Neil Goldsmith, our journal editor, has reviewed Brian Hall’s book, due out at the start of next month, it sounds a cracker …
BOOK REVIEW: High Risk, Climbing to Extinction. Brian Hall, Sandstone Press
Hardback £24.99 publication date 01/09/2022
Available from the publisher’s website https://sandstonepress.com/books/high-risk
I have no experience of being at the elite level in sport, or elite level of anything, for that matter. I often wondered, when I was at senior levels in management what differentiated the top tier from me and my peers, when they did not seem any brighter, any more competent than the rest. Indeed, some of the Government Ministers and Chief Executives with whom I have dealt, often appeared less able than myself and my peers. I came to the conclusion that they had an unbelievable desire to be there, a vaunting ambition that over shadowed everything else and often led to difficult personalities and awkwardness with personal relationships.
Sport is different, you can only get so far on ambition and drive, high ability is also a pre-requisite. In climbing this is certainly true, it is not ambition or drive which makes for a statement of ‘a genius, one of that rare breed of athletes who makes a total mockery of the efforts of others’ (John Syrett). The best have the high ambition (Rouse wanted to be the number 1 in British climbing), the drive and the ability and, often, the awkward personal relationships which go with high ambition.
This book is about how those factors come together to take what is, to the average climber, extraordinary risks and enormous hardship in the pursuit of excellence in their chosen sport, climbing. It also is a raw and compelling read about the personalities Brian Hall has climbed with and lost over his long and successful career as an alpinist, operating at the highest level of the sport. He recounts the stories of their achievements with him and the history of their death. What is fascinating is his build-up of the factors which might have contributed to their demise.
It was a generation of climbers who took greater risk than before, or since, in the pursuit of a purity of style: alpine style ascents in the highest mountains, with what was fairly primitive gear. The way in which the stories of ascents are weaved in with the complexities of personalities and relationships makes for a very good read, one which I could not put down.
There are some fascinating insights into the personalities and what drove them, often to their death. I was drawn to the section on Joe Tasker. Brian gives a different insight into what was a complex character, providing enough for me to wonder quite what it was which drove him to extreme risk, to the point of potentially risking the safety of those around him. Whilst leaving much unsaid there is sufficient to draw some conclusions particularly about upbringing in a Jesuit seminary. As the poet Browning put it:
Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp or what’s a heaven for
Others in the book died of natural, or at least non-climbing related deaths some of which were related to the lifestyle. Brian refers to the hectic, alcohol and drug-fuelled unconventional way of life based upon climbing of that generation of climbers as more truly a culture (or possibly a counter-culture).
There are some interesting and informative chapters at the end of the book on risk and the problems with high mountains which are of value in their own right.
This is the best climbing book I have read in many years and I can heartily recommend it.
Neil Goldsmith