The Science of Climbing and Mountaineering

Ludovic Seifert, Peter Wolf, Andreas Schweizer, Ludovic Seifert, Peter Wolf, Andreas Schweizer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317403159
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Médecine
• Subtopic: Médecine du sport

This is the first book to explore in depth the science of climbing and mountaineering. Written by a team of leading international sport scientists, clinicians and climbing practitioners, it covers the full span of technical disciplines, including rock climbing, ice climbing, indoor climbing and mountaineering, across all scientific fields from physiology and biomechanics to history, psychology, medicine, motor control, skill acquisition, and engineering.

Striking a balance between theory and practice, this uniquely interdisciplinary study provides practical examples and illustrative data to demonstrate the strategies that can be adopted to promote safety, best practice, injury prevention, recovery and mental preparation. Divided into six parts, the book covers all essential aspects of the culture and science of climbing and mountaineering, including:

• 
  
  

• physiology and medicine

• 
  
  

• biomechanics

• 
  
  

• motor control and learning

• 
  
  

• psychology

• 
  
  

• equipment and technology.

Showcasing the latest cutting-edge research and demonstrating how science translates into practice, The Science of Climbing and Mountaineering is essential reading for all advanced students and researchers of sport science, biomechanics and skill acquisition, as well as all active climbers and adventure sport coaches.

1
A cultural history of mountaineering and climbing

Olivier Hoibian

Mountaineering and climbing have been closely related since their respective origins at the dawn of the nineteenth century. In some respects, they are unique in the world of sport as both are practised without formal regulations or refereeing. The introduction of new technical equipment, however, has regularly sparked conflict and tensions around how these two sports should be defined. Moreover, between the two world wars, attempts to streamline the processes of ascension provoked heated controversy over the status of mountaineering and rock climbing as elite activities, with some practitioners fearing that they would become mere ‘sports like any other’. Similar concerns were voiced in the 1960s over the advent of ‘artificial rock climbing’, which was denounced by many as a form of ‘technological drift’ that threatened the very objective of engaging in these two activities. Yet despite all the protestations from various corners, these traditional activities have recently split off into highly specific sporting categories like via ferrata, ice climbing and indoor wall climbing, and competitions are now held alongside traditional mountain climbing and rock climbing in natural settings. The diversification in activities has in many ways been a positive development for the climbing community, as there is now something for everyone: climbing appeals as much to those who want to push themselves to their limits as to those who find climbing an opportunity for contemplation, and international competitions are a magnet for those who want to measure their performance against the best. A historical perspective on climbing and mountaineering will provide insight into the dynamics that have characterised the changes in these sports and will help to understand the social challenges they have posed.

Introduction

Mountaineering and rock climbing have been closely related since their respective origins at the dawn of the nineteenth century. Rock climbing, which in 1840 was given its first name, ‘varappe’ (Le Comte, 2008), in the Salève foothills of the French Alps, has often been thought of as a kind of preparation for mountaineering, although in certain geographic locations rock climbing in its earliest forms was practised in and of itself. Both activities have always been based on ethical principles, yet these principles have never been formally articulated. Instead they have been passed down through the generations as a guide to climbers everywhere, which gives these activities a unique standing in the sporting world. And in recent times, both have been confronted by radical changes and challenges.

The introduction of various technical advances in climbing has often caused dissension among climbers around the essential question of what constitutes legitimate practice. Between the two world wars, steps to streamline climbing practices provoked considerable controversy about whether such advances would turn climbing into ‘a sport like any other’, forever stripped of its elite status. Controversy surged again in the 1960s with the creation of artificial climbing walls, which were soundly denounced by many as either a technological deformation of the sport or a crass attempt at opening it up to all and any, thereby threatening its core values and the symbolic benefits that practitioners derived from it. Although today’s conflicts have taken on a different form, they nevertheless persist, with the controversial project to have climbing declared an Olympic sport being a good example.

The two climbing activities have recently split off into several categories: via ferrata, icefall climbing, dry-tooling, indoor wall climbing, and practices on bouldering and multi-pitches, and today competitions have become common. Yet, despite these innovations, traditional high-altitude mountaineering and rock climbing in natural settings continue to thrive. The diversification of climbing practices has broadened the range of motivations driving climbers, with some finding a means to exceed personal limits and others finding a meditative, contemplative practice. And situated somewhere in between is the desire to achieve elite performance at international competitions. A historical perspective on the successive phases that have marked mountaineering and rock climbing might help to better understand the dynamics in play and the social issues at stake.

A cultural approach

Mountaineers have always had at least one thing in common with those who are passionate about deep-water and desert sports: a penchant for writing about their impressions. The number of works on mountaineering and climbing far exceeds the number of works on any other land-based sport or leisure activity. The authors have often brought a historical perspective to their writing, with some looking far back in time to find clues as to why certain people have always been driven to conquer the highest mountain peaks. Somewhat opposed to this abundant historiography, historians have tended to conduct more methodical investigations within well-defined conceptual frameworks. In the 1970s, epistemological debates about the discipline of history led to a certain relativism (Veyne, 1971). The ambition of a ‘total history’ promoted by the French ‘Annales’ school of Lucien Febvre and Marc Bloch was much discussed in the interwar period, to the ultimate benefit of more circumscribed approaches (Poirrier, 2004). Although today historians will readily acknowledge that their work can be challenged, they nevertheless stand firm in their claim that history is a scientific discipline. A historical accounting is, to their eyes, quite different from a fictional narrative because it is truth-based and the facts can be verified by historical methods (Ricoeur, 2000).

In the midst of these debates about the nature of historical research, cultural history emerged as a distinct field of investigation. Defined as ‘the social history of representations’, it is based on a broad interpretation of ‘culture’ as defined by anthropologists, and this therefore encompasses physical leisure and sport practices (Chartier, 1998). Cultural history, however, pays particular attention to the significations or meanings associated with such activities by incorporating the corporeal know-how and the specific techniques of the social universe being studied (Ory, 2011). According to Roger Chartier, this essentially means incorporating clear thoughts and personal intentions and desires into a system of collective constraints that both makes them possible and standardises them (Chartier, 1993).

Mountaineering and rock climbing have a unique position in the world of leisure sport. These activities arouse scientific curiosity; attract those with aesthetic and contemplative sensibilities, a spirit of adventure or a desire to attain high levels of performance; and offer an unusual form of tourism. In this sense, they can be said to be characterised by a certain ambivalence. Up until quite recently, they were practised without regard to regulations or referees, yet conformed to an unwritten code of ethics transmitted by the practitioners themselves, thereby lending themselves to multiple appropriations over time, notably between the different parts of the social elite. For this reason, writing the cultural history of mountaineering and rock climbing is far more than retracing the major steps in their development and dissemination throughout the world: close examination of the evolution in the collective representations associated with them is called for. One such examination concerns the debates and conflicts around the legitimate definition of these sports and how these debates developed and became structured. By necessity, this field of investigation also includes a historical accounting of elitism, especially with regard to the educated faction in societies that are organised hierarchically according to a logic of social distinction (Hoibian, 2008).

The cultural conditions for the invention of mountaineering

Since the dawn of time, mountains have been a part of the landscape: permanent landmarks on the horizon. Palaeontologists have shown that the valleys and the most accessible mountain passes have been inhabited since the earliest traces of humankind. These areas have always been important for travel and trade routes, even in the dead of winter. The remains of Otzi, the Neolithic hunter whose mummified corpse was found in a crevasse of one of the Tyrolean glaciers, provides evidence that this was so even in very early times.

On the highest mountains peaks, however, the situation has always been quite different. Summits are sterile and inhospitable places, long associated in the popular mind with supernatural powers (fairies, dragons, evil beings) that were believed to be at the root of a good number of the catastrophes that have regularly befallen the valleys (torrential flooding, avalanches, mudslides, etc.).

In the eighteenth century, the expansion of urban lifestyles began to transform the representations of the educated elite. These new sensibilities, promulgated by the Enlightenment philosophers and the pre-Romantic writers, marked a new era in the relationship between humankind and the mountains. The works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Albrecht von Haller helped spread this new appreciation for the summits and glaciers of the Alps and Pyrenees as objects of contemplation throughout Europe (Engel, 1930). The inhabited valleys and the pasture lands began to pique the curiosity of the European elite, and they started to frequent these rustic areas with some regularity, embarking on excursions and admiring the picturesque settings. This set the stage for a new type of aristocratic and worldly tourism.

Ascending Mont Blanc

The process of legitimising this fascination with high altitudes was supported by a growing scientific curiosity about the unexplored parts of the world. The great voyages of explorers like Cook, Bougainville and La Pérouse were part of a vast movement to explore and inventory the planet, and the snow-covered mountain peaks were terra incognita. However, to overcome prejudices and break through the natural and symbolic barriers to a world of eternal snow, the authority of science based on reason and faith in progress were needed. In 1762, the Geneva scientist Horace Bénédicte de Saussure provided the decisive incentive by promising a large reward to anyone who would set out to find a viable route to the top of the mountain considered at that time to be the highest in Europe: Mont Blanc. In the popular mind, the imperative of scientific discovery legitimised and justified the ambition to conquer this emblematic summit, even at the risk of the lives of local guides (De Bellefon, 2003).

In 1786, the summit of Mount Blanc was conquered and the response to this success was confirmation that these intrepid exploits were fully in line with the sensibilities of the social elite of the period. A cultural barrier had been breached. In contrast to the worries previously evoked at the thought of the ‘accursed mountains’ came the overwhelming desire to contemplate and even ascend these ‘sublime mountains’, forevermore perceived as worthy of interest. ‘Mountaineering, with its technical imperatives, its need for extreme caution, a thirst to conquer, and a feeling for the summit, was born right here and still promises many more mutations’ (Vigarello, 2008).

The mountain, stripped of any spiritual connotation by rational science, could thus now be surveyed. Some weeks after the ascent of Mont Blanc by De Saussure himself in August 1787, Marc Beaufroy, a young British subject staying in Berne, repeated the exploit. Setting foot on the highest mountain peaks of the European continent soon became a challenge for the most enterprising members of the ruling class. Momentum built to conquer the main summits of the Alps and Pyrenees and this was accomplished within a few years: Little Matterhorn in 1792, Grossglockner in 1800, the Girardin pass of Monte Rosa in 1801, Mont Perdu in 1802, Jungfrau in 1810, Breithorn in 1813, the Vincent Pyramid of Monte Rosa in 1819, Finsteraarhorn in 1829, Eiger in 1859, the Ecrins in 1864, the Grandes Jorasses and the Matterhorn in 1865, and so on.

In this crucial period for mountaineering, the British set themselves apart as fervent ‘collectors of firsts’ (Ring, 2000). Between 1786 and 1853, they made twenty-six of the forty initial ascents of Mont Blanc and before 1880 they made half of the first ascents of summits in Europe.

The era of clubs

For ‘tourists’ and mountaineering adepts in the early nineteenth century, the living conditions in the villages nestled into the valleys of the Alps and Pyrenees appeared rather crude. Comfortable hotels and inns were rare, transport was irregular despite progress in railways, the guides from local companies were not always reliable, and trails and shelters were cruelly lacking. The mountaineers of Europe began to see a strong need to organise into specialised clubs. The English were the first, with the ‘Alpine Club’ created on 22 December 1857, in London during a ‘gentlemen’s’ meeting of public school graduates. These members quickly adopted statutes that clearly spelled out the aim of this very elite group: ‘Fostering opportunities for climbers to meet and plan for the most difficult climbs, exchange information, and publish the narratives of these exploits’ (Tailland, 1997).

On 19 November 1862, the Viennese followed in their steps and founded the Austrian Alpine Club, and this was soon followed by their colleagues in Berne with the creation of the Swiss Alpine Club on 16 August 1863, in Olten (Haver, 2008). A few weeks later, their transalpine neighbours in Italy created the Italian Alpine Club on 23 October 1863, in Turin (Zuanon, 2008). In 1866, the German Alpine Club was established in Munich and in 1873 it merged with the Austrian club to become the biggest club in Europe in terms of membership. The Austrian-German Club had more than 100,000 members on the eve of the Great War (Mestre, 2000).

Amidst this vast movement, France seemed to be lagging behind. The Ramon Company had been founded in 1865 by the friends of the illustrious explorer of the Pyrenees, Ramond de Carbonnières, but it had no national ambitions. On the eve of the Prussian War of 1870, a group of Parisian mountaineers established the bases for a French Alpine Club but the defeat at Sedan and the events of the Paris Commune hindered this initiative. The founders of the French Alpine Club thus had to wait until 2 April 1874, to adopt the slogan ‘Excelsior’ and fix their aim as ‘Fostering and propagating exact knowledge of the mountains of France and the surrounding countries.’ The club founders were completely favourable to the participation of women and organised caravans for young school girls (Ottogali-Mazzacavallo, 2006).

Although the members of the alpine clubs were oriented towards the conquest of mountains by engaging the services of the best guides of the moment, the national clubs of the continent were more interested in acting as interlocutors with government representatives. The educated elite who had control of their destiny were able to define what constituted legitimate practices in planning for moderate climbs, following the most accessible routes, and being led by experienced local guides. They preferred a kind of ‘cultivated excursionism’ that made room for contemplative, scientific, literary or artistic practices, which were in keeping with their ethical and aesthetic values. Along the way, this enlightened bourgeoisie arranged the mountain, organised the guide business, created trails and shelters, wrote up scientific notices and invented a literature around tourism. They thus helped their fellow citizens to learn about an alpine type of tourism, contemplative and yet worldly.

As part of the same movement, alpine clubs were formed on other continents, especially in the United States with the Appalachian Alpine Club in 1876 and the American Alpine Club in 1902, and in Canada with the Alpine Club of Canada in 1906.

From 1865 onward, the most active members of the British Alpine Club began to think that the challenges of the Alps had been exhausted and turned to the conquest of mountains outside Europe. E. Whymper covered Greenland in 1867, the Andes in 1880 and the Canadian Rockies in 1900; A. F. Mummery organised an expedition in the Caucasus in 1888 and to Nanga Parbat in the Himalayas, where he disappeared in 1895. The routes traced out by these two legendary British explorers would then be followed by a growing number of mountaineers in the following decades, beginning with the Duke of Abruzzi and his expeditions to Ruwenzori in Africa in 1906 and to K2 in the Himalayas in 1909 (Bonnington, 1992).

The first debates on the legitimate practice of mountaineering and rock climb...