When mountaineers gather to tell tall tales about high places, about the mountains and the mountaineers that defined them, they speak in reverent tones of Mallory, Kurz, Harrier, Hillary, Meissner and Visteurs. To that pantheon may now be added the name of Cian Takahashi Gaynor.
Muroran-dake.
Its very name provokes a shudder of fearful recognition. K2 may be higher, the Eiger more famous, but among that exclusive fraternity of elite alpinists, no other mountain evokes such an equal mixture of desire and terror: the desire to be one of the few, the very few, to climb it; the terror of what that entails. For Muroran-dake is a mountain like no other. 911 metres of unrelenting, heart-stopping danger, a vertical dance with death that takes away more than it ever gives (Sorry, not too sure where that metaphor was supposed to be going).
Today, Cian climbed it.
Yes.
You read that correctly.
Today, Cian climbed it.
Well,
'climbed' may be linguistically incorrect, but hell, we aren't linguists, we're climbers, men and women enraptured with those places, those high places, that so many look up to but few, oh so few, look down from.
were you a bit hot and delirious when you reached the summit? Or is it a Japanese tradition to get naked when you get to the top of a mountain?
ReplyDeleteActually, I had planned on climbing the whole mountain bare-chested, but Sanae implored me not to as (a) it would be too much machismo for one mountain; and (b) I might attract some 'frisky' bears.
ReplyDeletesurely there are laws against such things!
ReplyDelete