerge where we usually do not look for them, in texts that most critics are not accustomed to thinking about as rhetorical at all. In this study, I also want to answer following questions: Why are there so few feminist accounts concerning mountaineering, and why do masculinity and racism in mountaineering often get discussed by critics but social construction of gender for women does not? One reason is that expedition accounts follow a generic convention that is common to almost all books produced about climbing: it is not possible to discuss political matters openly, even though uses and representations of body in wilderness environments are always politicalized and always involve issues about power, knowledge, and pleasure (or pain). …