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Climbing and modern frustrations


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I climb because I cannot build a ship, sail across the world, kill you and steal your golden treasures, take your land, destroy your cities to build a giant statue of myself, then sail back home to write my memoirs at my country estate.

 

It is our obsession to shape the land, to plow and till, to name and catalog, blast and cut.

Fighting this urge is a new thing, constricted by law, bound by popular opinion, we languish in plastic handcuffs,

Our grandfathers built the highways and cities, while we build nothing, frustrated and listless.

 

Tell me what you thought the first time you held an ice axe....did you imagine thrusting it into the pitiless ice and snow on some unimaginable face?

Welding it felt good, natural...like a hammer, it begs to be used, to be mastered.

Swinging it at imagined ice, you decide right then...you are a climber, and this is your weapon.

479411-summit.jpg

479411-summit.jpg.42c9708bf6eae129fcaba7626b4b5695.jpg

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Well, mine was a wooden handled Chouinard ice hammer, I was on a 1200ft ice fall, I was wearing jeans and a bunch of wool, there was cold water running down my wrists, and my belayer kept yelling "GET BACK ON THE ICE...!" - I wasn't really thinking about either as I was too busy trying to keep water from running down my leg...

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