Moving chronicle of life in the mountains and what followed

NOT SET IN STONE

Dave Vass

By DAVID BARNES

It is not surprising that Dave Vass was one of New Zealand’s leading climbers.

From an early age, his outdoor adventures went beyond what many of his peers would do. A teenage winter ascent of Mt Ruapehu was his first climb, but not content with reaching the crater lake, he then circumnavigated it via the crown of peaks that surround it.

He dabbled in caving (multiday trips under Mt Arthur) and rafting (descending the grade 45 Karamea

River on a raft made of tyre tubes) before settling into mountaineering in Arthurs Pass National Park with the Canterbury University Tramping Club.

This book tracks his climbing career as it moved south, from the big peaks of Aoraki Mt Cook to more elegant climbs around Mt

Aspiring/Tititea before settling into alpine rock routes in Fiordland’s Darran Mountains.

There were new routes and first ascents and, along the way, New Zealand’s first commercial canyoning business.

In a bitterly ironic twist, it was a broken tree root that brought all that to a halt.

A tumble down a bank ended in a neck fracture, tetraplegia and life in a wheelchair.

Most of the book recounts the preaccident adventures. It is much, much more than a mountaineering show and tell. Something about each trip gives an insight into the psyche, the motivation, of a driven climber, and the reader can see an evolving relationship with the mountains and the landscapes. The writing is beautifully lyrical, and anyone who has spent time in any of the locations will be instantly transported back there.

Not Set In Stone won the Nankervis/Bamford NZ Mountain Book of the Year, while I found myself recalling the Boardman Tasker prizewinning works of British climbers like Andy Cave or Paul Pritchard. But the quality of the writing means this book should have far wider appeal than just for outdoor junkies.

The accident inevitably means the book changes gear. At times remarkably frank and often emotionally charged — never before has a book moved me to tears, let alone twice — it confronts the reality of the lifethreatening aftermath and rescue, followed by months in hospital dealing with physical and psychological changes at a scale unimaginable to most.

Throughout, Vass maintains his outstanding ability to take the reader along on the journey.

It would be easy to imagine that someone who had led such a physical and active life could fail to adjust to his profound disability. Although it clearly was not easy, perhaps the driven nature of someone used to pushing at boundaries has enabled that transition to be largely successful.

David Barnes lives in Lower Hutt and is an avid tramper and armchair mountaineer