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DESNIVEL RECOVERES A CLASSIC OF MOUNTAIN LITERATURE
The “absurd plan” of one of the most powerful and ephemeral ropes that British mountaineering has given: Peter Boardman and Joe Tasker. A plan that led them to open a road on the west face of Changabang; a path that no one believed that only two people in light style would be able to open. A “shining mountain” and the book on the history of a rope, with a foreword by Bonington.
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It’s an absurd plan. Even so, if you can climb that wall, I think it will be the most difficult thing that has ever been done in the Himalayas.
The shining mountain
These were the words of Chris Bonington when in 1976 Peter Boardman and Joe Tasker explained their plan to attempt the climb of the west face of Changabang, “the Shining Mountain.” And Bonington’s response was one of the most optimistic. Most of the characters consulted thought that such a climb would be almost impossible for an extremely committed expedition of just two people. After all, it was perhaps the greatest technical challenge in the Garhwal Himalayas, and his ascent, especially if achieved in light style, would be the most relevant done to date.
The shining mountain
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A vision
And sometimes it is not about being stronger than others or more resistant, but having the ability to try, dare to try, use creativity. At that time a single rope to a Himalayan wall was very innovative and you had to have a crazy mind in the sense of “not afraid to defy logic” to carry it out. Not that Joe or Peter felt immortal or thought that their gifts were superior to those of all those who advised them that their climbing was impossible, it was evident that what they wanted to climb was something very special. They only dared to try … and they prepared it as well as possible being true visionaries also in the equipment, for example hammocks that until then did not exist. And they decided to test them in the only place they had on hand at sub-zero temperatures, to see how the sleeping bags worked once compressed within the nylon walls of the hammocks. So to prepare, they spent a surreal night in a cold room at the warehouse where Joe worked.
“At first, the cold seemed impressive to us. We scrambled and struggled to get into the hammocks, perched on boxes of cheesecakes and clinging to pallets of frozen sorbets. “
The shining mountain
The shining mountain It was the first book that Peter Boardman wrote, a very personal and honest story, and at the same time funny, exciting and descriptive that takes us inside this great adventure.
It explains the ascent in great detail: the steps carved into the ice, the type of nail that drives into each fissure, thinking how long the rope will hold without breaking when rubbing against that edge … The book has an almost instantaneous realism that transports you to that inhospitable wall from which they do not know if they will be able to get out, to bitter thoughts and also to simple ones. The quiet possibility of dying and the other ending the route alone, poor thing, what a nuisance !, while he is about to lose his jumar and fall into the void … the wind that always seems horrible from inside the store, the difficulties to go to the bathroom hanging from the void …
The shining mountain
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«The insolent drama of mountaineering clouds the judgment of the arrogant. Life has many cruel subtleties, and handling them requires a lot more audacity than the obvious dangers of climbing. ‘
The shining mountain
You can sense how the thousands of little pressures of urban life suffocated Peter. In the seventies going by the Nanda Devi was an odyssey of travel, of trains, Indian buses packed with people with so many packages and just the two of them and their liaison officer, with whom he has a heated conversation about the sense of why mountaineering … looking inside he does not find reliable answers, only that he is interested in the cold, the altitude, the rock and the snow, and that there he could understand everything.
The books they read, the minutiae of day to day, when the absurdity of climbing the west wall of a mountain becomes the most important thing in the world and you don’t even need to know why, just because you are there alive, striving, committing, bordering on the absurd.
A rope
The Shining Mountain tells of this “absurd plan” and reflects how climbing a mountain can become an obsessive goal; It tells of the inevitable tensions that arise between the two after forty isolated days, in extreme situations, and of course also includes moments of joy, significance, complicity and laughter between colleagues who know how to live with adversity. Joe Tasker provides a second voice throughout Boardman’s narrative, offering another point of view and fully immersing the reader in the story, especially the three nightmare nights they spent hanging from hammocks and lost in the wall in the middle of storm. The chord relationship between them makes it clear that there are almost four hands writing the book.
And they are very different: Peter writes a meticulous diary, although in it he does not usually talk about the discrepancies when they arise with Joe or his discomforts, he thinks that perhaps it is the last thing he writes and does not want someone to misinterpret him or give him too much weight later to an argument, when something is written it tends to be exaggerated, he says. And Joe, for his part, wants me to live in the present as long as possible instead of writing so much. It is nice to see these differences and subtle difficulties in coexistence with each other, or how fearful situations are experienced with humor because they think that humor is closely linked to fear.
The shining mountain
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“Between us there used to be a certain uncooperative hostility to things of no importance. If an argument became too heated, we used to use a slogan: “Don’t worry, when we come back everything will be fine.” It was our way of establishing our common recognition that all the tensions that arose were the result of unusual circumstances in which we found ourselves.
The shining mountain
A gap of possibilities
On May 15, 1982 they disappeared on Everest as Chris Bonington tells in the prologue:
“His death, in addition to the deep feeling of pain for the loss of good friends, also implied a terrible feeling of frustration, because both still had a lot of potential to contribute, both on the mountain and in the creative aspect.”
The shining mountain
And the whole story is impregnated with the melancholic feeling that they are gone, that they left young and beautiful corpses, which sometimes mythologizes certain characters and their experiences, as if dying young were only a quality of the highest spirits.
I tend to admire the survivors of the mountains more, and at the same time the story of these two characters really has something very beautiful, of absurd and potential stupid plan, of madness, unconsciousness and fearlessness, the qualities of some young corpses and also, for what not, some extraordinary experiences.
The shining mountain
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“The snow shower had passed, and the setting sun was beginning to redden the rock around us. But I felt relaxed. I took several photos of Joe, varying the exposure to capture the light of the moment. “Hurry, no time to take photos.”
It was the first time Joe’s voice had sounded sourly impatient.
“Don’t worry,” I replied. You will like to have these photos when you are a grandfather! »
The shining mountain
I am saddened and moved by the knowledge, when I read between the pages of The shining mountain this dialogue so spontaneous, that they did not reach grandparents, who died at the age of 32 and 34 respectively on Everest: their poetry, their audacity, their desire to grow and live … to hang on a land full of wrinkles.
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