High Adventure

An anthology of alpine writing displays the greatest appeal of the genre: most of it was written by people who could have died gathering the raw material.

- Geoff Chapple

A climber writes to his mates proposing a do-or-die summer assault on the dangerous Ramsay Face of Mt Whitcombe. “It’s all or nothing, the front pages or the back.” Of the New Zealand Alpine Journal, that is: the front pages document the most spectacular climbs of the season; the back pages carry the obituaries.

The letter, quoted in To the Mountains, a new anthology of alpine writing, perfectly captures the allure of mountain literature: it’s about people who put their lives at risk. They just go for it, and when they write, the dangers and stress they face can’t fail to make a good read.

But the two editors, Laurence Fearnley and Paul Hersey, are more inclusive than that. We follow a 13-year-old girl, roped up to her surveyor dad, reaching the top of the Mackinnon Pass in 1889 on the newly emerging Milford track. She’s an observant kid, who notes the robin that perches on her dad’s theodolite, and his hat. Dad names a tarn after her – Lake Ella – and she’s a good read, too.

So is Jill Tremain who, during her epic 1971 traverse of the Southern Alps with Graeme Dingle, takes time out to pen a hilarious apology to a fellow female alpinist for nicking her food stash at Murchison Hut. Elsewhere Ed Hillary writes from base camp after climbing Everest to his girlfriend’s father, and president of the New Zealand Alpine Club, Jim Rose. The angles here are new, the vision fresh.