Why I Love to Climb Mountains

Most everyone is fascinated by towering mountain peaks, but the thought of climbing them is where the fascination abruptly ends and the fear begins. In our video-adept world, the images of mountain climbing that are too often portrayed are ones of disaster. Climbers are perceived more often than not as struggling for survival in a ferociously steep and unrelentingly dangerous landscape. It seems like a risky way to live and a frightening way to die. Avalanches, bullet-like rocks falling, electrical storms, freezing to death, getting gangrene and losing fingers and toes – why would anyone deliberately place themselves in such a nightmarish situation?

Despite the terrible hardships that may be endured and the awful deaths, it should pique one's curiosity to find out why those who climb go back and do it again and again, taking on ever riskier and more difficult challenges. There must be something very special about mountaineering to make climbers believe the risks are worth it. Perhaps the only way to understand why people climb mountains, however, is to go do it yourself. Climbers do not wrestle with such questions, and non-climbers will never understand a climber's explanation anyway.

Death is always a very real possibility when climbing mountains. It is both horrifying and fascinating in equal measure. This, in and of itself, may be the very essence of mountaineering, however; it is a strange mixture of fear and excitement, unlike the appeal of any other endeavor. I would not call it a sport, for there is no game to win, no competitor to beat, and no medals to bring home. For the most part one might argue that it makes no sense and is absurdly pointless, but that is what makes it so addictive. If death was not ever present, many would not be so drawn to it.

In a paradoxical way, death validates the life-affirming nature of climbing mountains. It is not sport, but it can become a lifestyle. It is a game of risk where what you stand to lose is far greater than whatever you could ever possibly hope to gain. Whenever you finally discover what it is that really makes it worth dying for, you find reason enough to keep doing it. For me, it is a heroic endeavor that has become an essential expression of a lifestyle I have chosen. To die while living heroically is preferable to living an ordinary unchallenged life. So I climb high to touch the place where the mountains kiss the sky. Should death claim me one day, I at least sense I will receive a heroes welcome on the other side. There is no better way to live.