Issue 18 June 2003
COMMENTResponsibilities and retrospective thinkingIn the December issue of TSM, Vice President Fred Belcher provided an excellent piece for the Comment section in which he talked about how we could best go about bringing on the younger members of the walking and climbing community, the ways in which the MCofS is looking ahead to the future, and the methods put in place to facilitate this process. Speaking purely from a mercenary point of view, the young folk of today are the committee members of the future, so in order for the MCofS to have a healthy outlook we need to encourage younger folk to take part in the myriad of rock and mountain sports activities available to them out of doors. A few weeks ago I met a father and son out on a walk in the snow, with the poor lad, who couldn't have been much over six years of age, in some distress as his wellies were full of snow and his hands sodden. The pain from the cold on his extremities must have been severe, and the roughness with which his father was admonishing him cannot have gone far in relieving the lad's anguish. How would he have viewed his mountain experience when he got home, let alone in the years to come? I cannot believe that such a negative experience at an early age will be completely forgotten, and am sure that the seeds of rebellion would have been sown. I forget who said 'negative experiences in youth beget a negative outlook in adulthood', perhaps it was Mao, perhaps it was me, but we'd be best to remember it. On a slightly different, but nonetheless relevant note, those of you with children who are able to attend the Annual Gathering should find that there is plenty for the younger folk to do this year. The sessions that we are hoping to provide include orienteering, rock climbing, abseiling and an awareness walk covering not only basic map work, but also looking at what makes our time out on the hills complete: wildlife, plants, geology etc. Also, any ideas for future gathering events for younger people will be gratefully received, as would offers of helping on the sessions. I very much look forward to seeing you, however old you are, in June. On the issue of motivation, a great friend and a man who loved encouraging young people passed away a few weeks ago. Chris Dansen, Munroist and all round mountaineer, was one of the most inspirational characters I've known and the void left by his death in the lives of all those who knew him is vast. Finally, due to a huge change in business commitments and to my spending part of the year overseas, I am unable to dedicate anything like the time necessary that the post of President demands, and am standing down at the AGM. My heartfelt thanks and apologies must go to all of those that were 'dropped in it' by my absence overseas almost as soon as I took up the post, and I wish my successor the very best in their new position.
Pete Hill. |
TALKING POINTThe Future of MountaineeringOur sport is a diverse collection of activities whose participants, around the world, operate to varying ethics and styles. They sometimes clash over issues such as bolting or not, on-sight on rappel, helping out fellow stricken mountaineers on Himalayan peaks, the adoption of climbing styles such as dry-tooling, as well as the management of climbing visitors in order to conserve a popular area. They all come together under the banner of the UIAA (the world federation of mountaineering). Currently the President of this body is Ian McNaught Davies, former President of the BMC and late last year the UIAA held a conference in Innsbruck entitled “The Future of Mountaineering”. Over 100 leading climbers and mountaineers (including Chris Bonington, Jim Bridwell, Leo Holding, The Huber Brothers, Reinhold Messner and Doug Scott) came together to argue these issues, by re-looking at an older UIAA paper “The Mountain Code”. Of the many decisions that were agreed from this soup of disparate views, were the basic principles of liberty and human rights, intactness of nature, solidarity of disparate religions and ability and ethnic origin, self-actualisation to achieve personal fulfilment, the need for honesty to evaluate accomplishments, excellence and adventure. This resulted in The Tyrol Declaration of Best Practice in Mountain Sports. This declaration covers many aspects of mountaineering from dying and death, conservation, responsibilities of leaders and guides, team spirit and public relations, but 'Article 1' is that of Individual Responsibility and the one recurring theme in all the agreed Articles is that of preserving adventure. But there is no doubt that this is at odds with modern societies continued will to make everything safer and so castigate mountaineers who have accidents as foolhardy and placing the lives of others at risk. The litigious world we live in also does not help, with many people happy to abdicate their responsibility to others, but then blame them when things go wrong and wish for compensation. As a result we now require civil liability insurance (see this article for more information about this subject) to make sure we will survive financially, once survived physically. Reproduced below are two articles based on past conferences that concentrate on adventure and why we must maintain it in our sport in the future………………………..
Risk and AdventureBy Bob Barton The following article is taken from a longer talk given as part of a conference on Risk and Adventure in Society held at the Royal Geographical Society during November 2000. Other speakers included Dr Frank Furedi, Libby Purves and The Duke of Edinburgh. As well as working as a Guide in the Alps and Scotland, Bob advises the Outward Bound Trust, the Duke of Edinburgh's Award and others on risk management. "Columbus set out to discover a new route to China, but he discovered America. Adventure rarely reaches its pre-determined goal." Robin Hodgkin's words serve as a reminder of the essential unpredictability of genuine adventure. People seem increasingly to expect an outdoor experience to be a risk free, error free and controlled commodity like a pack of computer discs. Without uncertainty of outcome, without risk, we may have a very fine recreational experience, but we no longer have adventure. I believe that we are in danger of risk being sidelined as an undesirable by-product of adventurous activity, of it being treated as if it were a carcinogen to be eliminated from an otherwise healthy diet rather than being recognised as itself an essential nutrient. The balancing of risk and benefit has always been at the core of adventure activities, but in many cases we seem to be under threat of this being replaced by the virtual elimination of risk. I should make it quite clear that I give no encouragement to the gratuitous taking of risks, most especially with other people's children. I applaud efforts to improve the quality of our risk management, but the active balancing of risk with benefit is too precious a commodity to be lost. My own most intense memories of mountaineering are of a state of deep concentration, of total engagement in just such a balancing between the possible and the imaginable. The influence of genuinely adventurous outdoor education spreads far and wide in the lives of those taking part. Some time ago I received an invitation to a meeting aimed at, and I quote their title, "ensuring safe practices in outdoor education activities". One sentence was emphasised in bold by the organisers: "The greatest risk to young participants in outdoor activities is lack of awareness of current guidance on the part of organisers" So storms, steep cliffs and flooded rivers are less of a risk than a lack of awareness of the current guidance. This is like saying that the greatest danger facing people travelling on motorways is lack of awareness of the Highway Code or failure to read the car manufacturer's handbook. Lack of compliance maybe, but surely not often lack of awareness. I think the writers of statements like this need to get out more. I mean this quite literally. It is a very sobering experience to go into the great outdoors and measure your carefully constructed and well-intentioned guidelines against uncomfortable reality. Tom Price wrote “Anyone can make adventure training safe by taking all the adventure out of it” and “The best safety lies not so much in the avoidance of danger, but in learning how to deal with it.” The combination of these two ideas is a strong persuasion of the need to have the active balancing of risk and opportunity at the centre of outdoor education and that at least some of this must be done by participants themselves, so developing their own risk management skills. This happens most readily when youngsters are thrown on their own resources and that is why, when skilfully matched to capability, unaccompanied journeys are supreme. They are successful not despite the absence of adult leaders, but entirely because of it. I have attempted to argue a case for real adventure but a question remains. How to reap the benefits of risk without paying its price? Ultimately, there is no way to square this particular circle; society must decide what price should be afforded, what balance drawn. We may have little immediate influence over a wider society's shift towards risk aversion, but by a defence of real adventure we might give future generations of young people the adventures they deserve and that our future may depend on. The Matterhorn was first climbed by Edward Whymper and his companions in 1865. On the descent they were overtaken by tragedy and this led Whymper to write perhaps the greatest lines in the literature of risk and adventure: "Climb if you will, but remember that courage and strength are naught without prudence, and that a momentary negligence may destroy the happiness of a lifetime. Do nothing in haste; look well to each step; and from the beginning think what may be the end." It is all a question of balance.......................
“If thy heart Fails thee, climb not at all”By Kevin Howett Taken from a presentation at the MCofS 2001 Annual Gathering debate on Munro Madness - A Risky Business. Kevin Howett espouses his personal adoption of a philosophy of risk-taking as the best means of developing safer mountaineers. The title of this article is a quote from Queen Elizabeth I. A first interpretation of her words might be 'do not take risks', but I think she was an adventure-taker and she meant that you should listen to your inner feelings. She knew what mountaineering was all about! The usual clichéd statement that mountaineering is an escape from the constraints of normal life is partly correct. But it is also a much more basic drive to fully experience the thing that is our life; that is our bodies; that is our consciousness. In many respects we are defined by the way our bodies relate to our natural environment and I fully believe that mountaineering, being so involved in all aspects of that environments extremes, up close and personal, is the only “activity” that allows a modern law-abiding person to truly understand what 'being' is all about. I would go further than Hemingway who feels they are amongst only three real sports, all of which carry inherent risk; to me they are life itself. My own background involved learning by taking close shaves with kindred spirits my own age. Our parents gave us a long apprenticeship from an early age, after which they were happy to give us the freedom to discover more about the outdoors ourselves; from walking the Border hills at 12yr old, to backpacking for 20 days in the north west of Scotland at 16yr old. We learnt a lot about planning, food, getting lost. No one knew where we were, we left no 'route cards'. How often is this amount of freedom given to children nowadays? And if anything went wrong would the parents now be visited by Social Services, castigated by police and media or possibly charged with neglect? As young adults at university we were possibly most at risk as our horizons widened with (minimum) help and advice from older students; struggling in a whiteout on the cairngorm plateau; dragging myself over the top of my first rock lead, all protection sliding down the rope or the time the rope untied from my harness and fell to the ground leaving me stranded 80ft up an overhanging wall; whilst a first Alpine visit saw me tripping over 'alpine coils' on Mont Blanc and diving headfirst into Italy. I learnt very quickly about making my own decisions and most importantly about my 'reserve' - a bit like Luke Skywalker discovering 'The Force'. Those in authority wishing to make us all safer often have a perception of risk assessment that is defined by a narrow and superficial understanding. If the absolute elimination of risk is you're goal, then the only way to gain that is to define safety practices set in stone from the outset; a helmet must be worn at all times, you must only use the specified technical equipment, you must not solo climb, you must not go out when the weather is bad! But this simply reduces the risk by superficial means (and often only seems to make people less safe) and does not allow one to fully learn risk assessment - the true path to safer practice. Back at university, friends and I went 'Glubbing'; purposefully tying ourselves into a sea cliff to see how big a wave we could endure! The experience helped us later when we descended into sea cliffs amid gigantic seas, not knowing whether or not we could climb out, but having the adventures of our lives. Alf Bridges, a renowned climber in 1930's Derbyshire would practice the art of falling off gritstone. His jumps got higher and higher, and he managed to learn how to fall from 40ft without getting hurt. We experimented in a similar way in Northumberland as well as learning to take bigger and bigger falls on a rope. I believe all this allowed me to understand my strengths and weaknesses (and that of my gear), and where my limits lay. Its my experience that most people (including children) have a highly developed sense of self-preservation so I feel that we should be instilling in beginners an adventurous nature along with a sense of personal responsibility that will make for safer climbers, who can continue to push personal limits but know when to turn back and who do not blame others when things go wrong. It is up to all of us (Governing Bodies of mountaineering, associated organisations, rescue, clubs and individual practitioners) to better champion the whole idea of taking risk. We should be proud of recklessness and it's history (such as incredible feats of endurance in the Antarctic by Shakleton and Wally Herbert, the climbing exploits of Messner on Everest or Herman Buhl or Johnny Dawes on the most serious rock climb in the world) and we should be rejoicing in this so called madness, because in reality the rest of society is not the true reality.
We would like to hear your views. Please comment through the 'Pitch-in' pages of the website or email info@mountaineering-scotland.org.uk
For more information about the Tyrol Declaration see the UIAA website: www.uiaa.ch or see your club secretary who has been posted a copy of the UIAA Journal 'World Mountaineering and Climbing' Issue 1, 2003, which covers the proceedings in detail. This magazine is available on the UIAA website (http://journal.uiaa.ch). |
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