The thrill of reaching a summit is the greatest possible reward for a mountaineer, the crowning of his goals, the purpose of his existence.
The physical limit of a mountain's top represents the completion of a project made of sacrifice, commitment and will, mobilising both physical and mental energies.
In reality a gruelling climb does not always end with reaching the top. It can happen that difficulties, the unexpected and emergencies met along the way force you to take unexpected decisions. The choice to break off a climb is the hardest moment for every true enthusiast. Deciding to give up the summit, the view, the personal satisfaction of having completed a route, stamps on your thoughts a deep loss of “meaning”.
Very often, above all the less experienced, and therefore those most eager to get there and prove what they can do, out of fear of feeling this sense of “defeat” may underestimate the dangers and take more risks, putting at stake much more than the climb.
Deciding not to finish is not exactly an admission of defeat; it is always a painful decision, but it is always dictated by maturity and experience, and it can be a great test of character to include in the challenge with oneself. Human beings do not pit themselves against the mountain, it would be a decidedly unequal, senseless contest. And again, human beings do not put the mountain to the test; rather they put themselves to the test, to discover their own abilities and their own limits.
The personal and natural factors are endless: fear of the cold, fear of the dark, the tragic sense of desolation and loneliness, the void of an overhang or the unpredictable crumbling of an embankment. Factors such as the weather, the condition of the route and altitude cannot be separated from the mountain; they are obstacles the climber can face and overcome only at the price of great effort, of an intense physical and mental commitment, of a determined will.
That is how the climb becomes the fruit of a tangled relationship between human beings and the mountain; a love affair in which the human being cannot help but be swept away.
There is a somewhat romantic saying that sums up the mystery of climbing, the sense of the imponderable and of human limits: “it is the mountain that chooses whether to let us climb it or not”.
On the face of it this statement would seem fanciful and irrational. And yet this short phrase tells us how human instinct speaks to rational awareness, giving it that sixth sense and that imaginative ability to sense future events.
Breaking off a hike, like a mountaineering climb, does not just mean we were not able to finish it. A “failure” carries with it the lessons of the hardest moments, it tells us about our limits. It is a starting point for planning the conquest of the next summit.
With every climb you build up experience. Probably the difficult moments are the most precious ones: you manage to learn something about yourself and about your way of acting and being.
You live your own limits, above all of character, but also physical and technical.
For a mountaineer these moments of difficulty and surrender are the real ground to work on, as in life…
This article was written with the advice of Dr Vincenzo Chelli