Preuss, Paul. The Piton Dispute

The Piton Dispute mountains are always the standard by which, never the enemy against which we measure our strength.

“If you can not climb a kletterstelle without a belay (= could not and would not climb without a rope!), you must not climb it at all” – – “It is far from my intention to reject entirely the use of a rope (= therefore one still need not always do it without a rope!).” Where a contradiction is supposed to lie in these two phrases remains a mystery to me.

To characterize climbing shoes and hob-nailed boots as artificial aids is in my opinion a prime example of a sophistic quibble. With this same line of reasoning, it ought also in Jacobi's opinion be considered justified from the alpine and sporting point of view to have a rope ladder tossed down from the summit in order to get up.

What Jacobi writes about the line of reasoning of the climber on a difficult kletterstelle is characteristic of the weak, decadent type of modern mountaineer who goes to the mountains so as to numb his shattered nerves by means of intense impressions. Physically and mentally sound, strong men belong to the carrying out of mountain routes! But if, during the overcoming of a hard kletterstelle, anyone really thinks of the difficulties that the---body-recovery expedition will encounter, then that someone should, if he is not so prudent as to give up climbing on his own, be forbidden the mountains and be placed in a sanitarium for nervous conditions. Jacobi is quite right when he quotes Purtscheller: “In the high mountains, there are not only things you cannot do but also things that you should not do,” but he should also apply this sentence to those who want to undertake difficult mountain expeditions with his line of reasoning.

That passage in which I speak about the possible necessity of undoing of the rope link between two climbers was also outright misunderstood. This error too will be refuted in the Nieberl article. It is only the eventuality of a double fall that I want to avert in the most pressing danger by climbing free (cases which, as I explicitly wrote, should not occur with methodical route execution), not falls in general. In actual fact, it goes Preuss on the first ascent of the Guglia without saying that I remain opposed to Nieberl as well as di Brenta to Jacobi in my opinion that, in the event of a fall, it is better to have only the one participant come off than the both of them. For this reason the leader has the duty in such cases – if he possesses the necessary presence of mind – to induce the second, possibly even by twisting the facts, into unroping.

Security is even my highest principle; that's something that Jacobi has completely misunderstood. It's not the principle of security that seems unjustified to me, it's rather the – in the present state of rockclimbing (= as climbing is pursued nowadays) – alleged adherence to this principle, which in reality is not abided by at all. Should one want, as I do, to adhere to the principle itself, the way rock-climbing is practiced must be set on a completely different foundation. Let how I conceive this principle be established for the last time in these pages in six theses that contain nothing other than the fundamental ideas of my previous essays and whose justification every thinking mountaineer has to concede: 1. You must not be equal to the mountain climbs you undertake, you must be superior.

2. The degree of difficulty that a climber is able to climb with security on the descent and also 26