Training for the New Alpinism: A Manual for the Climber as Athlete

By Steve House and Scott Johnston Patagonia Books Reviewed by Jon Popowich

This is an impressive new book by world-renowned alpinist Steve House and ath lete, climber and coach, Scott Johnston. Both have the resumés to contr ibute to a book such as this, in combination they’ve produced a ver y strong work. With four sections, 15 ver y detailed chapters and nearly 500 pages long, this is tr uly a magnum opus, a master piece where the authors arguably gather together ever ything known about alpine per for mance at this point in our histor y.

I don’t have the academic qualif ications to arg ue with the training science contained within it. It is clearly based on a combination of real exper ience and lessons, plus the ever-growing body of knowledge concer ning spor ts per for mance. The underly ing philosophy is simple, “No book can teach you how to lead a r un-out pitch. No stor y can show you how to bivouac. The fact is that you wil l gain the strength and endurance to climb a hard pitch more quick ly with a training reg ime plus climbing than by climbing alone.” What fol lows is a ser ies of ver y detailed chapters on absolutely ever ything concerning training, theor y, physiolog y, recover y, psycholog y, the list is long. Absent are sections on climbing technique and tools – this book isn’t intended as a how-to manual for alpine climbing. Balancing out the considerable science are excel lent commentaries and lessons by many of the old and cur rent masters such as Kurt yka, Troil let, Yaniro, Haley, Semple, Cordes, Blanchard, Steck, Habeler and others.

Alpinism is a game that can be tremendously rewarding, and br utal ly unforgiving on mind and body. If your climbing dreams occupy the geography of high alpine mixed rock and ice, or if like most of us you just want to improve the ef f iciency of your climbing as a whole, might just get you there. Highly recommended. our more conser vative approach on K6 West. However, the gold coin of the Piolets stil l has t wo sides. There are stil l winners and r unners-up, even if in the of f icial press release Lowe stressed that a “dif ferent jur y might have made dif ferent choices for the f inal nominees, and indeed […] for the f inal awards.”

And so I ask myself: Should I feel honoured by a pr ize accused of bias and ir relevance? Did our climb of K6 West deser ve the award? To my mind there was one clear choice for this year’s Piolets. Stephane Benoist, who repeated Ueli’s route on the south face of Annapurna a couple of weeks after its f irst ascent, put it well when he asked me – rhetor ical ly – what climb from 2013 we’d remember 10 years hence. For the rest, a dif ferent jur y might indeed have seen things dif ferently. It might have included Kunyang Chhish East among the winners. Had it been up to me, having climbed high on it in 2006, I would’ve. But before we star t splitting hairs – and perhaps it’s an easy thing for me to say, with a Piolet on my shelf – we should tr y to see the awards in ter ms less black and white. To quote Lowe again, “The f irst ascent of K6 West and the solo ascent of the Annapurna South Face are, in their own way, representative examples of the state of the ar t of mountaineering today.” Examples. Nothing more.

We can still ask whether we should even tr y to decide what the state of the ar t is. Numbers, so important in spor t climbing, fai l to capture the essence of a lpin ism. Instead, its essence l ies in the exper ience lived – and how do you rank dif ferent exper iences, especial ly when they’re someone else’s ? Yet the tr uth is that we’re always comparing and judging each other’s ef for ts. Just because choosing what’s sig nif icant is dif f icult, even if sometimes we can’t agree on what’s signif icant, it doesn’t mean it’s pointless to tr y. These days, the worth of a climb is often equated with the buzz it creates on Facebook and the number of views its f ilm gets on Vimeo. With their technical committee and expert jur y, the Piolets d’Or represent an attempt, however imperfect, to celebrate substance over st yle.

“Celebration of mountaineering” has a clichéd r ing to it. But this March, at the foot of Mont Blanc, there were times when it took on a real meaning for me, mostly away from the stages and speeches. Rather, I glimpsed it on the glaciers above Chamonix during the days and around bar tables in the evenings. It was seeing the passion in Stephane’s eyes as he talked about the south face of Annapurna while clutching a beer in hands maimed by frostbite; it was listening to Lowe’s stor ies of the north face of Alberta and the north r idge of Latok I, his white hair the epitome of what makes a successful alpinist. At times like these “celebration of mountaineering” didn’t seem like an empty phrase.