Betwixt a rock and a tall place

THE Alpine Club of England is celebrating its 150th anniversary this year, an occasion of interest not only to climbers but also to travelers, geographers and lovers of glorious scenery.

The club, founded in 1857 -- five years before the Austrians and Swiss started their own climbing organizations -- played an important role in opening up some of the most vertical parts of the world, including the Alps and the Himalayas. Alpine Club members made famous first ascents of the Matterhorn (14,691 feet) above Zermatt, Switzerland, in 1865, and Kanchenjunga (28,169 feet) on the border between India and Nepal, in 1955.

New Zealander Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay were the first to stand on the summit of Mt. Everest (29,028 feet) in 1953, but they got there as part of a British expedition, led by Alpine Club member John Hunt.

In “Summit: 150 Years of the Alpine Club” (to be published in the U.S. in March), author George Band, the youngest member of that party, who went on to reach the summit of Kanchenjunga two years later, tells the story of the club and, more broadly, of England’s long love affair with the mountains. Snowcapped peaks, Band says, were considered terrible until English Romantic poets, including William Wordsworth and Lord Byron, imbued them with metaphysical allure at the beginning of the 19th century.

After Albert Smith, an early club member, climbed Mont Blanc in 1851, he packed London theaters for six seasons giving illustrated lectures to a fascinated public that included Queen Victoria. Around 1900, Geoffrey Winthrop Young, an undergraduate at Cambridge who would later become a mountaineer-poet, invented the sport known as roof climbing, practiced on the university buildings’ peaks and gables. Art critic John Ruskin became a mountain devotee, leaving a treasured watercolor, “Lake of Lucerne and the Uri Rotstock,” to the club.

But why the British are drawn to glaciers, rock faces and snowcapped peaks remains a mystery. The highest mountain in the British Isles, Scotland’s 4,406-foot Ben Nevis, is an infant compared with Everest and Kanchenjunga. So, I called Band for some explanations.

At 78, he now lives in a cozy corner of southern England but well remembers his days in the world’s highest and most forbidding places.

Why are the English so keen on mountaineering?

In the Victorian period, the British started many sports. Penrith is considered the birthplace of British climbing. It was there that W.P. Haskett-Smith made a solitary first ascent of the Napes Needle on Great Gable [in the English Lake District] in 1886. In the Swiss Alps, they went with guides, but then learned the routes and techniques themselves.

The British experience in India gave ordinary people a chance to go into the mountains. They were drawn to the Himalayas. In the 1930s, Everest was a magnet.

But it’s curious, isn’t it? There’s something elemental about getting high up, and many of the first English climbers were academics and clergymen.

What is the difference between hill walking, hiking, climbing and mountaineering?

Hiking doesn’t necessarily imply going up a mountain. In England, we do a lot of hill walking, and we have small crags people ascend without ropes. Rock climbing is on higher crags and uses ropes. Mountaineering involves all that as well as tackling snow, ice and rock with ice axes and crampons.

What is the distinction between free and artificial climbing?

The English have always been proponents of free climbing. Unlike Continental climbers, we were very reluctant to use pitons hammered into the rocks [which leaves marks]. We thought that was cheating. But if we wanted to climb to the same standard, we had to learn. Britons discovered how to jam pebbles into cracks in the rock and later developed the idea into nuts and wedges. The last man takes them out.

In the past, climbers have left a great deal of debris in their wake, most infamously on Everest. Is anything being done about this?

Everybody now is more ethical and green. European teams are required to bring down their equipment, provided they don’t endanger peoples’ lives by doing so. Sherpas used to come down empty-handed, but are now being paid to remove empty oxygen cylinders. I have suggested building a pyramid, or chorten, of cylinders on Everest, as a memorial to those who have died there.

Some have called mountaineering a selfish sport, given the dangers. Is there any truth to that?

I agree, it is a bit selfish. But without the spirit of adventure, the world would be a sadder place. On the Matterhorn in 1865, very prominent people died. To many, including Queen Victoria, it seemed tragic and unnecessary. Today, some climbers stop when they get married and have children.

Was it hard for you to be on the team that conquered Everest but not with the pair who reached the top?

It was wonderful to take part. In many ways, it is like a football game. One chap scores the goal, but he needs a whole team.

Everest in 1953 was a siege-style climb, you say in your book. What does that mean?

Siege climbs are required for high mountains. You set up a series of camps while people get acclimatized. There is a great deal of preliminary work, sometimes more difficult than going to the summit. Only after you’ve set up on the mountain is the summit team picked and then everyone tries to make it as easy as possible for them. But anything can go wrong.

On Everest, Charles Evans and Tom Bourdillon were picked to go up first, but they had to turn back 300 feet from the top because of bad luck with their oxygen.

On alpine-style expeditions, climbers start at the base and go in pairs, carrying everything on their backs -- generally, six days’ worth of food and equipment. But it usually takes longer than that, and climbers end up hungry.

What is it like to sleep on a high mountain?

At high camp, around 27,000 feet, on Kanchenjunga, we cut a ledge out of ice on a 45-degree slope, about 8 feet long and 3 feet wide.

When we put up the tent, it overlapped the edge. We drew lots to see who got the outside, and I lost. [He laughs.] The next night, I had to do it again because the chaps said I had experience.

After taking part in the Everest first ascent, why didn’t you ever go back to reach the top?

By ‘53, Everest had been tried many times. In 1924, a team got within 1,000 feet of the top. I thought there were plenty of other challenges. Mountaineers reckoned that Kanchenjunga was a much harder climb. No one had been above 20,000 feet, so that left 8,000 feet of unknown face.

How long did you spend on top?

About 15 minutes. We were running out of oxygen, and it was getting dark.

You quote John Ruskin in your book, who wrote: “If you come to a dangerous place and turn back from it, though it may have been perfectly right and wise to do so, still your character has suffered.... If you go through with the danger ... you come out of the encounter a stronger and better man ... and nothing but danger produces this effect.” What do you think of that?

He was probably right.

susan.spano@latimes.com

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Alpine Club library

The library at the Alpine Club, 55/56 Charlotte Road, London, 011-44-20-7613-0745, www.alpine-club.org.uk, is open to visitors by arrangement. The 150th Anniversary of the Alpine Club exhibition will run March 14 through the end of April.