Where the Mountain Casts Its Shadow

by Maria Coffey
List(s):"Extreme Classics"
Category: "Travel"
Pages:229
Year of Publication:2003
Date Added:01/29/2010
Date Read:01/08/2014
Notes:Subtitle: The Dark Side of Extreme Adventure

The author shacked up with a guy who liked to climb mountains for a couple years before he was killed on Everest. She writes about the motivations and justifications for participating in a deadly activity made by the climbers themselves and their families.
My Rating: 5

Reviews for Where the Mountain Casts Its Shadow

Review - Where the Mountain Casts Its Shadow

Mountain climbing is dangerous. Anywhere from 10% to 33% of the people who climb at high altitudes die, depending on the mountain and the season. Extend that over a lifetime of climbing and the odds aren't good. A great many climbers end up dead or seriously injured. I can understand the motivation to be the first person to climb a mountain, or to go anywhere that nobody has ever been. But to risk your life to be the first person to "climb Mount Whatever during January by the difficult north face while wearing bunny slippers" is just egoism. I don't care if people want to do it, but it doesn't make them heroes, and I'm not even sure they've accomplished anything beyond the strictly personal level. And if they have family that cares about them, it's selfish.

I think most people either have a passion to give their lives meaning or a vice to hide from themselves the fact that their life doesn't have meaning. Mountain climbing is personally destructive, so I suspect for most it's a vice that disguises itself as a passion. People treat mountain climbers as heroic, so they are able to convince themselves they've done something worthwhile.

As I've suspected while reading their stories, and as one climber confirmed in this book, it's a means of escape from the real problems in life. While on the mountain, they are so focused that important issues, like what your children might be up to, disappear. In several places in the book, the author gets very close to this opinion while trying to give both sides of the story. She quotes a writer who asks "What is it about mountain climbing that transforms a fundamentally useless, selfish activity into an heroic act?" In my opinion, this book doesn't answer that question, and I suspect the answer is "Nothing."
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