Confessions of a mountain climber

I have a confession to make - I am addicted to mountain climbing. My addiction is a chronic one, but under my control (at least i think so), as I only go for an 8-10 day trek once an year, of course with a small number of 1 day treks that are dispersed unevenly between the big ones.

I have done 2 long treks till now, that is, i am at the beginning of the addiction process, and I still have a lot of hope. Both times I went for trekking, I was so tired and exhausted by it all, that at the end of it, I was glad to be back in civilization. This may seem like a good sign to people, since it means that I don't actually enjoy mountain climbing that much and I am susceptible to giving up my addiction.

Particularly, on my last trek, I went to cross the Rupin pass and we got real bad weather and lot of rains, much more than i expected and much more than I was comfortable with. As days passed, I was gasping for breath, the trek was tiring, my right shoulder was paining like hell, my clothes were wet, thus making the whole trek a harrowing experience. Everyday when I used to wake up in the morning, I used to worry about how we are going to go on with the bad weather constantly following us around. And then on the last day, technically speaking the 2nd last one, the weather opened up, and everybody crossed the Rupin pass. We still got some bad weather on the last day, but we had made it and we were filled with a sense of achievement and joy. So, after a few months, when I try to recall my displeasure, my tiredness, my paining shoulder during the trek, I come back with a nought. The only thing I remember is that I crossed the Rupin pass and a very pleasurable feeling comes back to me. Quite bad.

Have you watched a movie called "Touching the void", a real story of a guy called Joe who gets stuck up alone in a crevasse while descending from a successful climb of the mountain Siula Grand? Joe made it through, miraculously, and I remember the tears in my eyes when he comes back dragging himself to the base camp. Joe recovered from his near death experience, and still climbs mountains, ignoring the fact that he had almost lost his life while climbing. The movie should have evoked feelings of dread, mountains being dangerous and unpredictable, and that mountain climbing can be fatal for one's life. But after watching the movie, I was only left with a strong desire to see snow. That's how bad my situation is.

This addiction has made me introspect. I came to certain conclusions - that there are 2 kinds of people - people who have never tasted adventure and people who are addicted to it. Definitely, some people may have just overcome their addiction, but they are invisible to me.

In order to discover more about mountain climbing, I recently saw another movie about mountaineering called the Vertical Limit, and the conclusions I reached from it are nothing less than bizarre. 3 people are stuck on K2, one of whom is dying fast. So for saving these 3, a rescue team of 6 starts to climb up. If the mission had been entirely successful, you would have expected all 9 people to come back safe. But the real result of the rescue is that (sorry, this movie review contains spoilers) only the hero's sister survives out of the 3 stranded, and worse, only 2 out of 6 people in the rescue team survive and the rest die off. Effectively 3 out of 9 survive. In the case of nobody going to rescue, the survival ratio would have been 6 out of 9, the 6 being the people in the rescue team who wouldn't have gone and thought of risking their life. Any logical person can see which scenario was preferable. But then you consider, one of the guys stranded on K2 had bad karma, one of the rescue team was old and mad, and the fact that survival of the hero, his girl-friend and his sister were of paramount importance and consequently the importance of survival of others very little, then the odds may tip in the favour of the 6 going for the suicidal mission. Suicidal? Am I claiming Vertical Limit is teaching suicidal tendencies to people? Yes sir, i back my claim by the simple fact that the movie is about a few people climbing K2, and that to me, is strong suicidal tendency in itself!

Thus I come to my final conclusion that mountain climbers who climb very high mountains have suicidal tendencies or at least, have very little value for their own life, otherwise why would somebody go to the death zone and leave his life in the hands of the unpredictable mountain weather? I can joyfully claim that I am still sticking to comparatively lower altitudes, and thus I score less on the addiction scale and more on life expectancy. But the problem remains, I am addicted, and only time will tell where this addiction is going to take me.