The Shining Mountain

ll this was fuel to Joe, encouragement to his awkwardness when faced with obstructions. An iconoclast by nature, he had no respect for the cults and legends that surround personalities and preconceptions in the mountaineering world.

My internal resources had grown. At first, during the desperate struggle of the descent, I had a surge of panic. We nearly lost our way twice, and were constantly swept by avalanches in the blizzard, but then I felt myself go hard inside, go strong. My muscles and my will tightened like iron. I was indestructible and utterly alone. The simplicity of that feeling did not last beyond our arrival at Camp 6 and the thirty-six hours of storm that followed. But I was to remember it in the months that followed.

ut what are mountaineers? Professional heroes of the West? Escapist parasites who play at adventures? Obsessive dropouts who do something different? Malcontents and egomaniacs who have not the discipline to conform?

Life has many cruel subtleties that require far more courage to deal with than the obvious dangers of climbing. Endurance. But it takes more endurance to work in a city than it does to climb a high mountain. It takes more endurance to crush the hopes and ambitions that were in your childhood dreams and to submit to a daily routine of work that fits into a tiny cog in the wheel of western civilisation