Just because it happened to you doesn’t make it interesting.*
– Dennis Hopper
*could be the sub-title of this website actually…
So you made a first ascent eh? Did you, did you really?
Maybe. Maybe not. How do you know?
Being the first to do something holds special meaning to most humans. I get it. Theirs are the names that go down in the history books after all. Only science-geeks know the name of the second man on the moon. Only serious runners know who was the second person to best a 4 minute mile. (Oh.. and by the way… high schoolers regularly do that these days…) Who did the second ascent of Mt. Everest? And there has even been speculation over the actual first ascent for many, many years. Did Mallory and/or Irvine make it to the summit in 1924? Undoubtedly we will never know…
I gather that in 2014 or thereabouts the government of Nepal published a list of 104 peaks that permits could be applied for and that would be considered previously unclimbed. Small problem… was that some of them had been climbed already. Oooops!
So, just how do you know? Thing is… you don’t really. Not everybody who summits a so-called first ascent writes a journal article about it. Mugs Stump apparently climbed a ton of shit and didn’t mention it to people. Not everyone leaves a summit register or a cairn. Sometimes summit registers go missing. There was a U.S. Parks Service Ranger who was infamous for removing summit registers and tearing down cairns. I remember seeing entry’s in guidebooks where under FA is the statement ‘likely by prospectors’. I have written a piece before about doing the first winter ascent of Castle Towers. We didn’t record it anywhere. The first winter ascent get’s credited to some other jamoke’s who did it a year after we did. Difference is… they ‘told’ someone who recorded it. I’ll take it that we did the first winter ascent… but I certainly have zero proof that it wasn’t done any number of times before we did it.
And while we are talking about the old days… what about indigenous peoples ascents?
Chief Ian Campbell of the Skwxwú7mesh has said “We have been mountaineers for thousands of years”. His ancestors and other like them around the world have indeed ventured onto mountain tops, for vision quests, ceremonial events, hunting, and just plain old curiosity for millennia.
Degrees of ‘that’s pretty cool’
If you bag something such as the first ascent of the NW Face of Devils Thumb, then that lands right at the top of the scale of ‘that’s pretty cool’. First winter ascent of K2… that’s pretty cool as well. Badass. It really means something. Stuff that might put people on notice. Other first ascents… not so much. Back in the day I climbed some pretty nice boulder problems on one of the gulf islands. These were (still are) about the most obscure problems on the planet, done by maybe 2 or 3 people tops, and by today’s standards (and even by the standards of the times) were pretty tame (or lame). Super fun; you bet! First ascents? No doubt. I might even write those up one of these days. But about as close to the bottom of the ‘that’s pretty cool’ scale as you can get. But we had a blast. There is slim chance that Nalle Hukkataival is going to read this and make a pilgrimage to nab the second ascent of Spirt Deer (and downgrade it in the process).
Categorical (or maybe in some cases contrived) first ascents.
I’ll probably take flak for this one too… but as far as I’m concerned if you are talking about first ascents (like we are) then only three types count. The first ascent(to the actual top), the first free ascent, and maybe the first winter ascent. And the last one needs lots of caveats.**
So for all of you claiming things like first female ascent, oldest person ascent, youngest person ascent, first transgender ascent, first ascent during a harmonic convergence, first ascent on a Tuesday, first ascent by a dog, or cow (check into it) etc… get over it. I’m not trying to diminish the accomplishments of anyone. But…. They don’t say the first free ascent of the Nose by a woman was by Lynn Hill. They say the first free ascent of the Nose was by Lynn Hill!
**like for instance if it’s smack dab in the middle of ‘winter’ yet there are summer like conditions on the route… then piss-off. Come back in winter conditions… and in the winter.
This story isn’t meant to be negative. Are there first ascents still out there? You bet there are! Lots. Some really good meaningful stuff too. One just needs to be able to work for them, and in some cases understand the risks involved. There is cool stuff way out off the grid in the AZ desert. Deep in the Coastal Ranges, the NWT, the Greater Ranges, and of course Antarctica. Not to mention countless rock climbs and boulder problems. There are also some blank spots on some pretty famous peaks that don’t have routes on them. Granted some of these are waiting for the next level of climber to arrive, but I’m confident that will happen.
I have a small handful of ‘first ascents’. I’m proud of all of them. Some I’m pretty confident in the veracity of the claim. Others… maybe not so much. Maybe ‘first known ascent’ might be a better term. Or better yet… a fun climb.