Photo Charles N Brown©
M John Harrison's books include Viriconium, Signs of Life, Light, and the short story collection, Travel Arrangements. He was born in the Peak District and, while living for a time in Yorkshire, was a keen climber and fell runner. His 1989 novel, Climbers, won the Boardman Tasker Memorial award when it was first published, and has just been rereleased in paperback by Phoenix. It tells the story of a man who, running from a failed marriage, becomes increasingly addicted to the adrenaline, folklore and camaraderie of rock-climbing.1 On and Off the Rocks by Jim Perrin (Gollancz)
People climb for thrills. They climb to get away from the failed or boring bits of their lives. Most British climbing journalism skirts this point. Perrin doesn't, so these pieces have an unexpected liveliness. Most notable is his 1978 account, Street Illegal, the first paragraph of which contains the joyful admission, "I had been on Romney Marsh for a few days, trying (and failing) to get into the bed of a girl with large sensual hands and a calm manner." What can you do after that, Perrin implies, but drive to the Cheddar Gorge, cut yourself two lines of coke, eat all the speed - including the silver foil it came in - and solo a climb called "Coronation Street"? The climbing establishment of the time was not amused by this honesty, but you will be.
People climb for thrills. They climb to get away from the failed or boring bits of their lives. Most British climbing journalism skirts this point. Perrin doesn't, so these pieces have an unexpected liveliness. Most notable is his 1978 account, Street Illegal, the first paragraph of which contains the joyful admission, "I had been on Romney Marsh for a few days, trying (and failing) to get into the bed of a girl with large sensual hands and a calm manner." What can you do after that, Perrin implies, but drive to the Cheddar Gorge, cut yourself two lines of coke, eat all the speed - including the silver foil it came in - and solo a climb called "Coronation Street"? The climbing establishment of the time was not amused by this honesty, but you will be.
2 Touching the Void by Joe Simpson (Vintage)
Film hasn't treated climbing with much dignity over the last 30 years, Hollywood's basic assumption being, "That's really great, guys, now let's have the machine guns!", so Kevin MacDonald?s documentary reconstruction was welcome if only because it had the confidence to tell an undiluted climbing story. But the book is better. 1985: Simpson splits the bones in his leg in a fall near the top of Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes. Simon Yates lowers him 3000 feet by increments, belaying on nothing much at all, then loses control and cuts the rope. Simpson wakes up in a crevasse, puzzled to find himself still alive. The rest is history.
3 Against the Wall by Simon Yates (Jonathan Cape)
Yates became known as the man who cut the rope. Some years later he found himself back in South America with Sean Smith, Noel Craine and the legendary Paul Pritchard, attempting a new route in Patagonia. They were less than prepared. Paul forgot to bring a tent, though he found one later on a train. The team binoculars belonged to Noel's mum. Faced with cruel weather and an exhausting daily commute up decaying fixed rope, they soon saw that their intention to "laugh their way up the wall" wasn't neccessarily going to see them through.
Film hasn't treated climbing with much dignity over the last 30 years, Hollywood's basic assumption being, "That's really great, guys, now let's have the machine guns!", so Kevin MacDonald?s documentary reconstruction was welcome if only because it had the confidence to tell an undiluted climbing story. But the book is better. 1985: Simpson splits the bones in his leg in a fall near the top of Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes. Simon Yates lowers him 3000 feet by increments, belaying on nothing much at all, then loses control and cuts the rope. Simpson wakes up in a crevasse, puzzled to find himself still alive. The rest is history.
3 Against the Wall by Simon Yates (Jonathan Cape)
Yates became known as the man who cut the rope. Some years later he found himself back in South America with Sean Smith, Noel Craine and the legendary Paul Pritchard, attempting a new route in Patagonia. They were less than prepared. Paul forgot to bring a tent, though he found one later on a train. The team binoculars belonged to Noel's mum. Faced with cruel weather and an exhausting daily commute up decaying fixed rope, they soon saw that their intention to "laugh their way up the wall" wasn't neccessarily going to see them through.
4 Rock Jocks, Wall Rats and Hang Dogs by John Long (Simon & Schuster)
Subtitled Rock Climbing on the Edge of Reality. Subsequent to his adventures here, Long wrote the premise of the film Cliffhanger. He can't be held responsible for the result, and anyway you forgive him after reading this collection of short, primarily autobiographical sketches, set in Yosemite's legendary Camp 4, which usher in the era of sport climbing in America.
Subtitled Rock Climbing on the Edge of Reality. Subsequent to his adventures here, Long wrote the premise of the film Cliffhanger. He can't be held responsible for the result, and anyway you forgive him after reading this collection of short, primarily autobiographical sketches, set in Yosemite's legendary Camp 4, which usher in the era of sport climbing in America.
5 Rock Climbs in the Peak District, The Bleaklow Area ed Paul Nunn (The Climbers' Club)
This was the first guidebook I ever bought. Bewildered by its weird grammar, repelled by its fuggy obsession with local climbing history, and sandbagged by approach instructions which, if you followed them, led you into the middle of a soaking wet empty moor, I soon discovered a frightening discrepancy between the difficulty of the climbs as described and the difficulty of the climbs as actually climbed. Impossible to follow if you are not a climber, it makes strange reading even if you are.
This was the first guidebook I ever bought. Bewildered by its weird grammar, repelled by its fuggy obsession with local climbing history, and sandbagged by approach instructions which, if you followed them, led you into the middle of a soaking wet empty moor, I soon discovered a frightening discrepancy between the difficulty of the climbs as described and the difficulty of the climbs as actually climbed. Impossible to follow if you are not a climber, it makes strange reading even if you are.
6 Into Thin Air by John Krakauer (Macmillan)
Mountains are defined by their use to us. People still think of Everest as an almost metaphysical destination. In fact it's as used as a bus stop in Leeds, and a lot less tidy. On May 10, 1996, there were 141 people on the mountain - quite a few of them 'adventure tourists' (who had paid $68000 each to be there) and their guides - eight of whom died in the worst storm in Everest's history. Krakauer, commissioned by the US magazine Outdoors to report on the commercialisation of high altitude climbing, watched the tragedy unfold. This simply-written, genuinely harrowing account was his attempt to come to terms with it, and with the new use to which we're putting our tallest mountain.
Mountains are defined by their use to us. People still think of Everest as an almost metaphysical destination. In fact it's as used as a bus stop in Leeds, and a lot less tidy. On May 10, 1996, there were 141 people on the mountain - quite a few of them 'adventure tourists' (who had paid $68000 each to be there) and their guides - eight of whom died in the worst storm in Everest's history. Krakauer, commissioned by the US magazine Outdoors to report on the commercialisation of high altitude climbing, watched the tragedy unfold. This simply-written, genuinely harrowing account was his attempt to come to terms with it, and with the new use to which we're putting our tallest mountain.
7 Space Below My Feet by Gwen Moffat (Penguin)
Gwen Moffat deserted from the Auxiliary Territorial Service in 1946 to go climbing (and incidentally became the UK's first female mountain guide in the 1950s). She hated the army. She was bored with Stoke on Trent. Cader Idris had captivated her with its wildness. Climbers had captivated her because there was "no consistency" to them: they went where they wanted and did what they did. Her prose is beautiful, frank, tentative, full of the mountain landscape, and she demonstrates eloquently that a book about climbing can easily be a book about people too.
Gwen Moffat deserted from the Auxiliary Territorial Service in 1946 to go climbing (and incidentally became the UK's first female mountain guide in the 1950s). She hated the army. She was bored with Stoke on Trent. Cader Idris had captivated her with its wildness. Climbers had captivated her because there was "no consistency" to them: they went where they wanted and did what they did. Her prose is beautiful, frank, tentative, full of the mountain landscape, and she demonstrates eloquently that a book about climbing can easily be a book about people too.
8 One Step in the Clouds compiled by Audrey Salkeld & Rosie Smith (Diadem/Sierra Club)
A seriously comprehensive collection of climbing fiction, including short stories by Al Alvarez, Dermot Somers and David Craig, as well as curiosities like Kim Stanley Robinson's Mother Goddess of the World. It is also notable, if you haven't had enough after over a thousand pages, for its exhaustive bibliography. But the peach of this collection is the whole of James Salter's psychopathically focused Solo Faces, the best climbing novel ever written, yet somehow not a climbing novel at all.
A seriously comprehensive collection of climbing fiction, including short stories by Al Alvarez, Dermot Somers and David Craig, as well as curiosities like Kim Stanley Robinson's Mother Goddess of the World. It is also notable, if you haven't had enough after over a thousand pages, for its exhaustive bibliography. But the peach of this collection is the whole of James Salter's psychopathically focused Solo Faces, the best climbing novel ever written, yet somehow not a climbing novel at all.
9 Teach Yourself Mountain Climbing by Godfrey Francis (University Press)
If you're bored with indoor climbing competitions, insurance policies and shiny, insanely expensive bits of equipment with stupid names like Cardiac Arrester, or if you yearn for a time when the words "spirit of climbing" were not automatically linked to some manufacturer's marketing effort, track down this book, and learn how to tie on to the rope with a waistband of "Italian hemp line (five eighths of an inch circumference) wrapped six or seven times round the waist," which would kill you if you dangled from it for more than twenty minutes. You?ll soon feel better.
10 www.climbing.com My 10th choice isn't a book, it's a magazine website. Books are always behind the game. I go here if I want to know what's happening. The current issue has Tommy Caldwell's account of his successful attempt to free climb the Dihedral Wall of El Capitan. "My arms were seizing every time I lifted them above my head. Blood was seeping from holes in my fingers, knees, elbows, shins and forehead. I had been abusing my body on this climb for over two months." Really? Tell us more. If you're bored with indoor climbing competitions, insurance policies and shiny, insanely expensive bits of equipment with stupid names like Cardiac Arrester, or if you yearn for a time when the words "spirit of climbing" were not automatically linked to some manufacturer's marketing effort, track down this book, and learn how to tie on to the rope with a waistband of "Italian hemp line (five eighths of an inch circumference) wrapped six or seven times round the waist," which would kill you if you dangled from it for more than twenty minutes. You?ll soon feel better.
www.climbing.com
First Published in The Guardian.
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