End of the Rope: Mountains, Marriage and Motherhood

Jan Redford

Brad doesn’t spend all that much time keeping his basement apartment stocked with food. In fact, not at all. There are, after all, mountains to be climbed. Rivers to be run. Days out in the magnificent Canadian Rockies to be had when the weather’s good. Days in bed with women when it’s not. Brad takes unconditional love to mean free love. He’s thoughtful enough to roll away the sheets when Redford arrives back from a climbing trip to find he’s been in bed with one of her friends. The fact that he comes by his freedom honestly does little to numb the pain she feels. The only thing to do is to hit the road again – this time to Yosemite. It’s the early 1980s and Redford has found herself among the more serious alpine climbers in Canada. She could have stayed in Ottawa and pursued a life more steadfast than the one with Brad; but alas the mountains of western Canada found her.

Mountains may satisfy your deepest needs, but they don’t care how much you love someone who heads into them. Redford‘s life changes with the death of her boyfriend on Mount Foraker. In a short span, family life follows with a husband and two children. More often than not, it seems that the unsatisfying life her mother led has become hers. A university degree and a professional career become the new unclimbed summits. Much of the book is devoted to the struggle to obtain them in the circumstances Redford f inds herself in. Pursuing mutual goals on equal terms is never easy in any relationship; a shared passion for climbing notwithstanding. Refusing to accept a descent into servility, Redford eventually makes her life her own. The sense that she can express herself through writing serves to connect her to a greater world that the one she finds herself in the interior. Her memoir retells the story of escape in world when the space available for women in the world of climbing was far more limited than it is today.—