Climbing it differently?

Jon Barton, Managing Director at Vertebrate Publishing who publish my book Adventures In Mind, has written an interesting blog about women's climbing, and of climbing and mountaineering literature written by women. This has pushed me to have more of a think about this; I think it's a good subject for my own first blog post.

One thing that struck me when I was reviewing the final proof of my book was that in it I did not quote any books written by a woman. The books I quote cross different genres - mountaineering, climbing, fell running, philosophy, mathematics, fiction, cycling. That's pretty stark and I suppose there was a disappointment - almost a subconscious one - that Jon's blog got me thinking some more about.

A book written by a woman that I did read while writing Adventures In Mind was Nan Shepherd's The Living Mountain. I did actually quote from it in an earlier draft (I removed this text for various reasons, perhaps one day I will revisit it). Shepherd's book counts amongst my favourites and certainly my favourite on the subject of mountains and wild places. Reading it made me marvel at her wonderful writing, and also to realise more fully that there is a falseness to treating a mountain as a trophy, as a prize to be grasped before the reach of others.

‘To pit oneself against the mountain is necessary for every climber: to pit oneself merely against other players, and to make a race of it, is to reduce to the level of a game what is essentially an experience.’

Shepherd's subject is the central Cairngorm massif. This is an absorbing and beautiful place, The Living Mountain does it justice, Shephard writes of her obsession for the place. She does not really write of herself but of the self - the stuff - of the mountain, she loses her own self in this and wants to do so.

I came to The Living Mountain through Andrew Grieg's At the Loch of the Green Corrie (which also introduced me to poetry of Norman MacCaig). Griegs enthusiasm for Shephard’s book was more than enough to encourage me to seek it out (it has since been relaunched, to acclaim). On MacCaig's instruction, during the the last conversation Grieg shared with MacCaig before he died, Grieg finds the loch that forms the title of his book in Assynt, the stunning wild area of Sutherland in the north west Scottish Highlands above Ullapool.

'Glaciers, grinding West, gouged out

these valleys, raspng the brown sandstone,

and left, on the hard rock below - the

ruffled foreland - 

this frieze of mountains, filed

on the blue air - Stac Polly,

Cul Beag, Cul Mor, Suilven,

Canisp - a frieze and

a litany.'

From A Man in Assynt

Norman MacCaig

Assynt and the Far North enthralls me, as it famously enthralled MaCaig, and Grieg's writing encouraged me to head back to it, I spent a week there in April 2011. The landscape of Assynt is like nowhere else - the mountains rise up in splendid isolation from each other and in beautiful forms. During that week I ran up Assynt's munros and a fair few of its stunning hills - Stac Polly, Suilven, canisp and Arkle. At least as important to me as running over these hills, this visit also helped to inspire me to paint. One of my earliest paintings - Five Hills of Assynt - is based on a photograph I took when I was there.

Five Hills of Assynt

As well as his nature writing Grieg has written of climbing and mountaineering. In this he is similar to Robert Macfarlane and Jim Perrin, two more great writers who cut across the nature and mountaineering genres. It is probably no coincidence then that both Macfarlane and Perrin also recognise The Living Mountain as one of the masterpieces of its kind.

It is my own subjective opinion but I find Perrin's and Macfarlane's climbing related writing more approachable and often more stimulating to read than many of the mountaineering books on the market. These two writers often do not scale the peaks, exploring instead the side of a mountain or some remote corrie. Those that tell the story of taming the mountain, reaching the summit and then writing the book can be seen as a cliche, no matter what the writer learns as he experiences the climb. To be fair this formulaic approach is not unique to the world of climbing literature, climbing itself is so often used as a metaphor for challenge and associated success. It is a tried and tested approach that sells very well.

I don't think it is controversial to say that unless evolution forces a change men will always be physically stronger and faster then women. This means that in the innovation of new routes it is unlikely that a woman will climb that era’s hardest route before a man. I don't think I am being sexist or defeatist, just stating an objective fact (and a good reason for why we piss men off when we pass them in races or climb harder than them - they know they should be stronger and faster than us!). Perhaps that is why there are so few mountaineering books written by women. As typically in these books the 'last great problem' features frequently as 'the thing that must be overcome', if the same book formula is kept to, the vast majority of the time they are going to be written by men.

Regarding the relative strength of men and women, you could say the same as I do above for other mountain activities such as running and cycling. I do think however it is a different kettle of fish when endurance comes into play. When the going gets longer and tougher and the associated head games commence things become a bit more level. When I write this I immediately think of Helene Whitaker (nee Diamantides) who with Martin Stone in 1992 beat top male fell runners and the army to win the first ever Dragon's Back Race, the notoriously tough race north to south along the mountainous spine of Wales. 

Whitaker returned last year, 20 years after the first race and with a young family at home, to place third. These runs required both prodigious physical ability but also an incredible endurance, strength of mind and self-belief - stronger than those men running around her? The Dragon’s Back Race has only been staged twice - in 1992 and 2012. Of the three people who have finished both races two are women - Whitaker and the amazing Wendy Dodds (the third is the navigation and endurance guru Joe Faulkner). Dodds did not only finish both races but last year did so in her sixties. An incredible achievement but for those who follow and know her not at all surprising.

Shepherd finished drafting The Living Mountain shortly after World War II. Her manuscript sat languishing in a drawer for 30 years, after which she got it published, recognising the validity of her work would stand the test of time. And so it does. It’s recent reprint has proven popular, no doubt related to the rise in the UK of nature writing over the past 15 years. In many ways Shepherd was ahead of her time, her book is now recognised as one of the forerunners of nature writing.

I find Shepherd, Whitaker and Dodds inspirational in different ways. They show us what can be achieved if you follow your drive and hold true to yourself rather than get driven by literary expectations, the perceived demands of the reader or other peoples belief in your (gender or age) limitations. It is important to note that Shepherd was in a way almost anti reaching the top of a hill, and certainly against treating reaching the summit as some kind of conquest. In this way she experienced the mountain in many more ways than only the physical, and this is reflected in her writing.

A few weeks ago I was out for the day with my partner Aidan, running, walking and climbing on the Cuillin Ridge. We were on holiday on Skye with our daughter and Aidan's grandparents, who kindly looked after her while we had a rare day out together in the mountains. We started the day with Sgurr Alasdair and then continued along the ridge to Sgurr Mhic Choinnich. Along the way we roped up and pitched King’s Chimney. I led this pitch, the first time I had led any climb for years. As I moved up what was an easy route I was wearing fell running shoes and carrying a light-weight rack that led me to have to climb way above my gear, helping to make it feel harder. The thrill I felt when I reached the top brought back so many memories of adventures I have had in the past climbing around the UK and further afield.

We continued to follow the ridge, later we roped up again to climb The Inaccessible Pinnacle. The 'Inn Pinn' is a Munro, and the only one that requires rock-climbing to reach the summit. The climbing is easy but very exposed. It was a little busy, there was a party of two immediately ahead of us and one behind. Ahead was a guy called Brian, probably in his early sixties, who was leading Linda his wife (who was very calm and relaxed for someone who had never climbed before). Behind us was a very happy chap from Glasgow - probably in his late twenties - he had a big smile on his face and a pair of really battered walking boots on his feet. He was happy because he was in the middle of a three month adventure climbing all of the Munros in one big trip. His climbing partner was a cool and chilled out lady from Oregon who herself had just started a three month adventure of her own, cycling around the UK and then across Europe to Italy. They had met the night before at the campsite in Glenbrittle, when he had been looking for someone to climb the Inn Pinn with.

At first I was frustrated that we were stuck behind Brian and Linda; they faffed like hell and slowed us down, I had to help Linda at a belay to sort out their rope and Brian jibbered like anything on what is a really easy route. As I climbed up behind Linda waiting for her to leave the belay stance so I could set up mine, I resolved to chill out and enjoy the view. I am glad I did. The conversations Aidan and I had with the rest of them, and the excitement, pleasure and sense of achievement we all felt when we sat together just below pinnacle afterwards was something worth sharing, rather than rushing on to the next summit as fast as we could.

Abseiling off the Inaccessible Pinnacle

I suppose what I am trying to say is that we had a day out doing easy climbing and what a day it was. We saw and did some great things and met some people doing other amazing things. In time maybe I could construct this experience into something others would enjoy reading.

So, returning to Jon Barton's question, does there exist an untapped vein of female authors who can write at least as eloquently of their drive and passions for climbing and mountaineering as their male peers? There must be, just as there must surely be an associated vein of readers (and not all of them female). Is what required to get the ball rolling an awareness that it's not just about climbing the hardest, the fastest or the highest (although there are many amazing women who could write about these things) but that, if you want to write, having the confidence to do it, to stay true to what you want to write about, and then to pass it on to others to read is in my experience the hardest thing. I am also learning at the moment that it can be a very fulfilling thing - the new experiences I am now having and the feedback I have received so far have really made me think, stimulating me to write some more. I did think one book would be enough - I am beginning to think I might just keep going :o)