Is there a common factor between the adventures and adventurers described in this book? In basic motivation, spirit, call it what you will, I think there is, even though the adventurers themselves vary enormously in personality and style. In the fifty or so years covered by this book there have been huge social and technological changes which have also affected the way we venture. Yet I believe the fundamentals remain the same.
If we examine the complex mosaic of adventure, patterns emerge; there are differences of proportion but a uniting theme. Every one of the ventures I have described represents a plunge into the unknown to try to satisfy mankind’s insatiable curiosity about ourselves, our reactions to stress or danger, to finding the boundaries of our physical capability or that of a craft. In each venture there is some level of risk. Thor Heyerdahl or Vivian Fuchs were not interested in risk for its own sake, considering themselves scientists rather than adventurers, but they were undoubtedly prepared to accept a very high level of risk to achieve their objectives. The climber or cave diver, on the other hand, who is much more directly stimulated by risk, is not trying to do something dangerous dangerously. Rather they each seek out a situation of high risk and gain an intense stimulus, which can reach levels of euphoria, by being in complete command.
Tom Robbins, in his zany novel titled Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, defines this: ‘The principal difference between an adventurer and a suicide is that the adventurer leaves himself a margin of escape (the narrower the margin, the greater the adventure). A margin whose width and breadth may be determined by unknown factors, but whose successful navigation is determined by the measure of the adventurer’s nerve and wits. It is always exhilarating to live by one’s nerves or towards the summit of one’s wits.’
The margin of escape varies with the individual but arguably gets slimmer as successive generations stretch the limits and refine the techniques. In climbing, the ultimate is undoubtedly going solo, when your life is literally in your own hands and if you fall you are almost certainly going to die. Messner took this concept to the limit on the Diamir Face of Nanga Parbat and then on Everest. The same could be said of long solo ocean voyages or polar treks. Messner and David Lewis use very similar language in describing their need to push themselves to the limit to ‘find’ themselves, though the ingredients of this experience at sea and on a mountain are very different. Solitary sailors need greater reserves of self-sufficiency than mountaineers, the periods that they have to withstand loneliness being measured in hundreds of days. On Nanga Parbat or Everest Messner was alone for a few intense days. The moment-to-moment risk and physical stress were more continuous and unremitting than those of the solitary sailor, who matches them only in concentrated moments of crisis, such as the horror, known to practically every round-the-world yachtsman, of being knocked down in the Southern Ocean.
It is the media who batten on ghoulish statistics after each adventuring fatality. In purely statistical terms cave diving is probably the most dangerous of all adventure activities. But mountaineering, particularly at altitude, must run it close and certainly focuses press attention. One in three climbers who set out from the top camp for the summit of K2 die on the way up or down. Or to put it more personally, Voytek Kurtyka, who climbed the South Face of Changabang with MacIntyre and Porter and is one of the most successful mountaineers in the world, has commented in an interview that eighty per cent of the best Polish Himalayan climbers are now dead. Even the survivors, people like myself, Doug Scott, or Kurtyka himself, cannot claim to be alive because we have more cunning, know when to turn back, or are more cautious, for we have all had our narrow escapes when only luck has saved us. Why do we do it if it is so dangerous? The stimulus of risk is undoubtedly a strong lure, combined perhaps with the demonstrably foolish belief that it is never going to happen to me. This stimulus of risk creates a sense of heightened awareness. Doug Scott felt this on the Salathé Wall of El Capitan. He and his climbing partner, Peter Habeler, had already spent one night on the wall; hands were chafed and sore; they were fully committed, for retreat would have been difficult, but Doug was also totally attuned to his surroundings:
‘On Broad Ledge a frog leapt on the scene. My surprise changed to wonder as I contemplated that little frog and its place on the vast monolith of El Cap. How many more were there, I wondered. Perhaps enough to fill a ten-foot-square box. Then he hopped away into the rock, so perfectly camouflaged that I couldn’t spot him again. I felt really good up there because of that frog; he seemed to show that we were all in it together – not just the El Cap scene, but the whole business of being alive.
‘I looked around with a new intensity and watched a drop of water trickle down the dusty granite, a clear crystal that flashed a brilliant light and was gone, to be burnt up by the sun that had momentarily given it life. I traced his wet path upwards to a crevice and considered its route down through the rock from the melting snow hundreds of feet above.
‘I felt completely relaxed’
It is this sense of heightened awareness and perception of beauty, of being alive, of physical accomplishment, that raises adventure, despite its inevitable periods of grinding effort and agonising discomfort, from being an exercise in masochism to a much broader, richer experience.
The self-imposed hair shirt is present to a greater or lesser degree in every adventure. What would be memorable about the achievement without it? The struggle seems particularly unremitting in polar travel. Wally Herbert’s Arctic crossing is still the longest-ever polar journey, but subsequent travellers have refined the challenge. Naomi Uemura from Tokyo was the first to travel alone to the North Pole, but he used dogs and had a supply drop. The first man to reach the Pole unaided, hauling his own sledge, was the Norwegian, Borge Ousland in 1994. Two years later he went on to be the first to cross Antarctica alone and unaided, pulling a sledge weighing 178 kilos and, using a para sail when the wind was in his favour, he covered a distance of to 2,845 kilometres in sixty-four days. Polar travel has come a long way since Fuchs’ epic crossing in 1957–1958.
New materials and improved communication have enabled the modern adventurer to stretch the limits even farther and increase the safety factor. GPS (Global Positioning System) technology gives the sailor or polar traveller an instant fix on their position; satellite phones and lightweight radios can aid rescue, as when Ranulph Fiennes was in severe pain from kidney stones on his solo bid to cross Antarctica, or when Messner and his brother nearly drowned in their effort to make a North Pole crossing.
New technology has also created new forms of adventure. The development of the paraglider enabled Jean Marc Boivin to fly from the summit of Everest, while others have undertaken increasingly long flights and journeys. British flyer Bob Drury is exploring the Himalaya by walking to high launch points, then paragliding over peaks and passes as far as he can, attuned to the vagaries of updraught and wind, until forced to land, then walking on to the next spot from where he can take off once again. He describes its magic:
‘I can’t believe where I am. The stark clarity of this incredible landscape contrasting against the cold deep blue of the unpolluted high altitude sky leaves me feeling like I should be seeing it all from the safety of a Boeing 747. I’ve always known that one day I’d get to Zanskar, but never dreamt I might see it while sitting comfortably in a little chair at 6,500 metres, suspended under a nylon bag, supported by millimetre-thick strings.
‘I love the feeling of freedom you get from free flying, you are totally exposed to your environment and the elements on a paraglider. You feel the temperature fall and your heartbeat increase as you rise ever higher and the violent buffeting of the thermals tells you that you’re no passenger up here – you, and only you, can keep yourself alive.’
A less attractive, but equally undeniable, element involved in adventuring is the ego factor or, to put a slightly more acceptable face on it, the competitive element. In looking primarily at the innovators in adventure I have found myself concentrating on the record setters in whom this urge to be first plays a strong motivational part. It is a rare adventurer who does not have any of this element in his or her make up. Moitessier belatedly discovered he didn’t have it when he was in the position to win the Golden Globe Race and collect the prize and the plaudits, but instead he chose to sail on halfway round the world again and drop out in Tahiti. Donald Crowhurst had such a desperate urge to succeed he became the victim of his own ego and the publicity machine he had created. Eric Shipton lacked the single-minded ambition to reach the top of Everest but found profound satisfaction in exploring the Patagonian Ice Cap. Exploration was the end in itself. It did not have to prove something or provide an entry for the record books.
Shipton’s climbing companion of pre-war years, Bill Tilman, shared the same non-competitive philosophy. Tilman had established himself as one of the world’s outstanding high-altitude mountaineers in 1936 when he climbed Nanda Devi (7,816 metres), at that time the highest and by far the most technically difficult peak yet climbed in the Himalaya. But he, like Shipton, believed there were more interesting things to do than attaining summits. After the war he turned to adventurous sailing voyages in the Southern and Arctic Oceans. His attitude was summed up by the advertisement he placed in the personal column of The Times:
‘Hands wanted for long voyage in small boat; no pay, no prospects, not much pleasure.’
Setting aside this extreme viewpoint, the lure of adventure is easy to understand, since I suspect that most of us are attracted by it. With some it gets no further than daydreaming fantasies or the vicarious excitement of following others in print or on television. For many it is the modest thrill of climbing a local hill on a misty day, not sure of where you are, perhaps a little apprehensive, and then finding the summit, or sailing in coastal waters, or taking a hot air balloon up on a summer’s afternoon. Today we can indulge in the more instant thrills of white water rafting, bungee jumping, free-fall parachuting or gorge scrambling. Whereas twenty years ago the average walker, sailor or weekend climber was content with what was on their own doorstep, the world has shrunk to such a degree that with better communications, cheap flights and more disposable income, what was once unattainable wilderness now can be reached by package tours, be they to the Poles, the Himalaya or the wilds of Patagonia.
You no longer need to serve an apprenticeship before thinking of walking to the South Pole, sailing round the world or reaching the summit of Everest. A specialist outfit will take you there. While purists decry this development, I see it as an inevitable step in the evolution of adventure and I cannot begrudge the individual who has a dream which is allowed to come true. For the one thing I am certain of is that people in ever-increasing numbers will continue to seek adventure as a foil to a life that is becoming more pressured and dominated by technology, taking us farther and farther from the natural environment.
At the same time there is a danger that the increase in numbers and the commercialisation of adventure could damage the very places in which we seek our release. In this respect we need to find a balance and show some restraint for the sake of future generations. The great superlative challenges, the first ascent of Everest, the first circumnavigation of the world by balloon, the first solo crossing of the Poles may all have been achieved, but there are still unclimbed mountains, unsailed seas and breezes to carry us on our own personal quests for adventure.