The Hard Way Is the Better Way

In 2017, Denali National Park climbing ranger Mark Westman was digging through the archives of climber registrations from the 1970s and 1980s when he noticed an interesting trend. While the majority of the registered climbers were headed to the West Buttress, the main route on Denali, large percentages were going to other, less popular routes, such as the East, South, and Northwest buttresses, and the Muldrow Glacier. People were exploring all over the place.

“As with today, the majority of Denali climbers were registered for the West Buttress,” Westman wrote, “but there was also a healthy representation of climbers attempting Denali’s other moderate routes. In general, these routes are longer and more logistically complicated than the West Buttress, with lengthy approaches, and in some cases, slightly greater technical difficulties. But none of them are technically difficult by modern standards, nor do any, with the exception of the East Buttress, have substantially greater objective hazards. They do, however, generally require more ingenuity, planning, patience, and determination, as well as a solid commitment to self-sufficiency, and, like any route, a willingness to fail and try again later.”

Today, Westman says, “the range of moderate mountaineering on Denali has narrowed almost exclusively to the West Buttress.”

What Mark is seeing on Denali is not restricted to the Alaska Range, or even mountaineering. A quick look around shows a high concentration of people—okay, crowds—on the classics, be they climbing, hiking, skiing, or riding. Lines on Everest. Lines on Half Dome. Lines to drop into Corbet’s. What were once alternative activities have become mainstream and what are now mainstream have become hot. There’s nothing wrong with adventure blowing up—in fact, there are a lot of positives—it’s just that most of us run rivers and chase powder and climb rocks to get away from other people, to connect with wildness, and to restore ourselves in the process. And adventure, in its most traditional sense, has always been a journey into the unknown, not the rote following of paths created by others.

What’s happening in many places, though, is the opposite of that. As Brad Rassler reports in this issue, California’s Mt. Whitney, the tallest peak in the Lower 48, is besieged with hikers. Despite a lottery that now awards permits to just one in three applicants, up to thirty thousand people attempt the mountain in the high season every year. There’s only one full-time year-round ranger, and the peak is becoming littered with blue bags of excrement that are issued for the very purpose of keeping it clean. And while plenty of people still climb or scramble up Whitney via all kinds of routes, the vast majority take the Whitney Trail, the easiest path up the hill. Just as on the West Buttress of Denali or the South Col of Everest, they’re funneling themselves onto the milk run, the trade route, the best-known, most-commercial, and likeliest path to the top.

You know what? More power to them. I don’t own the mountains, and I long for other people to discover the same kinds of growth and joy I’ve discovered in the wildlands and waters of the world. I wouldn’t presume to judge or critique how you or anyone else experiences the outdoors. The traditional ideal of the outdoor monoculture has left far too many feeling disenfranchised and unwelcome. The sooner that attitude goes away, the better.

But I have always tried to approach adventure as an apprenticeship, as a lifelong journey of learning and exploration of the unknown. When I first came to high-stakes pursuits—climbing, then backcountry skiing—I was filled with awe at the world and deep respect for the risks. Objective hazards intimidated me, and my human frailties worried me, so I sought out progressively more difficult or remote or unheralded places specifically to test myself, to acquire new skills, to prepare for the next adventure and become embodied with new capabilities and something approaching the wisdom of experience. I had mentors, and I played in social centers like Mt. Washington’s Tuckerman Ravine, but mostly I eschewed guidebooks and beta and went to dark corners where I could figure things out for myself.

Ingenuity, planning, patience, and determination. A solid commitment to self-sufficiency. A willingness to fail and try again later. Sometimes you want the easiest way to the top, and that’s cool. But sometimes you don’t, and in my experience that’s better.