Though play as such is outside the range of good and bad,
the element of tension imparts to it a certain ethical value in so far as it
means a testing of the player's prowess: his courage, tenacity, resources, and,
last but not least, his spiritual powers - his ‘fairness’; because, despite his
ardent desire to win, he must still stick to the rules of the game.The player
who trespasses against the rules or ignores them is a ’spoilsport'. The
spoilsport is not the same as the false player, the cheat; for the latter
pretends to be playing the game and, on the face of it, still acknowledges the
magic circle. It is curious to note how much more lenient society is to the
cheat than to the spoilsport. This is because the spoilsport shatters the
play-world itself. By withdrawing from the game he reveals there relativity and
fragility of the play-world in which he had temporarily shut himself with
others."
Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens
Over the past few years monologues and dialogues on what have
come to be called climbing ethics have become a regular feature of climbers’
magazines. Tejada-Flores and Robbins have presented intriguing and
comprehensive descriptions of how the ethical machinery works or ought to work, and recently Robin Campbell has
offered a shorter decalogue. To be sure, Campbell and others have mentioned their
discomfort at talking about ethics in this respect - as if climbing had
dilemmas as weighty as those of the medical and legal professions. Recall,
though, that in a famous essay on conservation written no less than forty years
ago Aldo Leopold urged a further extension of ethical concepts: ethics dealt
with property and people at first, he said; but ethics ought to consider unimproved
land and the life-forms it supports. Clearly there is a sense in which many
young climbers agree with him and want to go a step further by protecting the
inanimate world of rock.
Ought one to apologise for adding to this literature?
If so, I offer two apologies, alternatives if you like. First, climbing and
mountaineering have been great fun and very satisfying. But the threats from
technology and population pressure in the past are nothing to the threats
looming in the immediate future. I find myself reluctant to agree with David
Roberts that the sport is probably doomed and may already be in its last throes.
But I am sure that if we want to enjoy these pastimes in roughly the same sorts
of ways as in the past, it would be wise to ascertain whether and how we ought
to protect them. Second, at some time or other I have flouted almost every rule
within an English climber’s reach. And yet, in the very act of committing each misdemeanour,
an utterly plausible excuse has been taking shape in my mind. So perhaps I
write with unusual authority and have
important new material to contribute?
lt makes sense to begin by scanning the entire field of
unethical behaviour on mountains, using ‘unethical’ in our contemporary sense.
Some readers may be upset at the inclusion of certain items in this list but
all these practices have been complained of by someone at some time. It might
be worth adding that less heinous offences, best referred to as breaches of
"climbing manners", can also be identified; some of the prototypes of
these peccadilloes were excellently dealt with by Winthrop Young in Mountain
Craft and more modern forms can be extrapolated. So we begin, obviously, with
the use of a power drill to get up a mountain and of a helicopter to get down;
with the use of light aeroplanes to look for or at prospective routes; with the
use of helicopters, aeroplanes, skidoos, jeeps,scramble bikes and so on, to get
men or material nearer to the climb than other or earlier visitors.Next we have
the use of pegs, bolts, nuts and slings to allow one to stand or hang in
comfort where might otherwise be difficult or impossible; and the abandoning of
this or other material on the mountain.
Then there is the whittling
away of climbs from below by the use of siege tactics; and the softening-up of
climbs from above by inspection or rehearsal by rappel or top-rope and by the
placing of useful or displacing of unhelpful material. Here we might add the
dissemination of detailed information about the mountain and its climbs in the
form of guidebooks,magazine articles, route descriptions, photos and topos. And
then comes the guiding on mountain excursions of people who want to go that way
but daren’t go there on their own; or of those who might just drift there by
chance but who don't understand what the mountain is for; or of people who don't admire the mountain and are scared stiff
anyway.All sorts of other complaints have been lodged about the presence on
mountains of people with uniforms, or with badges and certificates to prove it;
about the building of shelters and refuges; about the overdevelopment of rescue
facilities; about the use of rock shoes on easy climbs, and so on. But that
will do for a start.
Now it is clear to me that matters of right and wrong in climbing
involve actions with effects of two quite different categories. First, they involve
actions detrimental to the scene in its widest sense: conservation ethics,
called here environment ethics. Second, they involve actions that threaten the
accepted styles of climbing : game ethics, is called here competition ethics to
emphasise the dominant aspect of their nature. Some activities certainly lead
to both sorts of damage but it remains possible and important to separate the
categories and effects.We can list the main offences against environment ethics
briefly. First, there is damage to the biological life-bank of the cliff or
mountain, its plants and bird or animal life, Second, there is damage to the
rock itself, considered as something natural and admirable rather than as a
climbing problem that might need re-grading after rough treatment.Third, there
are the litter nuisances: bog paper on every ledge and bolts in every wall.
And, fourth, there is the erosion of the absolute mystery, dignity and privacy
of the mountain and the contamination of the local or native culture the
mountain stands behind and is coloured by.
Royal Robbins...ethical dude.
There are other problems as well. But in summary these are
the sorts of complaints that might be made by non-climbers who love the
mountain in an entirely platonic sense. The general type of offence is
disturbance. One could say a lot about these matters and if it were claimed
that they are outside the scope of climbing ethics the reply is, no, absolutely
not, the two areas are inseparable in many instances. But it is true that the
most heated arguments at present are about the ways in which climbs are carried
out. Competition ethics are based upon a number of factors or desiderata. There
is the need to exert oneself; there is the need to scare oneself; there is the
need to excel; and there is the example of archetypal climbs.
Beyond this,
competition ethics respond to change: advances in techniques; advances in
technology; increases in wealth and leisure; and the effects of population
pressures. ln mentioning the more important of these factors, Tejada-Flores’
indispensable description of 'climbing-games' has to be used as a model yet
again. One assumes that the reader is familiar with his terminology and ideas
and I use these freely here, without keeping bowing to the inventor. One notes
that he remarks that the climbing-game hierarchy isn't the only way of thinking
about climbing and no doubt he went through a number of alternatives. But an
obvious way of describing breaches of competition ethics is by saying that they
amount to the use of a handicap-system to assist the climber rather than to
defend the climb. The subversive purpose of this essay is to ask how much
competition ethics matter; but the question will have to wait a moment.
Having listed offenses against environment ethics we can now
look at the flouting of competition ethics. And here the cardinal sin is simply
the use of too much advantage, especially in support of a pre-emptive strike.
To this we can add the leaving of aid in place, a temptation to subsequent
parties. Over the past few years remarks about the use of excessive protection
have also been voiced from time to time. And then there is the creation of a
variation or traverse which, whilst giving a new climb, detracts from the
ambience of an existing line, a question of manners possibly. But the general
type of offence is that of reducing the personal handicap in relation to other
climbers likely to attempt the same route. It was remarked earlier that some
activities offend both ethics and some only one or the other. So, for example,
a pure bolt ascent might be held to flout environment ethics (by leaving litter
on the wall) and to flout competition ethics(by eliminating the personal
handicap). Gardening, on the other hand, violates environment ethics but
ratifies competition ethics because it leaves the climb in a more permanent
condition; whilst rehearsal by top-rope may be held to offend competition
ethics but does not threatenenvironment ethics in the least.
Excursus on sentiment. The great climbs can stand anancient
victory piton and the odd retreat pegs; even, perhaps, extended peg and bolt
ladders in certain situations depending mainly, rightly or wrongly, on how much
anxiety the situation arouses in the average climber undertaking the route.
Climbing is an art-form, engaging our feelings; and these mementoes, speaking
of the struggles of our predecessors. of success and failure, arouse emotions
in us. Even litter, then, may add to the impact of a climb. So here is the
related crunch question for frustrated ethicists. Does an unrecorded bolt
ascent of an otherwise unvisited wall breach environment ethics ? Or
competition ethics Or both? Or neither?
Another general observation on breaches of ethics centres of
the relative permanence of the effect. l began by mentioning the use of a power
drill to get up a mountain and of a helicopter to get down. Each of these bits
of assistance‘ constitutes a total breach of both ethics. But note that the
bolting is a relatively irreversible gesture against both ethics: the use of
the helicopter insults the environment ethic only until the echoes have died
away; whilst it damages the competition ethic for as long as we say it does.
Here's an odd difference then. Environment ethics can be breached temporarily,
with perfect repair, or permanently and irreparably, or something in between.
But how competition ethics are breached depends purely on what we say about the
matter. And we are influenced by factors that tend to make us change our minds
and construct new rules. One can observe the rules, or one can pretend to
observe them, or one can ignore them. And it is those who assume the last two
roles who interest me now: the cheat and the spoilsport.
ln climbing, a spoilsport is something more than just a
climber who takes an advantage one had not thought of oneself. A spoilsport
might be described as a cheat who admits, announces or boasts of his cheating;
or, retrospectively, a cheat who gets found out. But, to confuse matters,
British climbers use the expression ‘cheating’ in two ways. First, we joke that
we are cheating when we use more assistance than is usual; but by this
self-accusation we resign from the contest and clear ourselves. Second, we
cheat when we don't tell the truth about the aid we've used. The opportunities
for this on smaller crags have become less with population pressure. But even
on British cliffs there can be few leading climbers who have never found
themselves with a foot ‘caught in a sling’, whilst gardening holds.
And if any essential aid has been admitted to, dispensable aid is less likely
to be recorded. Something can be said in support of both cheat and spoilsport.
In defence of the cheat it has to be said that, in contrast to the disturbing
practices mentioned earlier, cheating stands alone; it does not really threaten
the game of climbing.
Hence the title of this article. In defence of the
spoilsport one can say what Durkheim said of other criminals. That his
existence is inevitable because he is the agent used to clarify and define the
edges of permissible behaviour. Perhaps both cheat and spoilsport might be
regarded as the guerillas of the mountaineering world, sabotaging the ethics
machine when its workings are causing absurd or undesirable effects. So here's
a health to Keith McCallum. Half cheat, half spoilsport, ably seconded by his
three fantasised companions (how real and individual were their personalities
to him Who was the best of the three? Where did J. S. Martin spend his August
holiday in 1967 ?) he blazed his way to glory through fifty dream climbs. One
has to give credit where it is due. In The Decay of Lying, Wilde speculates on the
character of the true liar - "his frank, fearless statements, his superb
irresponsibility” - and defines the really breathtaking lie: "Simply that
which is its own evidence".The genius of McCallum was of a very unusual,
very broad and visionary nature, easily damaged by the cynicism of the a world.
He was able not only to look at cliffs and write up fairly plausible
descriptions of impressive lines: but he was also willing and happy to attend
climbing club dinners as guest of honour and to make long and stupefying boring
speeches about his latest achievements and the state of the campaign. There's
conviction for you l One hopes that he has not been too distressed at the
response the uncovering of his initiatives drew. It would be nice to think that
he might one day return to the climbing scene with new ideas. I will assume now
that most of us agree that breaches of environment ethics are matters worth
serious thought, even if some alleged abuses need to be looked at rather sceptically.
But these are not the main subject of this article so only one question now
remains: do competition ethics matter? There are certainly points to be made
for and against them.
Clearly, competition ethics are essential for competitors.
They enable them to sort themselves out and to get into order of size, this
operation giving great happiness, anguish and excitement. Further, it is surely
the case that the better one climbs a route, the closer to the archetypal
style, the more pleasure one gets. For the most brilliant climbers, ethical
climbing is the only means by which a high enough level of tension can be
achieved and that goal becomes more elusive as technique and technology progress.
Finally, ethical climbing ensures that some problems are left unsolved; and
apart from the fact that this conserves a field of action for the experts of
tomorrow it is also claimed that there is an intrinsic virtue in modesty and
self-denial.
What, then, can be said against competition ethics? First,
that they should only apply to competitors. Might it not seem reasonable for a
man to ask to compete, not with other climbers - the collateral competition -
but only with the route and his own limits - the vertical competition: and
therefore to use whatever assistance he feels to be necessary ? This seems fair
enough to me. The joy of climbing includes elements other than the pleasure of
excelling, including, as claimed already, the catharsis of exertion and fear;
and that satisfaction is quite independent of one’s performance as compared
with the standards agree by groups.
lt might be said that unethical climbing is
simply a means of avoiding any such catharsis, but this is usually
true only for the scornful bystander in a particular situation; the unethical
climber is probably finding his unethical solution amply exciting. The
excellence of climbs, given a certain length of route, also depends more upon
such aesthetic factors as beauty ofmposition, rock architecture, setting and
view, than upon the actual method of achieving the hardest move: and on a
fairly long route the experience is not much affected whether the crux has been
climbed by layback, by jamming, or by standing in a nut sling. So that 60-year-olds,
I think, ought to insist upon their right to nut the crucial sections of routes
climbed free by 30-year-olds. The fact that this right is derided in Britain at
present is lamentable. We have reached the point at which sensitive climbers
are having to spend their holidays in Patagonia, where the wind is too loud to
permit prolonged discussions on ethics.
But now, unhappily, I reach the problem on which the theorists
break themselves: that posed by climbers who, in using extensive aid, reject
the competition ethic (since they're achieving a high enough level of tension
as it is) but who record their claims to first ascents. Is the First Ascents List
a competition ? Does it pre-suppose adherence to the competition ethic of a
particular time and place? Or is it no more than it calls itself, a historical
record ? At this point I find myself in a bit of a fix. I cannot help
commenting here on how irresistible the sexual metaphor appears to be. Don't
rape the mountains, says Campbell; leave a few monuments to Virginity, says
Robbins. It is a commonly held opinion nowadays that a false value has often
been placed upon virginity; and many readers, no doubt, share Dr. Comfort's
view that chastity is no more a virtue than malnutrition. Perhaps, then, the
metaphor is misleading And yet, in mountaineering the image of the undespoiled
seems to remain central and essential. Even those who imply that too much is
made of this legend of purity seem, by the very act of recording their
unethical ascents, to shake their own case. (Curious, too, to note how many
climbers have put on record the fact that they've made new routes without recording
them.) From this point several trains of thought depart and it's not possible
to catch all of them at once. So I content myself with saying that metaphors of
violation ought to be scrutinised carefully. In fact, I suspect that some interesting
understandings of the nature of the wilderness experience might result.
My own predilection, and my practice, is for doing new routes
as best one can; and, despite my title, for being reasonably honest about the
methods used. It doesn't perturb me in
the least if someone has made a new route by using more aid than I find to be
necessary on my subsequent ascent. If someone repeats my own climb with less
difficulty, I'm suitably impressed; with more, and I'm childishly delighted. I think
I know who made the first ascents of the Mont Aiguille, the Devil's Tower, Lost
Arrow and whatever, and I know how they succeeded. In a strange way the histories
of climbs made outside the competition ethic are often as interesting as those
of climbs made within it. So I think that the moderate climber ought to reject
the spectatorial role the é/ite have assigned to him.If I find a desperate
crack, accessible to me with two or three nuts and slings, I'm not going to
watch it for years until someone arrives who can finger up it. His aching fingers
will be his eventual reward as my dry throat was mine. His ethical ascent can
be used to underline the advance of the generations or simply my lack of skill.
But note that it might also be necessary to record the weather and perhaps
other variables; unless it is proposed to forbid the use of aid (or top-roping
or gardening en rappel) on new routes except in fine weather. Clearly, the
freeing of hard British rock-climbs is basically a fine-weather sport for gentlemen
of leisure who can wait for perfect conditions; whilst British rock-climbing itself is (surely?) an alI-weather
sport. (I must add here, in relation to the use of aid, that the problems of
speed and manners are often present. The objection to the use of siege tactics
surely stems in part from a response to the arrogance of blocking and claiming
a route in an area In which there is a population pressure problem. And when I
encourage old men and poor performers to use aid on difficult routes, I beg
them to consider whether they have a right to hold up a queue of climbers who
are genuinely longing to ascend that particular climb.
This article has changed shape a dozen times since first I
sketched it out. I had a hundred dazzling insights, which I could not
accommodate at this length, and. I met a hundred baffling problems, which I
could only evade or ignore. The general field of environment ethics, the
critical problem of people pollution, the intriguing area of the influence of
archetypes. and the matter of orders of preference in the use of advantage.
nave had to be passed by. The basic structure of the article to me to be a
reasonable way of looking; at the practices of climbers. But now I begin to
notice a suspicious resemblance between
the different pronouncements on the subject. each having a catch clause at the
end.
Tejada-Flores’ hierarchy of climbing-games allows an ultimate
judgement from the concept of good and bad style. Robbins proposes a
revolutionary First Ascent Principle and his benevolent ethic allows the
moderate climber to have as much fun as he likes; but then he announces a class
of actions called Outrages and these cannot be permitted. Campbell outlines
three restricted Categorical Imperatives and then comes up with a fourth, Love
the Mountain, which can be used to deal with any abuses he may notice. Some readers
may think my own suggestions disgustingly permissive; they have probably
forgotten my Environment Ethic, which enables me to forbid anything that makes
a mark or a noise. Perhaps, from the beginning, I ought to have distinguished
more rigorously between clean aid and dirty aid, nut and piton, as the
Americans keep doing. At any rate, I write in the certain knowledge that people
will let me know where I went wrong.
In the end, especially for those who climb
in public, it's a dialogue. It's a good thing that a climber should recognise his
capabilities. He should see the world as it is and understand, if he doesn't already,
that he may not be the best performer in the game. And it's a good thing also, provided
that the environment ethic isn't brutally offended, that a climber should feel free
to do his own thing and to reject the rules of others. I take J. E. B. Wright's
account of an incident during the German attempt in 1936 on Lliwedd’s then
unclimbed Central Gully Direct as a model for this dialogue: Stoeppler had been
warned about the Welsh weather and he had a tube fitted to his Bergen Sack
which took an umbrella. He was leading with the umbrella open keeping off the
rain. Teufel was leading me up Reade’s Crack. Along came five climbers. As they
arrived at the foot of Central Gully, bang, bang, went Stoeppler's hammer. The spokesman
of the five shouted, "What do you think you're doing?" Bang, bang,
went the hammer. This question was addressed several times, in a rising crescendo,
to Stoeppler and Schneider, neither of whom could speak English. The banging
and shouting went on alternately. Finally Stoeppler said to Schneider in German,
"if he shouts again, throw a rock at him."
The stone was not thrown but
the banging went on and the party of five continued on their way.’ There are
some extraordinarily puzzling questions in the field of climbing ethics and
it's rather amusing to see the young philistines torturing themselves with new
forms of the sorts of conundrums that have teased philosophers for centuries.But if matters of environmental damage aren't involved perhaps
the really crucifying dilemmas are for very small groups of people - the freakishly
talented, the disgustingly rich, and the clinically disturbed: but not for you
and me.
Harold Drasdo: First Published in Mountain 39