Jambo.

At precisely the same time that my first Dispatch hit the Internet, celebrated mountain-climbing author Dave Roberts took out an Op-Ed piece in the New York Times on the very same topic: how satellite tech has made it so much easier and safer to get “out there”. Thanks for the serendipity, Dave.

Roberts was writing on the death of 81-year old Italian Walter Bonatti, perhaps the greatest mountain climber the world has known. In 1955, in an escape from certain death on a solo climb on the Petit Dru in the French Alps, Bonatti pulled off what is thought to be the single most important climbing feat in mountaineering.

Even Reinhold Messner, no slouch himself – the 1st to solo Everest without supplemental oxygen – said that as a climber, Bonatti was envied around the world because he was “too ahead of the curve, too alone, too good.”

A pioneer of granite-face routes in the French & Swiss Alps, it was Bonatti’s misfortune to be on the first successful ascent of K-2 in northern Pakistan with climbers who were so jealous of his prowess that they hid their final base camp, forcing Bonatti and a guide to spend a night out in the elements, denying them both the chance to summit. Scarred for life by the betrayal, and later sued for libel by the weasels for trying to tell the truth, Bonatti wrote that his “disappointments came from people, not the mountains.” Given the scumbaggery of his fellow climbers, you can see why he may have felt this way.

In his OpEd piece, Roberts rightly sings Bonatti’s praise as an adventurer who upheld the Code, “if you get yourself into trouble, you have to get yourself out.” (See “Petit Dru” above.) Roberts goes on to lambaste modern day adventurers who violate the Code, and then laments that because technology makes it so easy to get out of trouble, it’s impossible nowadays to really get “out there”.

Like yours truly in my early Sahara days, when Roberts was making his bones in the Alaskan wilderness, he describes how he and his colleagues were “blissfully disconnected” and because of this, more “out there” and pure, I guess. He cites a few cases of hotdogs getting themselves into hot water and causing chaos (and in one case death) by calling in a chopper rescue. He concludes that because of the safety afforded by tech, modern day adventurers can never achieve the same “bliss” that he did, essentially pulling up the drawbridge to this great Bliss Castle behind him.

I beg to differ.

I can’t attack Roberts’ cred. I wouldn’t even try. He’s an accomplished adventurer and writer – many would kill to have just one of his careers. And though I’m Old School like him, I tend to take a more collegial, forgiving and inclusive attitude toward adventure and the people who seek it. Though I’ve seen and done a lot, I don’t think that adventurers belong to some elite club governed by arcane rules, which by their nature, are exclusive.

My only rule is simple: Do No Harm. To anything, or anyone, especially yourself.
As Bonatti’s K-2 story reveals, there are plenty of low-tech scumbags. And Roberts is not shy to point out the high-tech varietals. Both groups sink to the lowest common denominator to promote their feats, or conceal their flaws. As Bonatti so painfully knew, human nature is what it is – whether equipped with transponders, or crude mid-20th century oxygen bottles, which Bonatti and his guide were bringing up to their colleagues, when the weasels, incredibly, hid the camp. It sounds like an episode of LOST.

People do rotten things. Period. As Havard-Smithsonian astrophysicist Robert Kirshner famously said: “the strongest force in the Universe? It’s not gravity, it’s jealousy.” So let’s agree to condemn the selfish, the jealous, and the quislings, regardless their decade, and reliance (or not) on satellite. Bad character spoils more “bliss” than microchips.

And yes, tech does allow you to take bigger risks. It does shrink the world (as I argued in my last Dispatch), making it harder to get “out there”. But you still have to go! That hasn’t changed. The Call (to adventure) is still the Call. And if it dials your number, you have to answer. In today’s world, you may have to work all the harder to find that state of bliss, but it’s all still there for the taking. You don’t have to be a card-carrying member of some exclusive “Back in the Day” club to have a real adventure. And you don’t have to risk your life! Nike had it right: you just have to do it, and leave all the judgments and rules to others.

I’ve sat on an ice shelf at 20,000 feet, eyeing the equatorial sunrise. I’ve been eye to eye with a Golden Eagle on the Mongolian Steppe, my hand feeling the iron-clad grip of its talon through the thick leather glove. I’ve seen the Milky Way shimmering like patchwork of celestial spider webs, on my back, in the sand, all alone in the Sahara. My bliss was no less intense because there was a sat phone in my pack. Bliss is bliss, Mr. Roberts, and no one can claim theirs is more pure, or greater. Do the math: the more people who get out there, safely, and feel the bliss, the better off this planet will be. Bliss is leverage against scumbaggery. And risking your life? Overrated.

Last Dispatch, I promised to list the 11 (not ten) places I want to do before I peg out: given the amount of miles Amy I and logged this year, I’d have to say Lake Tahoe ten times … then the jungles of Cameroon, north of Nanga Eboko, on the Sanaga River, where I hung briefly in the ‘70’s.

We’re off to Everest Base Camp, then Bhutan. See you “out there”.