An attempt at a theory of "risk" in the mountains.
Exploring questions of "meaning" when we talk about danger in the mountains.
I can't help chasing questions of meaning. My search, the one that began back in 2004, carries on undaunted, casting its gaze where the everyday man doesn't dare look, where I myself struggle to look. And yet my shameless gaze compels me to shed light on those subjects that have no light.
Let's stop using euphemisms, let's be honest. Risk in the mountains can mean "death" or "paralysis" or "wheelchair", or a fall with injuries of various kinds... in short, in the mountains if you fall and you're lucky, then you've given yourself some nasty fracture.
But why do people go to the mountains and risk death? Massimo Marcheggiani, after a life devoted to the mountains, writes in his book ("Tu non conosci Tiziano"), "the "real" motivation that pushes apparently sane individuals to face all this is not easy to explain"... referring to the suffering and the risks of those who take on the winter mountains.
I would extend his observation to mountaineering in general, both to the risks of the winter mountains and to the summer climbing routes, right up to... and why not, all the other mountain activities that carry with them a more obvious dose of risk.
GPS, maps, reasonably accurate weather forecasts, mobile phones and network coverage to call for rescue, state-of-the-art gear and equipment. This is what modern technology has given us, and it has inevitably changed the ways and the spirit of adventure hiking, and by now the pioneering spirit of mountaineering too.
That's how hiking and mountaineering were definitively transformed into sporting activities in every respect. Gymnastic exercises to be carried out in complete safety. Technology has reduced the chances of danger, leaving us only the (very relative) chore of physical activity. With fewer chances of risk, we have also had fewer chances to explore what our limits are (physical and psychological).
Today our limit lies exactly where the technologies begin, technologies which, as an obvious consequence, we could no longer do without. A trivial example: we couldn't walk on an icy slope without crampons. In the past mountaineers would have cut steps in the ice, trying to create a safe passage. Today we would be neither capable nor patient enough to cut steps (perhaps for hours) using only an ice axe. Naturally you ask yourself: why do it, when you could put on some very comfortable crampons?
Taken to the extreme, the reasoning could be that, to go to the mountains, you shouldn't even be allowed to take the car to reach the start of a route. It seems a paradoxical argument, and yet this argument too hides an interesting provocation. In this case too, the statement can be read in a completely different way. None of us would leave home barefoot in the middle of winter, with no money, with a few provisions in our pocket, without a jacket, without a hat, without gloves, and walk all the way to the summit of a faraway peak. Climbing a summit this way would be extreme behaviour bordering on madness. The truth is that we would never think of undertaking projects like that because in certain "contexts" we already know our limits (or at least we think we know them).
It does seem realistic, though, to think that technology has already deprived us of our natural survival skills. It has deprived us of instinct, of the intuition to find the right way, it has deprived us of the ability to find our bearings. We are so distracted that we no longer recognise smells, we are completely incapable of listening to the sounds of a wood.
There is a paradoxical consideration, and it concerns the mountaineer's attitude. Those who go to the mountains don't go there so much with the idea of stopping in the face of danger and risk, but of managing it and, where possible, overcoming it.
The curious, paradoxical question concerns "how" to overcome the difficulties: the mountaineer uses everything available at that moment. Hands, feet, athletic movement, mental reasoning and why not... gear.
In fact we fall into a contradiction, because while on the one hand the mountaineer goes to the mountains to meet danger, on the other he also goes there to overcome it. Humanly speaking, I believe this is exactly what we need: a dialectical encounter with the mountain. The dialogue with the mountain takes place along its climbing routes. We're up there to try to prove the validity of our arguments.
It has to be said that this reflection is not, however, about establishing whether it's more right to go hiking or climbing with more or less gear. Personally I'm not interested in setting up hierarchies of "right" or "less right" things to do in the mountains. What I find interesting, rather, is understanding how far technology can help us or, alternatively, get in our way.
Does technology really take something away from us? Having a mobile phone or a GPS device in your pocket, what is it taking away from us?
Personally I believe technology considerably reduces the chances of giving answers to questions of "meaning" about existence. And I'm not talking about questions such as "who are we", "where do we come from" or other futile questions with no answer.
I'm talking, more simply, about the problem of how we make our choices of "value" over the course of our life.
In a perfectly safe world without risk, existing can become an absolutely undifferentiated and monotonous event. Nothing is valued, everything is equally important, everything is equally without value, if not actually without meaning.
If the absence of risk corresponds to an absence of emotional tension, and reaching a goal without danger corresponds to a success without exhilaration, then having eliminated risk may well make even climbing to the top of a mountain boring.
Yes of course... no doubt we remain sensitive to the greatness of creation, to the immensity of the sky and the stars, to the beauty of the clouds and the landscapes; we're not monsters of insensitivity.
But I believe that if we take danger and risk away from the mountains, then the pioneering act of conquering a route or a summit, which carries with it sweat and toil, fear and courage, anger and happiness, exhilaration and balance, then all of this would inevitably be lost.
And if this isn't an important question of meaning, what else is left for us to defend.
A culture of safety "at all costs", a culture of the absence of risk, can only heighten our anxieties, can only increase our neuroses of control over reality.
Admitting that there are situations of risk and imponderability (in the mountains as in life) can open the doors to the unpredictable, to novelty, to sudden emotions and passions. Faced with the exploration of the unpredictable and of ourselves, we must be able to respond with every last personal resource.
And that's what the mountaineer does, who for a single glance at the sky and the mountains puts everything at stake, making a promise of commitment so that tomorrow, on that summit... everything goes well.