ATTITUDE AND CHARACTER

Jeff Lowe approaching the south pillar of Nuptse, carrying on his back everything he would need for the next ten days

Extreme Alpinism was published in 1999 and won a number of awards. It finally went out of print after 22 years. This chapter was one of the most relevant, universally, and the reason the book was embraced and understood by many non-climbers; these lessons and ideas translate to a variety of human activities and disciplines, and forms the philosophical basis for the training philosophy apparent in my old gym project and affecting the current one today.

"It's easy to teach someone the skills, but it's difficult to teach them their own attitude"

Bruce Lee

Your attitude and emotions act as allies or enemies when attempting a difficult route at the edge of your ability. To succeed, you must forge a strong character and attitude. It is a matter of generating a justifiable confidence through self-knowledge, discipline and experience.

Climbing is a mental game. The best climbers aren't necessarily the fittest or the most skilled. Instead, elite climbers share a passion for climbing combined with the ability to exert their will and to pay attention to both internal and external conditions. To become great climbers, they had to remake themselves, to pare away impedimenta from life on the ground and to cast a new character suited for the challenges ahead. They were born with an internal fire. They tempered that fire with the recognition that only an unsentimental view of themselves would show where they needed to improve and learn. Once they saw the path to their goals, they adhered to it despite setbacks and difficulty.

It makes sense to emulate the great, but don't look at their accomplishments. Instead, learn from their preparation. Focus on the mental over the physical. At some point on a climb that stretches the limits, the only strength that matters is in the mind.

First, understand who you are, what you want, and what drives you. Self-understanding is the first step toward building self-control. Practicing self- discipline while climbing constructs habits of mind that will begin to kick in almost automatically as experience grows. With experience comes self-confidence, a prerequisite for tackling extreme climbs in the great ranges.

SELF KNOWLEDGE

Assess your personality before starting on the road to extreme alpinism. Some people approach climbing like an engineering problem, solvable step by step. These climbers train in a quantifiable way, investigating calorie consumption and planning meals accordingly, painstakingly weighing and organizing gear, researching weather patterns and interviewing others to discover the best time to try to climb. They map the route on a photograph, planning each pitch, each night's sleep, each climber's responsibilities. Other climbers behave like artists. They look at a route and intuitively know where it will go. They believe it will go. They load a pack with what they think they'll need, and upon shouldering it, they know whether that weight means success or failure. They plan casually. They know the season when conditions may be best and sense how little food and fuel they can get away with. They train just enough. They act flexibly, often probing with tentative forays to the mountain before committing to an all out push.

Most climbers possess some of both traits, one more dominant than the other. Learn which speaks loudest within you and obey it. By understanding and integrating one's motivations, abilities, and state of mind, one can climb great mountains.

Accurately assess your strengths, weakness, experience, and ability. Don't imagine you can attempt the Southwest Face of Everest in alpine style after climbing the Cassin Ridge on Denali in eight days. The leap isn't rational. Experience at 20,000 feet, lower than the starting altitude for climbing Everest, is insufficient. Of course, dreams are important. Dreams lead towards the great routes of the future. Recognize them as goals and march towards them, running towards them every now and then. Still, they belong in the future. Beware of accidentally succeeding on a route above your ability. Success breeds ambition.

Predicating your progression on a single successful ascent of a difficult and dangerous route, which was the result of luck rather than skill, is foolish. Learn to recognize when you lucked out and when you met the challenge. Without this understanding, such a victory will feed contempt for easy routes on forgiving mountains. Contempt leads to a casual attitude, which results in carelessness and ultimately, failure on a grand scale. Respect the mountains. Respect the routes you complete and those that turn you back. Respect for the mountains is a cornerstone of a long and fruitful career. Understand your temperament. Read studies on temperament types and apply their insights to particular sports and sub-disciplines within them. Understanding your type (and your Human Design) will direct you to the types of routes matching your predispositions. If you diagnose your abilities correctly and combine that with knowledge of your temperament type, the choice of a style of climbing within Alpinism will be simple. For example, having a great VO2 Max doesn't translate to the ability to climb K2 in under 24 hours. VO2 max doesn't correlate with the ability to acclimatize well. Many people are disinclined to suffer the monotony of moderate terrain or the risk of climbing without a rope. Some prefer climbing harder, "more interesting" routes at lower elevation. On the other hand, pure difficulty bores some people. The drudgery of reclining on a portaledge while the leader spends four hours leading a pitch may frustrate someone who relishes movement and loves to cover as much terrain as possible in a given time. They prefer to apply their technical skills toward moving quickly on less demanding terrain.

Look for routes where you can exploit your strong points, and where you'll be comfortable and satisfied. Experiment with different types of climbing and learn how you perform both physically and emotionally on them. Only by knowing yourself can you avoid using other people's yardsticks to measure your own achievements or to decide whether a route is worth doing.

Jeff Lowe, day two on the south pillar of Nuptse, May 1986

CONTROLLING FEAR

Inexperienced climbers hold the grand masters in awe because of their apparent fearlessness. Whatever his actions suggest, no man is immune to fear. Although the great climber feels comfortable in terrifying situations, he knows how to fear only that which should be feared. He knows fear as a product of mind and therefore subject to control and direction. Don't imagine the grand master dispassionately contemplating the killer storm's arrival. Instead, understand that he is scared though not paralyzed, terrified but turning his fear into productive action. Acquire the difficult yet essential skill of directing fear, harnessing it as a source of energy. There is no recipe because each mind is different, but some concepts may provide direction.

Nobody ‘controls’ a situation in the mountains. An individual trying to impose his will upon the environment will fail to come to terms with it. It is vanity to imagine you will. Instead, grow comfortable with giving up control and acting within chaos and uncertainty. Attempting to dominate constantly changing circumstances in the mountains or to oppose the abdication of control serve only to increase fear and multiply its effects. Embrace the inherent lack of control and apply your skill and ideals to the situation.

To climb through fear, to point fear up instead of down, maintain the desire and strength, the will and discipline, to go until the end of the pitch. If you are scared, reinforce your confidence by biting off what you know you can chew. Successfully swallowing it will encourage you to take another bite, another pitch. Try not to lose sight of the long view however. Any time your mind can accept a bigger bite, go for the top in one big gulp rather than chewing diet-sized chunks. Do whatever it takes to preserve your drive. Don't sketch around or get psyched out or consider lowering off to relinquish the lead. Trust your skill and give yourself up to the action.

The scared climber often points his fear at the ground, believing retreat will deliver a more comfortable state of mind. This climber has too strong a connection to the ground. His irrational fixation on retreat will impede upward progress even when retreat is no longer an option. Instead, he would do well to learn to aim his fear at the belay above. Scott Backes once described a climber as "going for the belay". He meant the guy was psyched, that if he hadn't run out of rope, he would have kept going. He didn't hit the target, he punched through it. One who climbs like this will feel fear, greet it, and keep going.

When all self-discipline fails and fear runs unchecked, the death spiral into panic is not far off. Panic is uncontrolled, undirected fear and as such is unproductive. It takes a huge amount of energy to panic and provides little enduring energy in return. Panic is great for lifting a car off of a baby or fleeing a charging mastodon, but it is useless for getting out of a dangerous, slowly evolving predicament in the mountains. Panic blocks thought. If you can't think, you die.

Every martial art and Eastern philosophy has at its heart the "conquest" of fear. Through meditation (active or passive) one may come to master fear. (However, some people spend their lives trying to know and subdue fear without appreciable results). To master panic in the mountains, work on this skill. Breathing and relaxation techniques may be carried everywhere once you learn them. These techniques reshape panic into plain old fear or discomfort, thus gaining power over it or releasing it altogether.

WILL AND SUFFERING

The difference between a good alpinist and a great one is will. The great climber exercises the discipline required to know himself. He trains to be stronger than he thinks necessary. On a route he eats an energy bar to sustain energy levels even if it makes him gag, and he drinks regularly to stay hydrated. He stops in the middle of a pitch to pull his hood up if the spindrift gets bad instead of waiting to reach the belay, and he stays dry because of it. He maintains the discipline needed to melt enough ice each night to fill the bottles, and sweeps snow out of the tent instead of letting it melt. He doesn't care if his partner's pack weighs less, and he wakes up and starts the stove when the alarm goes off. The great climber recognizes when he's having a bad day and admits it to his partner, then he relinquishes leads where he might slow the team and follows as fast as he can. He does all the cooking that night. A strong-willed climber will fast for a day or two without complaint to wait out bad weather.

Where does this strong will and hardness come from? It derives from recognizing desires and goals and then enduring whatever it takes to fulfill them. A strong will grows from suffering successfully and being rewarded for it. Does a strong will come from years of multi-hour training runs or do those runs result from a dominating will? There is no right answer because will and action feed one another.

Suffering provides the opportunity to exercise will and to develop grit. Replace recreational climbing with specific training to develop confidence. Climb on local crags in weather conditions far worse than any you would intentionally confront in the high mountains. Austrian climber Herman Buhl carried snowballs in his hands to develop his tolerance (psychological) and increase capillarization (physical). He climbed on his local crags all winter long, even in storm conditions, and rode his bike for hundreds of kilometers on the way to the mountains for training. It paid off, of course, when he climbed alone to the summit of Nanga Parbat.

The mind and body adapt to both comfort and deprivation. The difficult experiences of mountaineering may appear irrational and risky from the comfort of the armchair, but learning to deal with them is essential. Relish the challenge of overcoming difficulties that would crush ordinary men.

Michael Gilbert and Scott Backes got soaked to the bone climbing The Waterfall Pitch on the north face of the Eiger. When they stopped for the night at the Brittle Ledges, they discovered their sleeping bags had been drenched as well, Michael asked, "What are we going to do now?" Scott replied, "We're going to suffer." And they did. But it was a little thing compared to the suffering experienced intentionally and otherwise during the evolution of alpinism.

Learn to suffer.

EXPERIENCE AND LEARNING

Experience acts as a shield against disaster. It endows a climber with the ability to foresee potential problems and react appropriately to the unforeseen. Experience provides the raw material for imagining and executing hard routes in the mountains.

But if you don't have it, how do you gain it without being discouraged or hurt in the process? Bite off a little at a time. Choose mountains and routes fitting your ability. Develop a program that promotes progress without getting thrashed or discouraged. While there's truth in the adage that jumping into the deep end right away is the surest way to learn to swim, history abounds with examples of climbers who pushed the boat out too far and never came back, to mix metaphors.

It's easy to look at pictures of skilled climbers on difficult routes and think "I want to be there doing that." You want it all right now. Unless you wish to depend on luck instead of skill, move one step at a time. You may be cool, you may be talented, and you may have gotten away with some serious roadside routes or local alpine test pieces, but don't plan on succeeding on any worthwhile routes your first few times out in the Alps, Alaska, or the Himalaya. It takes time.

Learn how to learn. Write everything down if there's a risk of forgetting; refer to these notes whenever a question arises. Read the stories of the grand masters of alpinism. If you know how to learn, you will find gems in these stories not intended as instructional works. Ask questions. (Only the unasked question is stupid). Learn from your mistakes. The intelligent climber makes a mistake once in the mountains, and then he's "cured". The burned hand teaches best.

Find mentors with experience relevant to your goals and the willingness to pass it on. If you show dedication and desire, an inclination to learn and some talent, many 'older' climbers will offer you what they know. Even if they refuse to climb with you - and most will - a mentor who knows the path you wish to tread can teach you far more than any video, book, or school. You may have some mighty expectations, but don't count on fulfilling them right away. Don't even try. If you are in it for the long run you have plenty of time.

If you just want to do hard routes so you can say you climbed them, if you are climbing for other people, you'll probably have one or two close calls and then quit. Or you will be killed. Unlike other sports disciplines, high level alpinism becomes more dangerous the more you do it; the drug-like demands of harder, higher, lighter, faster have killed most of the very best climbers the world has ever seen. No one is immune.

CONFIDENCE

Confidence renders hardship easier to bear, makes extreme cold less debilitating, and allows the climber to take long runouts above dubious gear without inducing paralyzing, uncontrolled fear. Climbing while riddled with fear and doubt conjures worries about the condition of the ropes, the prospect of storms, and whether the "welded" half-inch angle at your feet will hold. These concerns require attention but should not consume you.

Most climbers graduating from wall climbing, cragging or "sport" ice and mixed routes to big climbs in the mountains allow apprehension and their lack of knowledge to affect their technical ability. This remains true until they adapt to the environment and can fully tap their skills. Until then, however, A2 will seem harder than it is. 5.8 will feel like 5.11, and M5 seems as sketchy as M8. All belays anchors look suspect. The awful scale of the mountains eats away at skill and experience gained elsewhere.

The surroundings make moves one could execute in the lowlands appear more difficult or dangerous than they are. This is a natural reaction. Remind yourself you've done similar moves before, that nuts have the same holding power at 14,000 feet as they do at sea level, and that 5.8 here equals 5.8 anywhere. If you did it in the lowlands you can do it here. The consequences of falling are far more serious in the mountains, but falling isn't the primary concern. Performing up to potential is. Working with your head to overcome physical inadequacies or problems posed by terrain and climate mean more than technical ability.

To imagine a difficult new route, to plan it and believe in one's ability so strongly that success becomes possible or even probable, demands a powerful ego. Don't confuse supreme confidence in one's strengths with pride. Understanding one's weakness is part of confidence, too.

Genuine confidence is rare. More often we see a casual, cavalier attitude towards life and death. People with inadequate experience don't understand the consequences of risk and tend to bluster and pose. An accumulation of near misses and watching friends die or suffer injury focuses attention and confronts even dullards with reality.

Belief in one's abilities is earned. Don't pretend. The audacity and certitude of youth often have no foundation, yet many routes in the Alps and Himalaya were realized by pure desire leavened with luck. The young climber who survives his years of boldness will develop into a self-assured, calculating, and mature climber with better chances of both success and survival. Try to live through the learning curve by exercising caution until skill develops. Talent alone can't help you. The ambition fueled by ability and vision must be tempered with uncompromising honesty about the limits of your talent, who you are, how much risk is acceptable, and which style of routes fit your ability. Posturing is fatal.

Steve House and Scott Backes high on the Slovak Direct after about 50 hours on the move.

FAILURE AND THE TYRANNY OF SUCCESS

People often treat climbing as a goal-oriented sport and rarely as an experience-oriented undertaking. One gains access to the lessons and spirit of climbing by climbing, and its value is not dependent on success. All goal-oriented rather than experience-oriented activities have failure as their antithesis. If you treat climbing as something with a beginning, middle and end, with achievement and success as the auditors of good work done and knowledge gained, you will learn to fear failure, to treat failure on climbs as a physical or psychic defect. But if you want to learn, if you want to live long enough to do a number of good routes in the mountains, if you hope to become a responsible climber whom partners and family can trust, learn how to fail and when to fail.

Every alpine climber struggles with learning when to fail. It is one of the most difficult lessons. Every great climber turns back too soon on occasion. He sometimes waits too long to retreat, goes past the point of no return and is forced to "fail upwards". There is no formula for determining the correct moment to fail. It can arrive as soon as you shoulder your pack, it can arise 15 pitches up an 18 pitch route, and it can bite you after days of toiling upwards. Knowing oneself solves the problem. You should fail and retreat before completely losing control of yourself.

Try to turn back while you still have some chance of affecting what will happen to you. Don't let things go too far. It's stated above that you can never be in control of a situation, yet you should never, ever voluntarily relinquish control of yourself. Make circumstance force it from you after a hard fight. Then, don't allow yourself to be paralyzed by panic when you eventually lose control. You will lose it at some point, but if you're well trained and learned from your experience, you should be able to remain flexible, to rely on reflex and the instinct for survival to make decisions.

Reflex is the result of training, training, training. The will to live is programmed into everyone. Some people's will is stronger than others. Is yours strong, or will you just give up without much of a fight? Know before you go. Learning how to fail is a bit easier. The mechanics are covered in the Going Down chapter. Retreating safely and efficiently, besides being physically intricate, is also a state of mind. Depending on the margin of safety, retreat could be mandated by the slightest indication of a potential problem with the weather or psyche. If the margin of safety is wide, the team may be able to get in really deep before pulling the plug. The style of ascent corresponds directly to the style of retreat that conditions dictate. Dealing with the possibility of both retreat and 'failing upwards' comprise an integral part of preparing for any route in the mountains.

GOOD AND BAD ATTITUDES

Despite ideal training and preparation, a bad attitude or unsettled mind will destroy focus, guaranteeing failure. You must want (or need) to be where you are, doing what you are doing. A mind not giving 100% is a liability. If you can't pay attention to the climbing or if you don't want to be on the mountain, don't go. You'll learn nothing by doing one thing with your body and another with your mind. You let your partner down (even if you think you're holding up your end by going through the motions) by not playing with commitment. You predetermined your outcome so don't lead your partner on.

A bad attitude for a climber bears no resemblance to general usage of the term. Many climbers completed hard routes out of rage and despair- some made a lifestyle out of it. I define a bad attitude as a mental state preventing one from realizing one's desires.

A good attitude, however, consists of a psychological state that allows and spurs the climber to realize a goal. Personal torment has inspired great climbs and great works of art. Outsiders often view torment as a negative state of mind or bad attitude. Confusion, questioning and doubt often act as fountains of creativity, producing many astounding works of art and action. Therefore, they meet my definition of a "good" attitude.

FAILURE, AGAIN

I've retreated from an alarming number of routes during my career. Sometimes I fled storms, other times technical difficulty thwarted me. Often, I forgot to eat and drink enough so my confidence fizzled, and sometimes I was scared, plain and simple. I've failed in the hut by realizing I couldn't do what I wanted the instant my feet hit the cold floor. The hours sleeping in the wake of a decision like that are some of the most refreshing I've had. I failed at 27,500' on Everest after four attempts on a new route in the lightest style possible; no O2, no fixed rope, no rope, no sleeping bag, just one partner, my tools, a pad, a stove and a shovel. I wasn't willing to risk doing "just a little more", the same "just a little more" which distinguishes the great from the merely good. I failed 1200' below the top of the biggest wall in the world after having climbed just under 14,000 vertical feet in five days. I failed to climb a new route on the 10,000 vertical foot north face of Pic Communism because I misinterpreted conditions both on the face and in my head. I wanted to be the guy in the magazine who soloed the hard, new route. Unfortunately, my brain was in the mood to cruise on moderate, though no less risky terrain. I retreated and just hours after failing I soloed the Czech Route on the same face, a climb more closely corresponding to my state of mind. I knew myself, but it took failing from eight pitches up the virgin line to make me see what I needed. I failed on routes because I did not know how to do them and each attempt was another foray into the classroom. I eventually graduated with enough information to complete the route. "Beyond Good and Evil" on the north face of the Aiguille des Pelerins required three visits to the schoolyard before we figured out how to do it. I retreated twice from the south pillar of Nuptse, even in the company of a much wiser climber, because for me the route was ten years in the future. I may have the skills and knowledge to do it today, but I certainly did not in 1986. Blind, foolish ambition coaxed me onto the wall. I'm glad I lived through it.

I have failed a lot. But my attitude towards failing and towards the learning kept me from considering myself a failure. I learned ten times more from every miscarry than from any success. The knowledge I gained gave me the confidence to return to these faces and attempt them again, or to try bigger, harder routes several years down the road. I know how to get down off any mountain, and I can do it in almost any conditions. These skills and this confidence allow me to imagine the evolutionary routes of my future. They allow me to progress instead of repeating myself. My attitude, while considered "bad" by some, is in fact one of the greatest assets I possess, and it kept me alive and productive for many years.