The Fixed Rope

I am not a mountaineer. I’m not even a (plastic) rock climber. The closest I ever came to mountain climbing was in my imagination at age 12, when I read the short novel Banner in the Sky (adapted as a Disney movie with the title Third Man on the Mountain). That was back when my seventh-grade English teachers were doing a shtick on the theme of “The Noble Quest“, and climbing mountains seemed right up there at the “summit” of the Quest Scale (along with running marathons and running for president). But I was listening a few weeks ago on National Public Radio about a climber’s “quest” to climb Mount Everest and discovered a phenomenon that I believes cheapens this concept: the fixed rope.

Back in the old days of climbing mountains, climbers tended to work in teams and did everything from scratch. One of the important jobs in climbing a mountain was to get ahead of the rest of the team and fix a rope, on which everyone else could secure themselves and use to climb the mountain. This very important task was usually something done by professional climbers, and in the Himalayas the local Sherpas often performed it. Once somebody installed the fixed rope, the rest of the climb went much more smoothly. It is a very important element of any quest to scale a peak.

But nowadays climbers often used the fixed rope that previous groups installed. To me, while this may (or may not) contribute to safety, it also detracts from the whole idea of the difficult “quest” and makes the whole project a little less than totally legitimate and complete.

The NPR piece on mountain climbing wasn’t really about the concept of “the fixed rope” per se. No, what made it stand out to me was the way it was reported. You would have thought that the rope had always been there from the beginning, something providentially hanging down from the sky, inseparable from the mountain! But mountain climbing isn’t the only area that I see this sort of thing.

When Lance Armstrong was doing his seven-year stint as the Tour de France champion, there would often be TV segments showing his training routine. He’d be in a sports/science lab on an elaborate bicycle apparatus, with his body all patched and connected to devices measuring his functions during his workout. Every motion on the bicycle would send out data to a computer which would in turn analyze his training performance and then give feedback to make him ride more efficiently. A far cry from just going out on the open road and training, wouldn’t you say? And people will still compare his racing times to previous riders who had nothing resembling these hi-tech “fixed ropes” to aid them.

Instead of using standardized equipment, professional golfers, bowlers, and tennis players use specially engineered balls, clubs, rackets, and (with bowlers) gloves and wrist supports designed to optimize their performances. Since these sports are all about out-competing one another, wouldn’t it make more sense to level the field by standardizing everything and eliminating performance-enhancing “crutches”?

And how about the sonar that some fishermen use to guide their boats in search of fish or the ridiculous sighting aids that shooters or archers use for killing their prey? What kind of sport or accomplishment is that?

Possibly the most obscene twist to this concept is the report during the campaign season that Alaska governor Sarah Palin would shoot moose from the relatively safe vantage point of an airplane overhead. Even if you are a hunter, how can you come away with anything less than disgust for such a cowardly and cruel “sport” done this way? But later, of course, Sarah is proudly standing over the corpse of the murdered animal, looking as if she had done it all on the ground and as if the moose ever had a prayer of surviving the ordeal.

If I’m going to climb a mountain, I’m going all out for having a secure, fixed rope already in place for me. Later I’ll carefully omit that and any other “aids” from my “quest narrative”, making it look as if I really went out there, faced the danger, and conquered the elements. Yessiree-bob, that’s what I’m gonna do. No Captain Kirk climbing the vertical face of a mountain with just his hands and feet for me! (See Star Trek V: The Final Frontier)