make the summit

If you made it to the summit plateau then you have climbed Rainier.

– Jim Whittaker (attributed)

This is a topic that has been around as long as people have been climbing. So you climbed such and such peak did ya? Did you make it to the top? The very, very, tippy top? Seems simple enough right? Well you might be surprised. My buddy Billy Backhoe who posts here as a guest sometimes got me thinking about this when he e-mailed me on this very topic the other day.

So… why wouldn’t you go to the very top? Lot’s of reasons I guess. One pretty common one, believe it or not… is you don’t know where the top is. Say what? Dude… it’s the top… you know… the spot… the one where you can’t go any higher. That’s usually pretty obvious on a pointy peak. But there are summits that are quite broad and flat and it can be a challenge to actually locate the real highest point. There are peaks that have a summit marker, which is great, except when it’s in the wrong spot as it was (is) on Dhaulagiri. There are peaks where the summit is a ridge or series of summits, and it can be difficult to know exactly which is the highest spot. On peaks like these it can be hard enough to locate the true summit in good weather. Imagine if it is a blizzard or whiteout conditions. Annapurna is such a peak. If the weather is fine and you have the time you can obviously touch all of them (assuming you can), but you might not always have that luxury. When we summited Castle Towers for the first known winter ascent we were pretty socked in. We hung around for a bit as the clouds were swirling around us revealing new vistas every few minutes. After a while we felt pretty confident we tagged the high point. Now in a situation such as this does it matter? You tell me…

Another reason for not touching the top is out of respect for local indigenous peoples sacred ground. I have heard many stories of climbers stopping short a few meters for this reason. I believe Kanchenjunga is like this. Works for me, although I have never knowingly been in this situation.

Here’s one. It’s too hard. Or perhaps too dangerous.. That last little bit… it might only be a few meters, but, do you risk it? Manaslu is notorious for climbers stopping short of the difficult last section. Some peaks are well guarded by unstable snow mushrooms, others are dangerous cornices. On some mountains the summit is maybe so small that you might be hard pressed to actually stand on it. Super Pin in the Needles comes to mind. You can ‘easily’ touch it with your hand. Does that count?

What about this… It’s too easy. What? Yeah you heard me. This usually happens when someone climbs a really hard route (possibly even a new route) that doesn’t quite end on the summit. They could wander over the easy ground to the top but they eschew it for a quick descent. Maybe they are racing weather, exhaustion, or perhaps some other reason. This can be also be caused by or cured by the vernacular we use. There is a subtle, yet big difference between:

‘We climbed Mt. Kraznydang by a new route on the north face’ vs ‘We climbed a new route on the north face of Mt. Kraznydang’

There is actually some speculation that maybe nobody, or at least far fewer than reported have actually stood on the true summit of all of the 8,000m peaks. That club might be much smaller than previously thought.

Some folks are even proposing a so-called ‘tolerance zone’ around the 8,000 meter peaks. This zone might even need to vary depending upon the mountain in question.

And then there are the folks; and climbing history is full of them, that are frauds, or just outright liars. And surprisingly enough there are some in these ranks that are very good climbers. Some examples you say? Cerro Torre first claimed ascent. Denali first claimed ascent. South Face of Lhotse (solo). And when called out on some of these climbs, some climbers are adamant about the veracity of their ascent and some fess-up… but how about this for an excuse…

K2 at 8,611 +/- meters is tough no matter how you slice it, even in flawless weather. In 2010 conditions on K2 were such that no one summited the peak at all, by any route. That is with the exception of the Austrian alpinist Christian Stangl, who claimed to have summited and returned in an unbelievable 70 hours. The day following his ascent, another party was attempting the same route and discovered iced-up fixed ropes, Christian’s gear still cached, and no tracks visible in the snow. Stangl did provide a summit photo, albeit somewhat dubious, but ultimately he admitted that he had not summited, however he believed he had because of an incredibly vivid hallucination. (I’ll need to remember this one…)

Speaking of K2… no routes have been completed on either the East or North faces…

Or how about this to ponder…. maybe you did stand on the top of a mountain, the very top. But did you get there by fair means? This opens up a whole can of worms. What exactly is fair means? Is this subjective? What might be fair to you might not be fair to me. Does it count if you didn’t get there by fair means?

Did you use oxygen en-route to your Everest summit? The one where the Sherpa carried all of your gear. Did you climb Cerro Torre by the bolt ladder? (Before it got chopped…)

I’m sure everyone would agree that if you landed on the summit via a helicopter then you probably didn’t actually climb it. But what if you used a chopper to get ‘close’? How close is close? I’ve used choppers multiple times to approach remote peaks. Is that by fair means?

Now… I’m not suggesting that you try this… but in 1995 Göran Kropp left Stockholm, Sweden on a cargo bicycle with 108 kilograms of food and gear. By April 1996 this cat arrived at the Everest Base Camp after pedaling 13,000 kilometers. After one aborted attempt on May 3rd where he turned back 100 meters shy of the top, he tried again and on May 23rd he summited without supplemental oxygen. He then cycled part of the way back to Sweden. This is probably more or less by ‘fair means’. Likewise when Messner soloed Everest from the north side.

Taking a trip for six months, you get in the rhythm of it. It feels like you can go on forever doing that. Climbing Everest is the ultimate and the opposite of that. Because you get these high-powered plastic surgeons and CEOs, and you know, they pay $80,000 and have Sherpas put the ladders in place and 8,000 feet of fixed ropes and you get to the camp and you don’t even have to lay out your sleeping bag. It’s already laid out with a chocolate mint on the top. The whole purpose of planning something like Everest is to effect some sort of spiritual and physical gain and if you compromise the process, you’re an asshole when you start out and you’re an asshole when you get back.

– Yvon Chouinard

There is a whole other genre of not making the summit however. This is the ‘not even close’ variety. Often times, the ‘not even started‘ variety.

Making the summit or climbing the route; that’s what its’ all about isn’t it? Nobody I know goes out climbing with the intent to not make the summit, to not climb a route, to bail part way. That’s just not in our makeup as humans. (at least on the surface isn’t)

Those wacky zen fellows are always going on about the journey as opposed to the destination. Yeah, yeah..

Circumstances though, often times get in the way of our best laid plans. I have done a bit of climbing over the years. If I were to add it all up and only use one criterion for success; that being making the summit or completing a climb; then… out of hundreds of summit attempts; if I was a professional baseball player I would have a .650 batting average. This of course, if I were a ball player would be spectacular, and I’d be raking in big bucks and living the rock and roll lifestyle, instead of writing stuff like this.

There are many reasons for not finishing a climb, and in some cases for not even starting one. Of course there can be weather related issues. Or perhaps illness or injury. But sometimes, it’s something else altogether.

I can remember being at the base camp for Popo in Mexico. Bruce and Ross and I started early from the refugio, but I don’t think I had gone more than 10 minutes or so, when I realized that for whatever reason, I just wasn’t into it so I turned back and spent the day lounging and eating, while they bagged the summit.

And lest you think that this happens only to bush league punters like me…. We were spending a few days climbing around the Columbia Ice fields. We hooked up with a young guy from Switzerland named Lars. Nice kid, and a pretty accomplished climber. He had just been in Alaska where he had soloed the Messner Couloir on Denali. We also got to see him climb in person soloing one of the routes on the North Face of Andromeda. On one of the mornings we were surprised to see him in camp, as he had been planning on doing another solo route on Andromeda or Kitchener. He told us that when he got up early to go for the climb that something didn’t feel exactly right about the day; so he decided to go hiking in the meadows instead and look at the flowers…