An unmistakable vein of nostalgia ran through Saturday鈥檚 annual gathering of the 鈥攏ostalgia for alpinism as it once was, or seemed to be in a bygone pre-smartphone and social media golden age of discovery and adventure. Remember when climbers spent most of their time outside on actual rocks, not indoor climbing walls? When glaciers weren鈥檛 melting away under the relentless pressure of a changing climate? When Everest, once arguably the ne plus ultra of a climbing career, wasn鈥檛 clogged with conga lines of plodding luxury tourists and stuntmen aiming to jump off the top in wingsuits on live television?
At AAC-sponsored panels Saturday聽afternoon at the聽DoubleTree聽Hotel in Manhattan, and a gala dinner Saturday night in what was once a Christian Science church, older climbing luminaries like 92-year-old Fred Beckey, 80-year-old Chris Bonington, and 70-year-old Reinhold Messner mingled with many of the sport鈥檚 younger generation, including 30-year-old Kevin Jorgeson and 36-year-old Tommy Caldwell, who just completed their now globally-acclaimed first free climb of Yosemite鈥檚 Dawn Wall, and Swiss speed climber Ueli Steck.
Beckey, the 鈥渃limbing bum Bodhisattva鈥 who probably has more first ascents than any climber in history, was awarded the AAC President鈥檚 Gold Medal. And Bonington, who scaled the Eiger in 1951 and led the pioneering first ascent of the South Face of Annapurna in 1970, was on hand to introduce the evening鈥檚 guest of honor and featured speaker: Messner, whose solo ascent of Everest without supplemental oxygen in 1980 is considered the alpine equivalent of mankind first walking on the moon.
[quote]鈥淚f you don鈥檛 like the crowds on Everest, there are so many mountains where there aren鈥檛 any people at all. I think the safest thing is a laissez-faire approach鈥攍et people make their own choices.鈥漑/quote]
For all the reminiscing about past triumphs and tragedies鈥擬essner lost his brother Gunther on a harrowing descent from the summit of Nanga Parbat in 1970鈥攖he man often called the greatest climber in history was looking forward, not back. This summer, he plans to complete more than a decade鈥檚 work building six museums to mountain culture in northern Italy.
鈥淭hen I will invent something new because I am hungry to look beyond the next horizon,鈥 he said.
Messner was in the audience earlier that day during a panel discussion between Bonington and Steck, who soloed the Eiger in less than three hours but was already looking back to a golden age when he could climb at a standard his now 38-year-old body is no longer interested in. Steck drew a lot of laughs from the several hundred people in the properly-awed audience when he explained, 鈥淚f you do the Eiger in three and half hours, it鈥檚 totally safe.鈥
On both their minds, as well as on the minds of the panel of guides and Sherpas that followed, were recent events on Everest where political and commercial pressures and environmental changes have come to a head.
鈥淭he game as we know it and try to play it is changing,鈥 said panelist and longtime mountaineering guide Dave Hahn, who has climbed Everest 15 times, starting in 1994. 鈥淭he down-wasting of the lower glaciers on the north and south side of Everest is staggering. You wouldn鈥檛 recognize the Hillary step today compared to the 1970s, eighties, and nineties. The Lhotse face is more dangerous.鈥
The environmental changes mirror a changing social environment as a younger, more worldly generation of Sherpas assert themselves, and Nepal-based companies get into the guiding business, often offering cheaper rates to climbers. The 2013 Everest climbing season was notable for the so-called 鈥渂rawl鈥 that ensued when Steck and his climbing companions Simone Moro and Jonathan Griffith got into a confrontation with a Sherpa rope fixing team鈥攁 dispute attributed to crowded slopes, cultural differences, and male posturing. And the climbing season last year was effectively canceled by labor unrest and grief after 16 Nepali mountain workers were killed in the Khumbu ice fall ferrying loads for clients.
The tensions arising from crowds of climbers and the commercialization of the mountain 鈥渋s an absolutely inevitable development,鈥 Bonington told the gathering. 鈥淚t鈥檚 been going on since the 19th century. One could argue that the numbers should be controlled, but I鈥檓 not sure how you do that. If you don鈥檛 like the crowds on Everest, there are so many mountains where there aren鈥檛 any people at all. You can climb on some obscure five-and-a-half-thousand-meter pimple at the end of a valley where no one has ever been and get huge satisfaction. I think the safest thing is a laissez-faire approach鈥攍et people make their own choices.鈥
Asked if there should be quotas on Everest, Greg Veronvage, the longtime Base Camp manager and Everest expedition leader for the commercial guiding company ,聽said, 鈥淲ho would control it? The government of Nepal? They can鈥檛 even give their people electricity and clean water.”
Vernovage said he found that many of the backpacks carried by the climbers killed in the Khumbu avalanche were twice as heavy as the prescribed weight limits鈥攂urdens which would have slowed them down on one of the most dangerous sections of the route. 鈥淚鈥檓 in favor of using helicopters to bypass the ice fall before April first,鈥 he told me. 鈥淲e鈥檙e taking in the ballpark of 70 loads鈥6,800 meters of rope, pickets, ice screws, tents, oxygen for Sherpas. We鈥檙e not talking about luxuries, we鈥檙e not bringing up espresso machines, rugs, and caviar.”
The nostalgia for simpler times on Everest and elsewhere in the climbing world sometimes seemed tinged by a touch of wistfulness that one鈥檚 best days aren鈥檛 ahead. Wouldn鈥檛 it be fine to be on the brink of the adventures awaiting 22-year-old Sasha Digiulian,聽a junior at Columbia University who at the moment is the best female rock climber in the world and received the Robert Hicks Bates award for outstanding achievement by a young climber for extreme difficult ascents. Among her recent climbs was a line in the Dolomites, where she was prompted to go after Messner sketched out a route for her on the back of a wine menu in Salt Lake City. Or Jorgeson and Caldwell, who received honorary AAC memberships to a standing ovation two weeks after the Dawn Wall ascent, widely considered the hardest climb in the world. A golden age, already receding.