Why Do We Climb Mountains?

Why do we climb mountains? Do we like to feel “on top of the world”? Do we want to see the view? Do we just enjoy nature? The small hikes, the small mountains, they’re understandable. People who go on day hikes need a break, and they want to feel nature. That is not the focus of this article.

Why did anyone climb Everest? Or K2? Why do people die every day trying to get to the top of some of the most desolate, inhumane conditions on Earth? There is a community of individuals among us that spend their lives preparing for the absolute worst possible living conditions, just to get to the top of a mountain. They are fascinated by the difficulty, by the insanity, and sometimes by the fame as well. For the purposes of this article, I will refer to them as climbers.

To the rest of the world, climbers are absolutely nuts. Take Alex Honnold for example. Alex Honnold recently became the first person on the planet to free solo El Capitan in Yosemite. This means that he climbed a 3,000-foot vertical surface without a harness or rope. He has been periodically asked why he even had the urge to complete this dangerous feat, and his response is always the same: “I don’t want to die any more than anyone else. I just like climbing.” In his movie, “Free Solo”, he talks about how he was very antisocial growing up. He had very few friends, and did not seem to wish for friends in this time of sadness. Instead, he found a new life in climbing. He climbed alone, without the help of someone at the bottom holding his rope. This is where he found an ability climbing “free solo”, without a rope at all. In the movie, one of Honnold’s climbing friends proclaims, “to someone that doesn’t really climb, this guy is insane. But to someone who does climb, and who climbs a lot, this guy is absolutely outrageous.” Honnold is an honorary member of the community of climbers. He exhibits a completely intangible desire to get to the top of a mountain that he acts upon almost every day. Every major free solo climber has died climbing, and Alex Honnold, eventually, will be no exception. In fact, Clif Bar, the company, refused to endorse or sponsor him for this reason.

Alex Honnold is just one small example of an entire world of people that subject themselves to this activity. Some call it torture, others call it death, and some call it fun. My goal is to provide insight as to why the select few call it fun, and why anyone would want to subject themselves to this deadly environment.

Early in my college career, I made a friend named Caleb Matteson. I was playing Ping Pong on the first floor of my dormitory when Caleb’s drunk roommate broke the table in anger that he couldn’t play Ping Pong himself. Caleb calmed him down in the voice of a therapist, explaining that he had to wait his turn. I thought this was rather hilarious, as this man was about nineteen and did not need to be told to wait his turn. Nonetheless, Caleb was extremely patient with his roommate, and eventually led him off to bed. When Caleb came back, I explained to him that I was intrigued by his patience. All he said was “People are fun.”

Caleb is a tall and scrawny young man. He drinks tea at least twice a day, and wears sweaters that are scratchy, like the stubble of a beard. His smile is utterly contagious, as well as his love for the world, whether it’s authentic or not. But above all, I saw Caleb as a profound adventurer.

In his spare time, Caleb runs to stay in shape. A couple of weeks after I met him, I vividly remember passing him at the end of his run. He yelled to me that he had run at the speed of his fastest mile, for seven miles. Essentially, this means he sprinted seven miles. I spent the rest of the day thinking about how this was even possible, let alone the idea that it was a pastime for Caleb. I later learned from him that his larger intentions are to climb every fourteener in Colorado, another feat I barely thought possible.

Ever since coming to college, I had been obsessed with fourteeners. These are mountains that are above 14,000 feet, and can be radically difficult to climb without help or experience. Being an inexperienced person myself, I was quite aware that I couldn’t climb one alone. So when Caleb showed me his list of unclimbed fourteeners, I asked excitedly if we could climb one together.

Caleb agreed to lead me to the top of a mountain called Longs Peak, which is situated about one hour from Boulder, Colorado, buried in the Rockies. For most of the year, there is so much snow on Longs Peak that it disguises itself in the clouds. It is indistinguishable along the horizon. This much snow demands an expertise in climbing that I am still far from possessing. However, toward the end of July when every last bit of snow has melted, the summit of Longs Peak darkens, towering over its neighbors and clearly visible at a distance. The summit is well beyond the altitude where trees can grow, allowing for Longs Peak to appear as one seamless and unmovable rock.

The first person recorded to climb Longs Peak was a man named John Wesley Powell. As a young lad, Powell’s biggest pursuit was to explore the area around the Mississippi River in rather large expeditions. According to his journal, he once spent four months walking across Wisconsin.

On August 23, 1868, Powell brought five other men to the top of Longs Peak. It was late summer, and the sun beating down on the expedition team left them exhausted from the heat. The wind soared in small tornadoes.

The easiest route up the mountain was a windy path through a forest at the base. The team had to trudge through six miles of thick trees and rock, slowly gaining on an altitude of 13,000 feet. Eventually, Powell’s team passed the tree line, and was left with solid rock.

Following the tree line, there was a large valley of rock that would later be aptly named the Boulder Field. The Boulder Field lasted for about a mile, and required mild technical movement, climbing over rocks to ascend up the mountain.

Following the Boulder Field was a large rock formation called the Keyhole. Powell’s group was awestruck at the sight of it. The keyhole sat toward the top of a steep incline following the Boulder Field. Today, this steep incline is where most climbers turn around. After the journey that had already taken place, climbing the incline to the Keyhole seemed to be impossible.

The Keyhole itself appeared as a vastly large hole in the middle of the rock. The rock was quite thin on either side of the hole, causing a rather peculiar natural feat. What Powell did not expect is that the Keyhole also acted as a wind tunnel. At 13,500 feet, a wind tunnel can easily blow a human off the mountain and into the valley on the opposite side. However, considering the weather conditions were essentially ideal, Powell and his team got lucky and were able to move through the Keyhole safely.

What followed the Keyhole was a long pathway about the size of a small pedestrian crosswalk. On one side of the path there was Longs Peak itself. The mountain shot vertically up about 500 feet from this point. On the other side of the pathway, there was a 1,000-foot drop into a valley lined with ridges. Today, this pathway is called the Narrows.

It’s rather incredible that Powell and his team completed the Narrows. Without prior knowledge on where to step, the Narrows becomes the most treacherous walk of the climb. All the while, gusts of wind cause a continuation of the wind tunnel effect, forcing extreme concentration from the climber to step in the right place. The majority of those who died climbing Longs Peak have died while walking through the Narrows.

When Powell and his team accomplished the walk through the Narrows, they were rewarded with the homestretch to the summit. Essentially, this was nothing but a short walk uphill to the top of the mountain. The summit was not a small apex, but rather a large flat surface. It looked as though the mountain decided to stop growing at that height.

It took thirty-six years from when Long’s Peak was discovered until Powell reached the summit. The ultimate American adventurer of his time, he would be the first of many to reach the top. Powell is a human symbol of the strong and seemingly inherent desire to climb something of this nature.

Mountains are arguably the simplest form of adventure possible. They give people an outlet to push themselves as far as they can go, to be stimulated by their own adrenaline and instinct in the purest way possible. Essentially, all one must do is climb. The less gear one brings, the higher their chance of death, and the more adrenaline they receive by being closer to death. Some would say that this adventure is merely absurd. The philosophy behind climbing mountains would then become simple-don’t do it. However, there is a subdivision of human that would find this very idea equally absurd. This is the type of human that asks “how could you turn that down?” This type of human loves pushing themselves, loves being uncomfortable, and loves being scared. Climbing a mountain is the perfect way to get a thorough dosage of all of these things. And it comes with the reward of being on top of the world, just for a second.

It was early October when Caleb and I found ourselves itching to be on top of the world. The beginnings of winter were already setting in, the trees turning bare and the sky turning grey. Caleb and I filled his truck with extra clothing, small amounts of food, sources of light, his ice axe, and several water bottles full of boiling water. He told me that the temperature would easily cold enough to freeze our source of water, so it was important to ensure that said water was quite hot at the beginning of the trip. Caleb has a funny way of doing things just weirdly enough so that people will ask about it, and he can explain it with his signature smile. He did this practice many times while filling the water bottles with his boiling water.

Before long, we departed for the mountain. We drove straight into the sunset, and into the mountains. The plan was to sleep in his truck. We would bundle, eat a small dinner, and attempt to rest until our departure on the trailhead, which was set for 2 am. We would summit Longs Peak by 11 am to avoid the inevitable storms that came in the afternoon. We would walk down in a timely manner, and gossip about the experience on the way home. The events that prevailed were much different.

In order to emotionally and physically cope with the pain associated with receiving such a pure type of adrenaline, many climbers must develop an interesting type of meditation. Though the very goal of climbers is to put themselves in pain, it may still be quite overwhelming given the circumstances. At the basic level, the best climbers are extremely well-practiced at maintaining a certain breathing and heart rate. In the presence of extreme cold, injury, or even fear, climbers have often taught themselves to remain calm and to think clearly, regardless of the dire situation. This is especially difficult when the air is thinner, and it is much more difficult to get enough oxygen to the brain.

The meditative process of calming oneself so significantly stems from multiple religious practices, but it is most commonly seen in hinduism. Thus, I will focus on this meditative practice through the lens of Hinduism.

“Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain, but for the heart to conquer it,” an Indian Hindu philosopher wishes in his studies. This is one of the core beliefs of Hinduism. Essentially, it goes with the principle that pain is a part of life. Any soul on Earth is bound to feel some amount of pain and suffering that they will need to get through, regardless of the choices they make. Thus, it is necessary to have the will to get through this suffering.

There is a governing force in hinduism called Karma that is the principle for the unfolding of events in an individual’s lifespan. Karma, the “exercise of the moral law of the universe,” is the result of a balance between pain and serenity. Hindus believe that Karma, as well as all suffering, both stem from wrongdoings earlier in their life or in a past life that they must pay for in order to restore balance. This helps them to cope with the pain that they go through, whether it be physical or emotional.

Current research on hinduism shows that the attitude of acceptance towards chronic or life-threatening pain contributes to that pain diminishing and becoming tolerable. In other words, when an individual has acceptance for their pain, they will subsequently feel less pain. The psychological approach to resolving pain has a very perceivable merit on top of current medical practices.

I have lightly adopted this practice. Currently, my knee is feeling the repercussions of an immense activity level, and I am stretching every day in an attempt to relieve it. Being a serious runner and climber myself, it is quite difficult to manage a good activity level while also leaving my knee time to heal. I am beginning to let myself engage in activity even if I feel pain in my knee, just for the sake of happiness. I am also refraining from giving up on treating the pain, while attempting to accept that it is there.

A lot of other morals come from the idea of accepting pain. For example, those in permanent or chronic types of pain are strongly encouraged not to treat the pain passively. This means that they should not forget about it, or get used to it. An individual in pain should always continue to attempt to lessen the suffering. In addition, someone in pain should never let the pain dictate their activity. The pain is often present whether they attempt to ignore it or not, so the best adopted hindu strategy is to engage in an activity that might be painful, despite the pain. In other words, avoiding painful activities is counterproductive and counterintuitively more debilitating to the individual. Thus, hindus are taught to detach their pain from their activity level, and engage in activity anyway.

To climbers, this is huge. For pain to be chasable in this fashion, for pain to be a necessary part of the world, these are huge developments in the mindset of climbing mountains. Since the climber made the decision to climb the mountain, the pain and suffering they feel is of their doing, and only stems from their own life outcomes, an essential feature of Karma. The pain of climbing a mountain is much more manageable when in the mindset of acceptance, whether it be from cold, from high altitude, from missing home, or from a physical injury. Climbers using a hindu perspective (or any similar religious perspective) tend to stay conscious of the pain they feel, they tend not to ignore it, and they tend to welcome it as they continue climbing the mountain. This practice takes years to master, even as a practicing hindu.

Caleb’s and my drive led us to a dirt road. It was clear that this was the only road for many miles in any direction, as there was no other street to turn on to. We were completely surrounded by an ominous mix of thick forest and walls of granite. Sometimes there would be rocks that had fallen in the middle of the road, causing Caleb to swerve the heavy truck enough to bring my stomach with it. My ears popped from altitude roughly every five minutes, which was my only indicator of our location. Night had fallen, and the only light source was the single headlight that still worked on the truck. Our destination, it turned out, was nothing but a parking lot. Caleb switched off the truck, I quickly longed for the heat that no longer came from the vent.

I was sick with a cold at the time. My hurting throat mixed with an elevation of 8,000 feet gave me a moist cough that I would keep with me for the remainder of the trip. I gasped for air quite often, as I kept a mask over my mouth for warmth. My internal body temperature was low, and I felt the repercussions of this upon stepping out of the car for the first time at the base of the mountain. From afar, Caleb pointed out a missing person’s sign tacked to a Billboard. “There’s that guy,” he said, referring to the person he had read about in the news a couple of days prior. A fellow climber was presumed dead on the top of Longs Peak as he had not returned home in about four days. Caleb stopped talking for a small moment of silence, and then his smile returned.

Snow brushed off our winter coats like dust. Our body heat never caused it to melt. The wind welcomed us by blowing snow into our faces and stinging our cheeks like microscopic needles. The snow would remain on our cheeks, and eventually freeze. Caleb took a deep inhalation and an audible sigh as though he were given a pina colada by the beach.

The higher the altitude, the colder it gets. This is a commonly known rule, but it applies to the temperature of both the earth and the wind. It even applies to the wind chill effect, in which the speed of the wind itself results in a simulation of much colder temperatures. Commonly, there is a danger for frostbite at high altitudes, a condition in which blood becomes unable to circulate to certain appendages in the body, effectively killing the appendage in question. Another risk is hypothermia, in which one’s internal body temperature drops below a safe warmth. In extreme cases, hypothermia can cause unconsciousness, leading to death without proper care. Especially at high altitudes, the temperature can be dangerously cold.

The man who kickstarted this discovery was Evangelista Torricelli in 1644. In attempting to measure barometric (air) pressure, Torricelli filled a glass tube with mercury and placed it in a dish that also contained mercury. He marked intervals on the tube to watch the relative rising and falling of the mercury.

Torricelli was the first person in the world to accurately measure barometric pressure and how it changes based on location. In his words, he concluded that “we live submerged at the bottom of an ocean of the element air, which by unquestioned experiments is known to have weight...”

However, four years later in 1648, it was Blaise Pascal who discovered how pressure changes based on altitude. Pascal persuaded his brother-in-law, Florin Perier, to climb to the top of puy-de-dome, a volcano in central France. After an abundance of thorough experiments he found that barometric pressure falls at an exponential rate the higher in altitude one gets.

The bottom of this “ocean” of air is the most dense, so it puts the most weight on the mercury dish, causing the mercury in the tube to rise. At high altitude, there are fewer air molecules, so the air is less dense, and lighter. The fewer air molecules there are, the more each molecule can move around freely, so there is less pressure on each air molecule. The more a molecule moves, the more energy it expends in the process. In this particular case, energy is given off as heat loss. Essentially, at higher altitudes, air gets to move around more freely, causing it to lose more energy. This energy is given off as heat energy, and the air thus becomes much colder with lower barometric pressure and higher altitude. Ascending even a small mountain will cause this effect to rapidly kick-in.

I felt the intense cold creeping up my appendages as we shared a quick dinner that consisted of a handful of Goldfish and half a slice of pizza. Caleb then smiled all the same and turned off the lights inside of the truck to signal that it was time for bed. In an attempt to make myself feel safe, I adjusted my seat to it’s flattest position, and grabbed all of my layers to use as blankets. The moment that I had run out of layers to bundle up with was the moment I began to shiver. My knees shook hard enough for my jacket to continuously fall off my legs, so I picked it back up periodically. It took me two hours to realize that I would not be sleeping that night. Even more discouraging, Caleb was completely unconscious, in a deep rest.

It is here that I learned how the cold causes one to think irrationally. I was furious at Caleb. I wanted to yell at him. I wasn’t mad because I was cold, or because I didn’t feel like being at the base of this mountain, I was mad because Caleb likes feeling this way. He enjoys the feeling of being in danger, of living life to its edge. I was mad that I wasn’t like him. No, I was mad that anyone could be like him. Am I really an adventurer myself? I was screaming, but only in my head so that Caleb could sleep. Caleb and I had lived the past month like brothers, and now I hated him. This was one of the worst possible moments to question my friendship with Caleb. Whether I lived to go home or died on the mountain was essentially up to him.

Death while mountaineering is not a joke in the slightest. Jon Krakauer, a journalist who climbed mount Everest, wrote a vivid account of his experience in a book called “Into Thin Air”. One particular anecdote in the story that stuck with me was of the Sherpa Ngawang, a young and strong native to the community near Everest that was part of Jon Krakauer’s team.

Unfortunately, groups that climb Everest are notorious for overworking their Sherpas, causing them to be more susceptible to the effects of high altitude. Ngawang for instance developed a condition called High Altitude Pulmonary Edema (HAPE) while carrying a load of at least one hundred pounds. HAPE is a condition of the lungs, characterized by low oxygen in the brain, and a buildup of mucus. Ngawang was reported to be “stumbling like a drunk, and coughing up pink, bloodlaced froth,” toward the end of the day.

A sherpa developing a sickness, especially one as bad as HAPE, can stir an abundance of confusion. As Sherpas are native to an environment as lethal as Everest, they are expected to be naturally immune to the altitude and the cold. For those who are not native, A sherpa developing a sickness is a shot in the face at the dangers of climbing.

For the sherpa himself, a completely different thought arises. Sherpas are extremely unwilling to admit their sickness, as it reveals weakness. They are less likely to be hired if they are known for developing a sickness at high altitudes, and so it is drastic for their wellbeing to be considered invincible. This is exactly what Ngawang struggled with.

Ngawang denied that he had HAPE. Jon Krakauer frequently reported at undiffused quarrels between Ngawang and the doctor at the camp. For many days, the sherpa refused to believe that he was simply unable to climb further.

The reality with HAPE is that it is completely immobilizing. Without rapid descent from the mountain, the compromised climber will slowly perish from inadequate levels of oxygen, both in the brain and in the vascular system. Ngawang had spoken of a small throat infection prior to developing HAPE as well.

Eventually he was unable to speak due to excessive coughing. He slowly went delirious, and did not resist being taken down by the other climbers. He lost touch with his surroundings, and was barely aware that he was slowly being dragged down to Base Camp.

Ngawang was visibly deteriorating, and the rush to get to lower altitude heightened every second. Eventually, the speed at which the team was losing Ngawang surpassed the speed that they were descending. At camp two, 22,145 feet above sea level, they decided to put him into a Gamow bag, an airtight sleeping bag that can replicate a higher air pressure. They let as much air in as possible and crossed their fingers before going to sleep. After the labor of carrying a man slowly down the mountain, staying awake wasn’t a possibility.

Everyone in the camp awoke briskly to the doctor screaming in horror. The group rushed to the bag as quickly as their muscles would move. Ngawang had choked on his own vomit in the night, and was pronounced dead that day. He was buried on the mountain, as it was unanimously decided that it was no use bringing a dead body to the base of Everest. Jon Krakauer and every other climber went back to their sleeping bags that night, but did not sleep.

This year, 2019, A record number of people have died on Mount Everest. Being essentially the most famous mountain in the world, individuals who call themselves climbers are overwhelmingly awed by it, and the richest ones make an attempt to climb it. Climbers of this nature will consider themselves climbers after they have climbed one or two small mountains without disaster. So, when they attempt Everest, they are met with conditions that are completely unfamiliar to them, and that they are physically unprepared for. During certain conditions on Everest, it is impossible for any human, regardless of ability, to survive, and that is something inexperienced climbers often don’t realize. Essentially, Everest is a fantistic place to commit suicide whether it be intentional or not. Yet so many people attempt it each year.

This year in particular, climbers have been dying because of a slightly more pressing reason. There is literally a traffic jam on Mount Everest. Hundreds of climbers attempt to summit the mountain each day, only to be met by a line caused be inexperienced climbers moving much too slowly, and people taking selfies at the summit before coming down. Climbers run out of oxygen in their tanks while waiting in line, and those who are unfit to survive without artificial oxygen then pass out and slowly die since their body can not run off of the oxygen that is naturally at that altitude. It is unsafe to linger above 25,000 feet, and this is what hundreds of climbers do each day while “ascending” Everest.

I firmly believe that no one at all should climb Mount Everest after this year. Not just inexperienced climbers, but no one on the planet, and here’s why: We as humans have polluted Everest in a way that we will likely never completely fix. When humans die close to the summit of Everest, their bodies are left to freeze and remain where people must step over them to continue towards the summit. Empty oxygen tanks, debris from campsites, mountaineering gear, and anything inessential that was abandoned all still remain at the top of the mountain to this day. Just as a footprint remains on the moon for thousands of years, gear on top of Everest will likely remain for a similar amount of time. Even despite the nepalese law put in place that every climber must bring as much trash as they can back down with them, there are still far to many sheer pounds of trash on the mountain, and too many inexperienced climbers to successfully reverse the problem. Not only is it permanently too dangerous for any climber to climb Everest at this point, but the wondrous mountain has had enough. Too many people have died on Everest for anyone to take it lightly. Mountaineering is a deadly sport, and climbers must know that before they take it on.

Now, in the car, my survival instinct kicked in. I began to think of my brother and sister instead of Caleb. I thought about what it would be like for them if I died. If I froze to death in that car, they would never know what I thought about before then. If I died on the trail, no one would ever find me. If I died and they knew the whole story, that I froze because I was underprepared, or because I wanted to follow a seemingly indestructible friend, it would haunt them forever. If I died, I would never see them again. They would never see me again. I shed one tear, creating a line of clean down my cheek, settling in my face mask.

I pushed the car door open as though I wanted to break it. I had one boot in the snow before I started to run away from the car. It wasn’t quite running, but more a rapid trudging through snow while fighting the wind like it were vines in a jungle. A mix of fear and adrenaline was boiling inside of me. I ran as fast as I could, eventually passing the sign to the trailhead and moving up the trail. I gasped for air to no avail, so I ripped my mask off, hoping to have one full breath of air. I looked around and as my vision became clearer, I made eye-contact with the red eyes of a singular coyote. The eyes were guarding the trail. I didn’t turn around. I continued to stare. The adrenaline left, and all that remained was fear. But it was apathetic fear. It was the kind of fear that someone gets before they attempt to commit suicide. The “who-cares” kind of fear. That was when I turned around and started a slow walk. I didn’t want to look at the coyote anymore, but I think I wanted to give it a chance to catch me.

When Caleb found me, I was throwing snowballs aimlessly into the wilderness. I was laying in the snow, shivering. Feeling the sharp cold on my back meant that I could feel at all, which was nothing if not reassuring. Caleb told me to look at the stars, and so I did, but I didn’t want to listen to him. I told Caleb that every part of my body was saying no to this hike. He told me it was my call, in the same happy tone he always uses.

It wasn’t true. Not every part of my body wanted to go home. My eyes watered uncontrollably in front of Caleb. When he embraced me, I felt like I would live again. I felt like I would survive, and I felt a warm shiver through every vein I had. My emotions came out all at once, and I stained Caleb’s shirt with tears. I would not climb a mountain that day, and I would go home to my bed.

The ride home from Longs Peak was silent aside from my occasional sniffle. I felt like a small child, the kind that Caleb would have to say “wait your turn” to. I now lived in two shadows: the shadow of one of the most impressive mountains in America, and the shadow of Caleb.

As a developed civilization, one with a solid understanding of science and how our brains work, we truly have absolutely no idea why climbers so badly wish to climb mountains. There is no evolutionary advantage to pushing oneself to the limit, to hurting one’s own body or putting oneself in danger. There is no advantage to riding a motorcycle, or bar-fighting, or skydiving, or climbing a mountain, yet people do these every day. It goes without saying that many people die doing these things too. Thus, there will always be the question as to why we ever decide to engage in these activities. The only thing we know about these activities and what they have in common is that they cause a rush of adrenaline and what is called the fight-or-flight response. Why this is appealing to some of us, we have no idea.

A connection can be made with this appeal to adrenaline, and the appeal pain. An addictive nature to pain can be attributed to many different things. For example one may be trying to distract themselves from a greater underlying pain. This is seen in medical cases where patients experience a large amount of long-term muscular pain. Sometimes, patients will relieve themselves by inflicting pain in other areas. In the TV show “House”, Dr. House does this by breaking his hand so as to distract himself from his leg pain. The last shot of the scene is him smiling in pure euphoric delight.

Pain is a feeling. People feel pain. Another attraction to pain is the thought of feeling at all. At times, those in depression or apathy sometimes become so sad and depressed that they begin to stop feeling emotion. They begin to feel neutral. They lose touch with happiness, with love, and with the thought of feeling. The unfortunate blessing with pain is that it is the most effective way to feel something at all. It can be said that this is why those that are suicidal tend to hurt themselves. They want to feel something, anything. It can be heartbreaking to watch.

It is possible then that we need adrenaline in quite the same way. We feel adrenaline in the same light that we feel pain. I believe that this is why we climb mountains. The subdivision of humankind that climbs mountains is likely in constant and desperate need to feel something. In fact, they may be psychologically addicted to the feeling of adrenaline, or of feeling at all. Just the thought of feeling is enough to make any motorcycle rideable, any bar fight fightable, and any mountain climbable.

Even though Caleb and I were far from death in retrospect, we now share a very odd friendship. We converse with each other roughly once a month, which is pretty seldom for a college campus. We are so nice to each other that sometimes I feel like I’m in a Utopia when I’m around him. We never talk about our friendship, and so I believe that it is slowly depleting. At this point, it’s almost irrelevant to talk about the night we climbed Longs Peak. Enough time has passed that the event is long behind us, and it is arguable that Caleb never saw it as significant in the first place. Thus, I will likely never bring it up again. This is rather saddening because I believe that that night is the source of Caleb’s and my friendship diverging, but I don’t believe that the significance of the event is mutually shared between us, making it extremely difficult to bring up as well.

I have done a lot to be thoroughly prepared to climb mountains since then. I regularly go to a climbing gym, or climb outside. Over the winter, I attempted a much easier fourteener, Grays Peak, by myself, but I had to turn around about two miles before the top because every step I took caused my feet to sink about fourteen inches into the snow. My knee began to give out, and eventually I decided it was better to get to the bottom uninjured. Given my lack of income as a college student, I then built snowshoes with some old boots I have, and two cheap tennis rackets. I plan to use these to attempt Grays Peak once again when the snowy conditions return and my knee heals. I stretch for about an hour every single day in hopes that I will be physically capable of reaching the top of any mountain that stands in front of me.

And then I will climb Longs Peak. Since the second I felt the heat come through the vent of that truck once again, I’ve been consumed in thought about that night. I’ve had a dangerous itch to climb Longs Peak for months, and a worse itch to show Caleb that I can. I want to take a deep smiling sigh at the inhuman conditions of that mountain. I want to salute the coyote as I trudge past it. And I want that mountain to sit in my shadow. That is the best possible way that I can verbalize why I want to climb Longs Peak once again.

It’s very possible that the desire to climb a mountain stems from something indescribable by science or philosophy. George Mallory, after failing to ascend Mount Everest in 1924, was asked why he had attempted to climb it at all. His response, one of the most famous mountaineering quotes in history, was “Because it’s there.” It is quite likely that there is no reason at all why we climb mountains, other than the fact that it gives us an achievement with purpose. We may be in awe at what’s at the top, and thus our curiosity takes over. However, when a climber risks their life to get to the highest altitude on Earth, I believe it is hard to say the reason why. And yet, people climb Everest every day that the conditions permit it, and a good fraction of them die trying. In a way, these are some of the saddest deaths in history, because no one knows exactly why the climber was so inclined to get to the top. No one knows why they didn’t turn back before their death was certain. We will likely never know what their drive was, or what the incentive was to do something terrifyingly difficult for such little reward. There will never be one solid answer. There will forever be wonder in the hearts of climbers, as well as their friends and family. This wonder may very well be the only drive to summit a mountain.