The following is a guest entry by Ted Wilson, mountaineer:

My former student and now friend, Christy Karras of The Salt Lake Tribune , wrote an interesting story today about mountaineers and death. She wrote about the coming weekend’s production by the SB Dance Company of “This Mortal Coil.” The show features the life and times of Al Burgess, a Salt Lake City climber who has earned a world-class reputation for his high mountain climbs and exploits. I know Burgess. He is an engaging man who climbs the climb and minimizes the talk, just as Karras tries to get to the essence of climbing.

Karras says in her article, “When mountain climbers get together they always talk about the same thing. They talk about death.”

And now the SB Dance Company will apply the art of dance to the mission of climbing a mountain. It seems mountain climbing has finally permeated the culture deeply enough to have traditional art mediums like dance join the burden of explaining why human beings rope up, suffer incredible hardships of cold and harshness, put themselves in grave danger of dying, just to summit a worthless piece of real estate. As the great French climber Lionel Terray said, “Conquistadores of the Useless.” (Terray climbed huge mountains around the world, but he died on a a short rock climb in south central France.)

George Leigh Mallory, whose body was found on Mt. Everest seven years ago by Salt Lake climber Conrad Anker, said prior to his fatal expedition to Everest in 1924, “I climb Everest because it is there.” And that pithy, even prosaic, comment has been the best explanation of the human desire to climb ever since. Perhaps art, now, can move the explanation needle further up the gauge.

But my lifetime of climbing and my opportunity to rub shoulders with the greats of climbing — the Burgesses, the Ankers, the Unsoelds, the Whittakers, has taught me death is about the last thing that enters the mind of the alpinist. Mind you, I was never a climber like the greats, but I listened when in their presence.

Climbers love life beyond normal. They love life so much that the process of endangering themselves makes them feel really alive. My old climbing club had a standard saying when leaving a secure ledge to head out onto the rock where the chances of falling could overwhelm. It was, “Out of the womb and onto the shooting gallery.”

The expression captured the essence of your butt hanging out over a couple thousand feet of space where a fall would result in injury or death. Somehow, you gathered courage, finished the lead to the next secure ledge and, as Winston Churchill said, “There is nothing in life quite so satisfying as being shot at without result.”

But “death?” Only in the full essence of denial does the mountaineer think about death and its horrible, grim, and decisive conclusion. No, we skirt around it as climbers. As our friends get killed, and sometimes they do, we carefully analyze why and say to ourselves we would never make that kind of mistake. When climbing we think no more of death than a skydiver, a car racer, or a soldier does. Sure, it is back there in the recesses of the mind, in the core of the brain, but it does not come to the surface because if it did, we would simply quit in the middle of the very thing we choose to do in celebrating life.

If you go to a climber’s party, death is not the issue of the evening. Climbers are more intent on the women in the room or the beer they are drinking. Denial goes a long way.

So dancers and artists, you are welcome to replace the rather dull and boring literature of mountaineering (there are a few exceptions) with a new interpretation of the foolishness of climbing. But don’t look to death as the explanation. Look more to why we want to live.

Blogmaster’s note: Ted Wilson has climbed mountains around the world since 1958. He has pioneered routes throughout Utah’s Wasatch Range, the Tetons, and in Europe. No, he hasn’t climbed Everest, but he endures me, his wife, daily.

In this 1964 photo in Little Cottonwood Canyon, Ted Wilson is third from the left in the back row. Climbing phenom and outdoor apparel guru Royal Robbins is next to Ted, wearing the white beret. His wife and business partner, Liz Robbins, sits in front of him. Photo credit: Dick Wallin.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 25th, 2007 at 7:12 pm and is filed under All, Sports, Community, Media, Big Utah, Pretty Things. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

The following is a guest entry by Ted Wilson, mountaineer:

My former student and now friend, Christy Karras of The Salt Lake Tribune , wrote an interesting story today about mountaineers and death. She wrote about the coming weekend’s production by the SB Dance Company of “This Mortal Coil.” The show features the life and times of Al Burgess, a Salt Lake City climber who has earned a world-class reputation for his high mountain climbs and exploits. I know Burgess. He is an engaging man who climbs the climb and minimizes the talk, just as Karras tries to get to the essence of climbing.

Karras says in her article, “When mountain climbers get together they always talk about the same thing. They talk about death.”

And now the SB Dance Company will apply the art of dance to the mission of climbing a mountain. It seems mountain climbing has finally permeated the culture deeply enough to have traditional art mediums like dance join the burden of explaining why human beings rope up, suffer incredible hardships of cold and harshness, put themselves in grave danger of dying, just to summit a worthless piece of real estate. As the great French climber Lionel Terray said, “Conquistadores of the Useless.” (Terray climbed huge mountains around the world, but he died on a a short rock climb in south central France.)

George Leigh Mallory, whose body was found on Mt. Everest seven years ago by Salt Lake climber Conrad Anker, said prior to his fatal expedition to Everest in 1924, “I climb Everest because it is there.” And that pithy, even prosaic, comment has been the best explanation of the human desire to climb ever since. Perhaps art, now, can move the explanation needle further up the gauge.

But my lifetime of climbing and my opportunity to rub shoulders with the greats of climbing — the Burgesses, the Ankers, the Unsoelds, the Whittakers, has taught me death is about the last thing that enters the mind of the alpinist. Mind you, I was never a climber like the greats, but I listened when in their presence.

Climbers love life beyond normal. They love life so much that the process of endangering themselves makes them feel really alive. My old climbing club had a standard saying when leaving a secure ledge to head out onto the rock where the chances of falling could overwhelm. It was, “Out of the womb and onto the shooting gallery.”

The expression captured the essence of your butt hanging out over a couple thousand feet of space where a fall would result in injury or death. Somehow, you gathered courage, finished the lead to the next secure ledge and, as Winston Churchill said, “There is nothing in life quite so satisfying as being shot at without result.”

But “death?” Only in the full essence of denial does the mountaineer think about death and its horrible, grim, and decisive conclusion. No, we skirt around it as climbers. As our friends get killed, and sometimes they do, we carefully analyze why and say to ourselves we would never make that kind of mistake. When climbing we think no more of death than a skydiver, a car racer, or a soldier does. Sure, it is back there in the recesses of the mind, in the core of the brain, but it does not come to the surface because if it did, we would simply quit in the middle of the very thing we choose to do in celebrating life.

If you go to a climber’s party, death is not the issue of the evening. Climbers are more intent on the women in the room or the beer they are drinking. Denial goes a long way.

So dancers and artists, you are welcome to replace the rather dull and boring literature of mountaineering (there are a few exceptions) with a new interpretation of the foolishness of climbing. But don’t look to death as the explanation. Look more to why we want to live.

Blogmaster’s note: Ted Wilson has climbed mountains around the world since 1958. He has pioneered routes throughout Utah’s Wasatch Range, the Tetons, and in Europe. No, he hasn’t climbed Everest, but he endures me, his wife, daily.

In this 1964 photo in Little Cottonwood Canyon, Ted Wilson is third from the left in the back row. Climbing phenom and outdoor apparel guru Royal Robbins is next to Ted, wearing the white beret. His wife and business partner, Liz Robbins, sits in front of him. Photo credit: Dick Wallin.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 25th, 2007 at 7:12 pm and is filed under All, Sports, Community, Media, Big Utah, Pretty Things. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.