Preuss, Paul. The Piton Dispute

The Piton Dispute any need to prove that it is of the utmost inhumanity to say to the mountain leader: refrain from a route if as a husband and father you dare not tackle a dangerously friable stelle or dangerous in some other way without letting the rope – for lack of any natural horns to use as protection – run through a securing iron ring; refrain from a route which you yourself may manage entirely safely and securely but which doesn't offer any real possibility of protection for your companion of lesser ability! Or to say: don't try to reduce the danger for your fellow route-mates and yourself – that's unchivalrous! The vast majority of amateur climbers is young, inexperienced and unpracticed; they generally possess more ambition than ability. They are often only just equal to coping with very difficult stellen, but any difficult mountain is a real problem for them. How can one shout to these young people: Just, whatever you do, don't protect with pitons, don't rappel! All that would be unsporting, unchivalrous! What can not or will not be undertaken entirely “independently” on the ascent as well as on the descent should be left alone. The descent is as a rule harder and more dangerous because as is well known we have no more than corns on the tips of our toes.20 Nevertheless: “Don't rappel, that would be unsporting, unchivalrous! That would be a battle waged with unequal weapons! Take care not to reduce the risks!” A peculiar view! Does the mountain perchance behave chivalrously? Does it not set traps of the basest sort? Are brittle holds, rockfall, and so on chivalrous means on the part of the enemy that's to be defeated? Does not ruin, particularly on first ascents, lurk behind every hold? And Preuss calls protecting yourself as much as possible from the mountain's dirty tricks an unchivalrous way of fighting! Was the knight of the Middle-Ages perchance unchivalrous because he protected his chest with armor?

“If a kletterstelle cannot be done without a belay it should not be done at all!”21 What alpinist can boast of having such experience that he can assess with certainty the climbability of a, say, merely six meter high section of face? And the proposition: “where you can go up, you can also go down” is only entirely correct in theory; for nothing is easier on a complicated kletterstelle than forgetting the sequence of all the moves. On a ticklish retreat down a vertical face the slightest circumstance is apt to cause a catastrophe! Even the best climber isn't proof against general happenstance!

Any alpinist who doesn't comprehend the value of the feeling of having solved a great problem with relative security is genuinely to be pitied; great treasures remain hidden from him! Wouldn't it be ridiculous pedantry to turn back from a stelle when the undefeated face can perhaps be delivered up to us by one piton?

We don't want to swindle our way up faces by means of protective pitons;22 we only want to reduce as much as possible by their means the dangers that threaten us, so that, as Lammer23 puts it, of the absolute danger only the danger of the danger remains, like a fraction of one half. We'd rather in the event of a fall hang four or even twenty meters on a protective rope (perhaps with a broken leg) than have the ravens celebrate a feast with our corpse in the dark abyss.

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