On a Mountain Top of the Mind, at 2AM

It''s barely sunrise here and I had another of ''those'' nights. Another night of waking up at Zero-Dark-Hours in the late night (typically about 1-2 AM or so) and finding myself coping with a brood of unwelcome, bittersweet recollections of past experiences, errors made, wrong paths taken, fateful forks in the road and wasted opportunities. We all have them of course, or so I''ve been told by erstwhile specialist colleagues in psychiatric medicine. Very few (and fortunate) are those who are not occasionally plagued by such unhappy, futile ruminations of what might have been. Such moments become increasingly frequent as we age...as we get nearer to that end-point of the senses that delineates the known from the great unknown beyond. [PS: I am WELL aware that it is a severe violation of the ''Man-Code'' to even mention such anxious and unmanly moments of self-doubt, but...]

I''ve always been envious of those of my friends who never seem to have any such concerns and like the captain of a sailing ship with fully unfurled sails in known, deep waters, set their courses through life unencumbered by the ever-lurking uncertainties of hidden shoals, shallow reefs and other littoral perils that pepper the fringes of the ocean''s great vastness. In my case, as an innately reflective personality, ''full-speed ahead'' is not and never has been a maneuvering option on my bridge telegraph.

However that may be, I did eventually manage to get back to sleep after several hours of coping with this ruminative episode of masticative masochism and slept-in a bit too long (till 6AM), as a result. Despite all the retroflexive angst, I seem to have gotten in enough sleep to wake refreshed and ''beyond'' the reach of such personal devils, an hour or so later.

I am a life-long, habitual ''reader'', a practice that continues to this day, just 8 months short of my 79th birthday, and first thing I do after making the usual pot of strong Dark Roast Whatever, is sitting down in my ''reading room'', my Husky girl snoozing at my feet, and spending about an hour and a half plunging through my most recently acquired book. With a library that now approaches just under fifteen hundred volumes, I have amassed quite a collection of books in the several special, primary areas of interest I maintain, one of them being climbing (mountaineering, high-altitude rock, extreme ''Alpinism'' and other lore dealing with the fantastic mountains that abound on our planet).

Now I should caveat that despite my fondness for mountain heights, by so-called ''modern'' standards of extreme mountain climbing, I am and have never been more than a fair-weather climber. Despite my rich imaginings, more accurately it would be safe to say that to the more skilled members of my old ''Cal Hiking Club'' coterie of the 70s I was known as ''the Little Old Lady of the Mountains'' and I admit to having lost a few former climbing partners due to my extreme caution, overly calculating and reluctant aversion towards extreme risk-taking. That probably makes me what might be called a ''somewhat experienced'', armchair+ mountaineer, since I never scaled Denali, never set foot on any big ones in Tibet or Nepal (like some of my friends), would only be caught dead anywhere near Canada''s formidable North Face of North Twin, etc., etc.

As a case in point, I have never in my life ascended any higher that about 15,000 feet (Swiss Matterhorn, Mont Blanc), anywhere, and usually reached the summit by the quickest, least technically challenging route...always exceedingly glad to have been able to summit anything with a minimum amount of danger, objective hazard and/or technical challenge! Does that make me a mountain wuse? Yeah, I guess so, but I still loved those awesome heights and they often provided me with a much needed sense of inner peace and centeredness back in my earlier days. Given all these qualities, I still love to explore those extreme heights vicariously, through accounts of epic adventures in high places, with their frequently imminent fatal outcomes. So it has been with the storied history of Cho''molungma (Everest) and my library contains a large number of expedition narratives and alpine-style ascents of the world''s truly high peaks (the so-called ''eight-thousanders'' of Tibet and Nepal, et al).

Very recently, a book (that I just finished) came to my attention detailing the incredible climbing feats of Slovenia''s amazing mountaineers in the 80s and 90s. Slovenia is, as far too few know, a very small sovereign nation that is located along the Adriatic Coast, directly adjacent to the lower border of Austria. It existed for a great many years as part of Josip Boz Tito''s Slavic nation of Yugoslavia, until 1989 when it broke away from the crumbling, strife-torn Yugoslavian Federation (with, surprisingly, Tito''s blessings) and became a separate and politically sovereign, independent nation of its own.

Of course, that part of south-central Europe existed for prior centuries as a region of extreme ethnic diversity (Slavs, Muslims, Germans, Hungarians, Austrians, Russians, Serbs, Croatians, Slovenes, Christians, Greeks, etc.) and was quite literally always a powderkeg, just waiting for someone to light a match and plunge everything into utter ethnic chaos. When the war (WW2) ended and Tito amalgamated much of this region by sheer force of will, an uneasy peace settled in, but with the breakup of the Soviet regime in 1989-1990, the former Yugoslavian ''imposed hegemony'' that existed came explosively apart in the form of the Bosnian/Serb/Croatian terror that eventually required UN intervention to placate. Fortunately for Slovenia, that small nation was spared most of the savagery and utter terror that characterised Slobodan Milosevic''s ethnic cleansing cruelty and the Slovenians were thus able to engage in Alpine exploits like few other nations in that region. With the serenely beautiful and formidable limestone heights of the Julian Alps (part of Austria''s lower Alpine chain) at their doorstep and the Austrian Dolomites just off Slovenia''s western border, the Slovenians were well primed to become highly skilled Alpinists.

Interestingly, my motivation for taking special note of this book I refer to is that part of my family supposedly came from an ancient part of Slovenia that, back in the 1500s, was known as the Duchy of Carniola. Had I not had this ancestral link to Slovenia, I would have probably not gotten this book to begin with, since I thought "Slovenian Alpinism? Whoever heard of that?" Little did I know!

Very recently something truly incredible occurred (although unrelated to Slovenian climbers) when a Chinese-American climber discovered lost 1924 British Everest Expedition climber Andrew C. Irvine''s boot at the foot of the East Rongbuk Glacier in Southern Tibet, where it had been hidden by ice and snowfall until the recent global warming effects allowed it to emerge from the glacial debris. That in itself widely reopens the eternal mystery of what the fate of Irvine and his partner George Mallory was, more than a century earlier, but it also stimulated a wave of renewed interest by the public in extreme Alpinism. Enter Slovenia!

Although the failed 1924 British Everest Expedition is about as far from today''s ''Extreme Climbing'' exploits as can be, it serves to illustrate the allure that humans climbing those inherently hostile heights has always manifested in the earthbound, pedestrian population whose greatest ''adventure'' is typically no more noteworthy than driving down to the local McDonald''s for a Big Mac.

But returning to the subject of Slovenia''s remarkable climbing feats, I highly recommend this book, written by Bernadette McDonald (ALPINE WARRIORS, 2025, published by Rocky Mountain Books, Ltd) to all of you. As far from most plodding, detail-encumbered and dry accounts of most expedition climbs as it could be, McDonald''s book is probably one of the most most inherently fascinating, highly competent mountaineering books ever written. It quickly draws the reader into the hitherto little known world of Slovenia''s greatest climbers, and as one reviewer (famed mountaineer Chris Bonington, who is now 90) succinctly put it: "A fascinating account of the extraordinary achievements of the Alpinists from this tiny Slovenian nation. Once started, I couldn''t put the book down till I was finished!" [Sir Christian John Storey Bonington, CVO, CBE, DL is an internationally acclaimed British mountaineer. His career has included nineteen expeditions to the Himalayas, including four to Mount Everest. He is one of history''s most distinguished modern-era climbers.]

Truthfully, that was exactly my own reaction to McDonald''s brilliant journalistic elan, as exemplified in this 336 page hardcover book of hers, but given the brevity of my daily reading window, I elected to go at it over a period of a few days. Still, it was so totally absorbing that I found myself going deliberately far slower in reading it than is normal for me, merely to more adequately savor the pleasure her excellent writing skill conveyed in her pages. Hers is no mere dry recapitulation of extreme climbing feats...it is a story filled with colorful, forceful and singular human personalities, the likes of which most ''ordinary'' people never encounter in their own pedestrian lives.

But more to the point, it exemplifies and showcases the finest qualities of the ''human experience'' that risking everything in imminently hazardous (yet serenely beautiful) settings brings out in individuals. In this book you will find everything, from the challenge of marriages to these ''extreme climbers'', the impact of human bonds and allegiances that few people like us shall ever experience personally, and an exploration of the driving life-force that pushes human beings onwards towards the near-unattainable, before death finally...inevitably... gathers them into its dark embrace, and what it is all about, to be a fragile human creature that fancies itself made of the strongest Titanium alloy!

In short: READ THIS BOOK! It will keep you engaged every single step of the way from the base of the mountain, to the highest peak on the summit!

PS: I attached an image at the top of this piece that accompanies my above narrative merely to highlight what it is like to be a mountaineer of my rather markedly junior accomplishments (truly worthy of the snarky epithets ''Mountaineering Wuse'' and ''Little Old Lady of the Mountains''), and hopefully provides a suitable contrast that helps set off the exponentially remarkable achievements of the Slovenian mountaineers this book is all about! Shown are myself and my climbing partner, Dave Hough (a grad physicist at UCB), both of us UC Hiking Club buddies, on the summit of 13,061 foot Mt. Dana in Yosemite National Park (about 1971 or so). We did the ''Walk-up Western Approach'' first, then later did the somewhat more challenging Eastern side route via the Dana Couloir. Other favorites in that same area were Mt. Lyelle, Mt. McClure, and Rodgers Peak, all about the same height. [Compare these modest heights with 28,169 foot Kangchenjunga, 27,940 foot Lhotse, 26,660 foot Nanga Parbat, 26,759 foot Manaslu, 27,825 foot Makalu, and 28,251 foot K2 in the Himalayas!] GAAK!