Training for the New Alpinism: A Manual for the Climber as Athlete

You can’t coach desire, and no matter how fancy your training plan or how high your stated goals are, it comes down to getting out the door and doing the work day after day.

You have to be honest with yourself that in the end no one really cares—you do it for yourself. Everyone must decide for him or herself how much risk he or she wants to take. Risk is not measurable and is always dependent on the individual. You need to know that it is impossible to indefinitely push your limits: higher, faster, better. Eventually you reach a peak and then it goes back down. I believe it’s important that you don’t lose your passion and that you enjoy the outdoors and challenging yourself, no matter what your level is.

My approach to training echoed how I climbed. The romance of climbing didn’t interest me. I didn’t seek harps and wings. I heard no opera up there. Instead, my mountains had teeth. The jagged edge we walked up there dragged itself across my throat, and the throats of my friends and peers. I took the mountains’ indifference to life as aggression, and fought back. I armored myself against that indifference; with training, with thinking, with attitude. I trained with friends who shared a similar approach. Our mantra was dark, but it motivated us. When we ran we breathed in rhythm—no matter the speed—and that beat had words: “They all died.” We inhaled and exhaled the great alpine epics—like the tragedy that befell Walter Bonatti’s party on the Freney Pillar—to push ourselves to a place where we would never come up short, physically. The consequences of falling short made training important. I realized early that controlling the things that I could control gave me greater freedom to address the things that I could not control. And the mountains offered those in spades.

greater fitness leads to more opportunity. This holds true for knowledge as well. When we acquire new skills, when we develop ourselves as human beings, we uncover new potential.

There’s a time to run and a time to walk. But don’t get me wrong: I’m not telling anyone to slow down. I’ve long viewed with suspicion the armchair directives barked at the young and driven, usually with the faux self-assuredness of someone who’s never been there, about how they shouldn’t push so hard, how they should go easy. I find beauty in charging into the unknown, armed with little more than a sharpened stick and unwavering self-belief. Beauty in dropping the excuses and trying, in making things happen rather than waiting for some imaginary time when you’re good enough, wise enough, have a job that pays enough—a time that will