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The mountains stir our imagination, the world’s high places call to us and challenge us to adventures. We want to get to know the terrain with all our senses: explore, trek, conquer peaks, climb precipices, get under the skin of the landscape and find peace. The photographer Claes Grundsten takes us with him to six continents and around 40 of the world’s most spectacular and beautiful landscapes. We encounter the breathtaking variation of mountains, whether highest or lowest, snow-laden or desert-like peaks, from the South and North Islands of New Zealand to the Lapland fells. Grundsten tells us about the geology of mountains, about climbing, the diversity of mountain cultures and the aesthetics of mountain photography. With its magnificent scenery, this book is an inspiration for all who yearn to experience the most remarkable mountain landscapes on our planet.

BERGTAGEN TR EK K I NG I N S PI RAT IO N

C LA E S

G R U N D STE N

ISBN 978-91-7126-429-9

MAX STRÖM

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789171 264299

MAX STRÖM

C LA E S G R U N DST E N

B ERGTAGEN T R E K K I N G I N S P I R AT I O N C LA E S G R U N D ST E N

TRANSLATED BY JULIE MARTIN BOK FÖRLAGET MAX STRÖM

“We remained on the summit nearly two hours, looking about us at the vast maplike views, that could hardly be surpassed in sublimity and grandeur; but one feels far from home so high in the sky, so much so that one is inclined to guess that, apart from the acquisition of knowledge and the exhilaration of climbing, more pleasure is to be found at the foot of the mountains than on their tops. Doubly happy, however, is the man to whom lofty mountain tops are within reach, for the lights that shine there illumine all that lies below.’’

JOHN MUIR 1888 Published posthumously in the essay collection Steep Trails, 1918

To Jill, my life companion and follower on countless mountain tours.

Cover, front: Torres del Paine, Chile.

Cover, back: Ama Dablam, the Himalayas.

Pages 4–5 : The Monarch, 2,904 metres, is located in the Kootenay National Park in the Canadian Rockies.

© Bokförlaget Max Ström, 2017 Photography and text: Claes Grundsten www.claesgrundsten.se Design: Mikael Engblom Translated by: Julie Martin Prepress: JK Morris Production AB, Värnamo Print: Livonia Print, Lettland, 2017 ISBN 978-91-7126-429-9

www.maxstrom.se

CON T EN TS

BERGTAGEN 8

P IONEE RS 136

TOPOGRAPHY 12

MOUNTAIN SPORTS 146

SUBLIME 16

TREKKING 156

TOPOPHILIA 20

CLIMBING 160

GEOLOGY 26

MOUNTAIN PHOTOGRAPHY 164

GRANITE 36

LAPLAND 170

SAN DSTONE 40

NOR WAY 174

LIMESTONE 44

S COT LAN D 178

DARK MOUNTAINS 48

G REEN LAN D 182

SNOW MOUNTAINS 52

THE ALPS 186

GLACIER S 60

THE H I MALAYAS 190

LIGHT 70

JAPAN 196

MOUNTAIN FORESTS 78

TAS MAN I A 200

CANYON S 90

N EW Z E ALAN D 204

MOUNTAIN WATER 98

PATAGON I A 210

H IGH COAST 104

THE ROC KIES 214

DESERT MOUNTAINS 110

THE AFR ICAN R IFT VALLEY 2 18

SACRED MOUNTAINS 116

WILDERNESS 224

ROCK GALLERIES 124

EPILOGUE 230

MOUNTAIN PEOPLES 128

B ERGTAG E N

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The Swedish “bergtagen” is an expressive and attractive word but it also has a touch of superstition about it. It derives from old oral tales of trolls who lured people to mountainous areas where they were captured and enslaved. Those who managed to flee and return home were changed and said to be unrecognisable. Captivity in the mountains had destroyed their personalities; they had become “crazed”.

Nowadays the word has become almost synonymous with “fascinated” or perhaps “madly in love”.

In that sense there are many of us who have been captivated by the beauty and challenges of mountains. Some prominent mountains were already venerated thousands of years ago for religious reasons, in both east and west, but the more worldly fascination with mountain landscapes first became widespread during the Age of Enlightenment. In the nineteenth century more and more privileged Europeans were drawn to the natural world to walk in the mountains and climb peaks. The ideas of the Romantic Movement led artists to dramatic landscapes and scientists tried to understand the origins of mountains. For a long time it was mainly the landed gentry who went mountaineering but in the mid-twentieth century the natural world increasingly touched everyone and more and more people began to visit and explore the Earth’s mountain ranges. Today no-one knows how many hikers and

climbers there are throughout the world. All of us share a love of landscapes, which stir our imagination; high places and tempt us to go exploring.

Mountain landscapes offer us experiences of beauty beyond the everyday. We want to get to know the terrain with all our senses: explore, hike, conquer peaks, climb precipices, examine the topography, take pictures of the views, look for flora and fauna, get “under the skin” of the landscape and find peace. Being “bergtagen” in the modern sense of the word means being possessed by the magnificent landscape. We accept difficult conditions on our trips; the weather may be inclement and the physical exertion arduous but still we return to the mountains and seek the golden moments when the light causes the peaks to stand out, when the splendour of the landscape and our own mood come together in harmony, when we become one with nature. The mountains leave us captivated, obsessed. They cause us to become explorers in both the physical and metaphysical sense.

Some mountainous regions are worshipped by extremely devoted admirers.

Sarek in Lapland is a good example, a vast wilderness with steep massifs and deep valleys, forests rich in wildlife and hundreds of glaciers. Anyone who has fallen in love with Sarek frequently yearns to return. My lifelong passion for mountains began there 50 years ago. On one of my countless trips I walked up the easily climbed Låddebakte and looked down on Rapaselet, which is the most fascinating place in the area. The delta is tightly hemmed in by the precipitous mountain walls of Bielloriehppe that was glowing red in the afternoon sun. The landscape felt timeless and un­touched but these trips take us beyond the physical reality. In the wild you enter a context that is bigger than you are.

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< Distant blue mountains arouse long-

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ings and strong feelings of freedom, while the profiles of the landscape stir mountain-lovers we are not afraid of rough ground and this experience of the wild is priceless; we want to be bound to the hills and the open spaces, to sink into the landscape. It’s not just the path that is worth the effort but also those god-given moments of calm. One beautiful September day in Norway Jotunheim was wrapped in a fresh haze and I was lucky enough to be standing on Glittertind, the jagged peak of Kyrkja to the left and Tverrbotnindane to the right.

> The light acts as the conductor, drawing our eyes to flick between the overwhelming views and the finer details of the scenery. Sometimes you see something special, worth photographing, like one solitary tree against a dramatic mountain peak, as the evening glow gilds the slopes high up on Ama Dablam in the Himalayas. With enchanting discoveries like this I often wonder just what it is about nature that makes it so beautiful – if nothing else, experiences of nature are a form of cultural expression.

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our curiosity. What lies beyond? As

TOP OGRAP HY

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A mountain landscape is characterised by its topo­ graphy, meaning the description of its features, but here I am chiefly referring to the variations in altitude. A quarter of the Earth’s landmass is to some extent mountainous but what that includes varies widely. Almost half of all the land in the world is more than 500 metres above sea level but considerable parts are flat plateaux and not particularly rugged. The picture is a little clearer if we combine the height above sea level with the appearance of the land. A slope should have a certain minimum gradient and the land a certain minimum variation in altitude for the area to be deemed mountainous.

Our view of mountains depends more on their relative rather than absolute height. Some mountains are imposing landmarks even if the peak is not particularly high above sea level and vice versa.

The experts call how much a mountain stands out its “topographical prominence”. You measure the difference in altitude between the highest peak and the nearest mountain pass that separates it from others. Around the world there are just over 1,500 peaks with a prominence of over 1,500 metres. To my mind the height of a mountain above its base says even more about its stature, but in most cases the height of the peak varies with the different points of the compass. Mount Everest seen from the south is not very notable and surrounded by high ridges; its most imposing side, Kangchung, faces

east and is a 3,000-metre-high, icebound mountain wall. Mountains that are often cited as the highest when measured from the base to the summit are Kilimanjaro, Nanga Parbat and Denali (Mount McKinley), all around 5,000 metres or more in one sweep. The highest mountain in the world when measured from the base is Mauna Kea on Hawaii, 10,210 metres, of which 6,000 metres are beneath the sea. Measured from the centre of the Earth, Chimborazo in Ecuador reaches the furthest out into space.

Topography is the mountain’s body and soul and as a mountain-lover you want to explore it, pref­erably on your own two feet and from different angles, seeking the most attractive perspectives and investigating the mysteries of the terrain. The desire to map the land was probably passed down in our genes when people began to populate the Earth and new areas had to be explored in order for us to survive, but today the interest lies in exploration and adventure. Perhaps sadly for an old-fashioned romantic, there are no longer any completely unknown mountain tracts to explore for the benefit of mankind but it is easier to travel to all corners of the Earth and that has its advantages. As a mountain-lover you can always find exciting new areas you have never seen before.

The fells around Kebnekaise have their own special topography. The Laddtjo­ vagge forms the magnificent entrance.

A storm is threatening and the light makes the scenery more dramatic than usual. To the right stands Duolbagorni, 1,662 metres, which was voted Sweden’s most beautiful mountain in a survey. Its absolute height is modest but the almost 900-metre elevation from the base is impressive. With its steep walls and the crater-like basin at the top, Duolbagorni is a prominent peak but it is considerably shorter than Kebnekaise’s 2,111 metres.

Following pages show the differences in altitude between these two mountains, Duolbagorni to the left and on the right Kebnekaise, a 50-metre-thick dome of ice on the South Peak. If that ice melts the South Peak would be downgraded to Sweden’s third-highest mountain.

Then the highest would instead be the adjacent North Peak at 2,097 metres, on the right where a cloud has descended.

Figures for heights are always factual but they are also deceptive. A lot of people want to climb the highest peak in a mountain chain, a country or a continent.

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SUBLIME

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In 1756 the Irishman Edmund Burke revived the ancient Greek term “sublime”. He believed that conflicting feelings were aroused in people who looked at mountain landscapes. He called a landscape that is so majestic as to be indescribable, but not beautiful in the classical sense, sublime. He saw the mountains as the antithesis of the cultural landscape and believed mountains inspired people with both fear and wonder. That is why they are sublime. Burke was not a dedicated walker but he wanted to promote an aesthetic idea with respect for the mountains at its heart. The experience of a threatening landscape gives us satisfaction provided the threat does not materialise. In the mountains these feelings become very intense, according to Burke.

Thus seeing mountain landscapes as sublime is a European idea and it became a trend among the elite of the Enlightenment. People were drawn to the mountains as much for the disturbing fear they aroused as for a hunger after beauty and the quest for achievement. The term sublime also came to be highly significant for artistic expression during the Romantic era at the turn of the eighteenth to the nineteenth century. Many landscape painters thought mountains were inspiring. The magical fluctuations of the light undoubtedly contributed to this and some took them as a sign of God’s existence.

A new school of philosophy claimed that a simple life among the peaks was superior to life in the cities.

Burke’s little book about the sublime became the starting point for the growing enthusiasm for mountains in the western world. During the nineteenth century more and more travellers began climbing untrodden peaks in the Alps – and after that golden age of climbing, developments moved in new directions. The pioneers set their sights on the higher mountains in the Caucasus, the Himalayas, Africa and South America. They wanted to conquer the Earth’s topography at the same time as walking tours in Europe’s mountains became increasingly popular.

In the second half of the twentieth century climbing became an advanced sport and mountain walking became something of a popular movement in developed countries. Nowadays we tend to talk about tours as adventures rather than sublime experiences. But the essence of the word adventure is double-edged, the adjective adventurous can mean taking reckless risks. Our attraction to mountain landscapes reflects man’s complex psyche. Many mountain-lovers focus on completing challenges while others concentrate on experiencing the natural world without taking dangerous risks. However, these two motives do not necessarily conflict with one another. Many, perhaps most of us, want to experience both sublime beauty and adventure on our mountain trips.

Mont Blanc, where mountain climbing was born, has both classical Alpine beauty and an exciting history. This collection of extremely jagged granite spires is called Les Aiguilles de Chamonix, the highest, Aiguille Verte, is 4,122 metres high. The peaks emerge from the clouds like islands in another world. The mass effect of cloud and fearful precipices inspires us with a zest for life. You are humbled, inspired, challenged, somewhat frightened and endlessly fascinated. To describe that experience the word sublime is fitting.

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< In this part of the Andes, at Purma­

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marca in northern Argentina, the mountain landscape takes on different The sedimentary bedrock makes the peaks colourful and very rounded. But even though the topography is not as dramatic as rugged mountains, it is tempting to call the landscape sublime.

Climbers do not flock to these colourful heights, the rock is far too soft, but the landscape makes a serious impression and it’s always possible to walk.

> Over the centuries the inhabitants have transformed the Alpine valleys into a cultural heritage. In the Seealp Valley in the Swiss canton of Appenzell the vegetation is luxuriant thanks to the calcareous bedrock. Challenging mountains and pastoral pastures combine here to form a sublime whole.

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forms from the steep Alpine landscapes.

TOPOPHILIA

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The term “topophilia” (from the Greek topos, place, and philia, love of) began to be used in the midtwentieth century by two well-known British poets.

They were trying to explain their attraction to unusual natural environments and why they wanted to go there. Some time later the philosopher Alan Watts explained that people loved these strange places either because they are extremely beautiful, have a fascinating lack of beauty or because their charm is not easily described. Another element can be added to these ideas of what makes some places special – an inaccessible location. If we see these characteristics in the landscape as attractive perhaps we can call ourselves topophiles, admittedly not a recognised term but meaningful. For a topophile nature’s charisma is important. The Romans talked about “genius loci”, the spirit of a place, and in oriental religions there have long been similar terms for sacred landscapes. Places with particular charm exist in most types of landscape, not least in mountainous areas. The climber Alfred Mummery, who was active towards the end of the nineteenth century, thought along similar lines. He claimed that during a climbing tour you get to know a mountain down to its finest fissure. The experience is like seeing the world through a magnifying glass and only then do you discover the personality of the landscape, in his opinion.

The fact that most people clearly like beautiful landscapes is a truism, but there are also aesthetic qualities that are not self-evident and only become important when you discover them. That is what the term “topophilia” focuses on. The question is why one is sometimes strongly moved by one place but left indifferent by another, even though they are both quite similar superficially. What are the qualities in a landscape that captivate us? Apart from an attractive appearance, originality can have that effect. It can be hard-to-define details in the topo­ graphy that distinguish otherwise similar places.

Sometimes you come to a place that you sense with your whole body and then you begin to wonder.

I can be flooded with unexpected empathy for a mountain landscape that does not seem anything special at first glance but has an appeal that creeps up on you so to speak.

A singular place is thus unusual in some way, but certain original mountain landscapes are actually forbidding at first glance; they can look ravaged.

Fortunately, first impressions often change. Our view of nature has different phases and with increasing experience we perhaps develop a taste for the more unusual. Then we begin to appreciate strange mountain environments as much as the best-known picture postcard landscapes. That is how it has been for me.

A cloud has settled on Upuigma, 2,100 metres, accentuating how strange the landscape is in southern Venezuela. This mountain is part of La Gran Sabana, one of the most extraordinary of the world’s many large-scale mountain landscapes.

An area slightly bigger than Cyprus is full of high table mountains, tepui, like blocks scattered across a floor. These plateaux form an isolated world and therefore the ecology is unique. Down the vertical sandstone walls tumble extremely high waterfalls. And below the mountainsides grows dense rain­ forest that turns into savanna, much of it formed by the slash-and-burn culture of the original inhabitants.

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< The mountain deserts of northwest

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Argentina are part of Puna de Atacama, the driest desert area in the world. At a metres lie enormous expanses of infertile land surrounded by volcanoes. In the background the evening sun rests on Cerro Aracar, 6,095 metres, close to the border with Chile. The landscape offers a palette of colours seldom seen.

> The massif of Bungle Bungle in north­ west Australia is like nowhere else on Earth. The name is a corruption of the Aboriginal word for bundles of grass.

Today the formation is more often called Purnululu, meaning sandstone. The area is a World Heritage site and famous for its 20–50-metres-high sandstone “bee­ hives”. Cyanobacteria grow on the dark bands, protecting the brittle rock surface, and the light bands have a crust of iron oxide. The slabs in the foreground are sculpted by the flows of water in the rainy season.

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height of between 3,500 and 4,000

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In central Mongolia, at the edge of the Gobi Desert, stands Baga Gariin Chuluu, a compact massif 30 to 40 metres high

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with broken granite blocks scattered over an area just 20 kilometres long.

Between these strange rocks lie grassy meadows that almost look as if they had been planted, a highly original mix of barren and fertile ground. The massif rises like an old ruined castle on the endless steppe. The isolated location, far away from everything, rein­forces the feeling of originality.

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G EOLOGY

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Mountains live for a long time. Their story involves several stages and awfully long periods of time – as a rule the bedrock is much older than the peaks we see. The fact that mountains exist at all is chiefly due to tectonic plates: seven big ones and about ten smaller. They drift around on the surface of the Earth like giant ice floes at speeds of between one and 20 centimetres a year. They have existed for at least three billion years and change the world’s geography infinitely slowly.

Three hundred million years ago the world looked very different from today; all the landmass was collected together in the supercontinent Pangea, later broken apart by the movement of the plates.

Today’s continents slowly began to form but why they move is not entirely clear. Gravity probably plays an important part. Hot molten material from the depths of the Earth rises, cools, becomes heavier and sinks back. The pull of the moon, the tides and the rotation of the Earth are probably significant too. The forces cause each plate to drift away from the diffusion zone where the magma is welling up, while the ocean floor expands along these zones.

If, instead, a diffusion zone lies beneath a continent a rift valley occurs and in the long term splits the landmass. Since the Earth is not getting bigger, when two continental plates collide a mountain range without volcanoes is formed by folding, like the Himalayas. If an oceanic plate hits a continental

plate, the former dives down towards the depths of the Earth. This is called subduction and friction forces the bedrock up. A range with lots of volcanoes is born, like the Andes. Where two oceanic plates collide one is pushed down. Deep ocean trenches and series of volcanic islands result.

The birth of mountain ranges occurs over tens of millions of years. When a new landmass emerges from the sea erosion begins. These processes take an inconceivably long time. Volcanoes are born over a hole from deep in the Earth where lava is forced out, solidifies and, together with ash from the eruption, builds up a volcano. Most are found along the boundary between two plates, including Iceland and round the Pacific Ocean. Individual volcanoes, such as Yellowstone, occur far from the collision zones between the plates, above a hot spot in the Earth’s mantle that sends magma towards the Earth’s surface.

Faults can also create mountains as internal tensions fracture the surface of the land, gigantic blocks thrust upward and mountains rise up.

Another consequence is long escarpments. Less common are the single mountains formed when a body of granite is pressed upward through the Earth’s crust. Other solitary rocks occur in deserts, monoliths that are all that is left when the surrounding bedrock has worn away.

San Juan River in Utah runs through a 300-metres-deep meander, the “Gooseneck”. On the Colorado Plateau the river has eroded layers of the petrified seabed that are hundreds of millions of years old. About 50 million years ago the plateau was raised owing to the balancing forces of gravity in the Earth’s crust, like pushing a piece of wood into water and then allowing it to pop up, an isostatic elevation. Some geologists believe that most of the mountain ranges in the world are actually made up of high plateaux that have been hollowed out. According to that theory the collisions between the tectonic plates primarily create elevated land surfaces that are then slowly transformed into rugged mountain ranges by erosion.

If that theory is correct no peaks are born as precipitous formations.

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< The lava in the Earth’s biggest

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volcano, Mauna Loa on Hawaii, sometimes sets in sensual shapes. I saw this slope, about 3,500 metres above sea level. This type is called pahoehoe lava and has quite a smooth surface, little silica and is hotter than silica-rich lava.

Pahoehoe glides sinuously in tongues and strings. Volcanoes built up of this kind of lava have long drawn-out slopes and are called shield volcanoes. Mauna Loa has very long sloping sides. You can walk unimpeded up to the highest point of the crater, 4,169 metres.

> The Poás volcano, 2,708 metres, is in Costa Rica and has two craters, one dormant and this one which is active.

The crater has probably collapsed and is 300 metres deep. The sulphurous lake in the bottom is the most acidic in the world with a pH of close to zero and the temperature is between 40° and 70° C above zero. Poás has a history of many violent eruptions and an unconfirmed rumour says the lake can throw up the world’s highest geyser. It is easy to reach the crater by road but it is often foggy.

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formation on the volcano’s southern

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< In the upper reaches of the River Elbe in southern Germany there is sandstone that was formed in the Cretaceous

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period. The rock is usually porous and well worn by rain and wind. The edges become rounded and sometimes the weathering creates figurative blocks like this one. There is also a harder variant in the area that has been cemented by quartz. This is quarried for building, when it is called ashlar.

> The bedrock in the Argentinian Quebrada de las Conchas “shellfish gorge” offers a unique mix of colours.

Coloured sandstone, pale limestone and petrified brown earth emerged into the light owing to land movements when the Andes were formed. Erosion affects these soft rocks considerably.

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< Table Mountain in Cape Town is one

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of the most iconic mountains in the world, 1,084 metres above sea level. At million-year-old sandstone that protects the softer underlying layers of argillaceous rock. The latter were formed in a shallow sea, while the sandstone derives from deeper water. Deepest down is granite. The hard sandstone rocks stand out in the magnificent precipices. At the foot lies the sea, which emphasises the feeling of height.

> In spite of its name, Bryce Canyon in Utah is more of an amphitheatre than a canyon. The hollow is filled to the brim with fairytale towers called “hoodoos”.

These are formed when a hard rock protects an underlying one that is softer.

The brittle pink cliffs consist of petrified clay and fine sand and their colour comes from iron oxide deposits. This material originates from the later part of the Cretaceous period when layer upon layer of sediment was laid down in a shallow sea. The Mormon Ebenezer Boyce settled here and drove his cattle through the area. He is alleged to have said it’s “a hell of a place to lose a cow”.

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the top is a layer of extremely hard, 500-

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A trek along Laugavegur in southern

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Iceland takes you through this pale volcanic landscape comprised of easily to erosion. Ice and streams have carved out a lot of ravines in this crumbly material, the heights have become rounded and are speckled with late snow. This kind of lava is very hot, full of silica and flows easily as it gushes out. It comes from the nearby volcano of Torfajökull. Most oceanic islands arise through volcanic activity. Iceland is an elevated part of the mid-Atlantic mountain ridge on the boundary between two tectonic plates that are drifting away from each other.

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rhyolitic lava. The surface falls victim

G RAN ITE

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Pluto, Roman god of the underworld, has provided the generic name for rock that is formed deep under the surface of the Earth. The plutonic group includes granite that almost always occurs in bodies of magma that have penetrated other rock strata and then cooled down and crystallised. Depending on what minerals are included in the melt and how quickly it cools, the granite can vary in appearance and character. What is popularly called granite is actually a series of types of rock with different mineral blends, surface structures and colours. They are all hard and resistant. When the erosion has worn away the bedrock on top, granite is exposed to the light of day.

Some conspicuous granite mountains are just the tips of solidified magma that is significantly bigger below ground, like an iceberg. Large parts of the continents’ lowlands, for example the basic Scandinavian and Canadian Precambrian shield, consist of granite from the depths of flattened mountain ranges. Considerably younger granite is found in many of today’s most rugged mountain ranges. The peaks are as pointed as church spires, sometimes as monumental as cathedrals.

When mountains are built up of granite the architecture of the landscape is subdued. The cliffs are shiny and smooth. Weathering splits off sheets, like cutting an onion, and a vaulted profile takes shape. Occasionally quantities of blocks collect at the foot of the precipice similar to those below moun-

tains of softer rock but some coarse-grained granite is eroded to gravel, when wind and rain attack the flattest slabs. In many places the granite is so hard that phallic pinnacles are chiselled out. The world’s highest cliff is to be found on the granite mountain of Great Tango Tower in Khartoum, a sheer wall 1,340 metres high. All granite peaks with unbelievably high precipices and sweeping, steep cliffs offer firm ground for climbers, the best there is. The formidable shapes of granite rocks comprise some of the most spectacular scenery in the world and seeing them is a highly aesthetic experience if one’s eyes are receptive to mountains. In the nineteenth century John Ruskin formulated aesthetic ideas concerning our experience of mountain landscapes. He is one of history’s most respected art critics and was also a passionate mountain-lover. Ruskin took the feelings engendered by a work of art as his starting point. He felt that a genuine art experience must be based on what you actually see and the works must be interpreted both emotionally and intellectually.

According to his thinking we can look at well-formed granite mountains as if they were works of art, even though no human being has created them. Observing the carved shapes of the peaks in different lights can become a kind of art experience in the eye of the beholder. Ruskin wrote: “These crags, and heaths, and clouds, how great they are, how for ever to be beloved, only for their own, silent, thoughtless sake.”

The dawn light strikes the upper part of Borneo’s highest peak, Gunung Kinabalu, 4,100 metres. The mountain is a lump of granite, a batholith in technical terms, and it is still rising half a centimetre a year. It is not difficult to reach the upper slopes but the air is thin. At the very top there is a remote world with elegant crags moulded by the chemical weathering of the tropical rain. The mountain consists of granodiorite, which is a close relative of granite. During the last Ice Age glacial ice slid over Kinabalu and the smooth slabs that were created drove the treeline down to 3,200 metres above sea level. Above that there is no earth for the forest to take hold in.

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< Fields of polished granite slabs extend around Olmsted Point where, at a distance, one can see the climbers’ dream

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mountain Half Dome, 2,965 metres, in the Californian National Park of Yosemite.

In 1919 a rope ladder was installed that makes it easier to climb this well-known peak. It was climbed for the first time in 1875 by a geologist who drilled holes in the slabs and climbed barefoot. The abrasive glaciers of the Ice Age gave Half Dome its unique shape. The peak is part of the Sierra Nevada range that consists of granite 100 million years old, formed when the bottom of the Pacific Ocean was pushed down under the western edge of North America.

This mountain range grew thanks to the uplift forces 75 million years later and was then worn down.

> Stetind is one of the most pointed mountains in Norway and consists of granite that crumbles away when rock falls crash down the 1,392-metre-high tower. The granite is about 1.6 billion years old and was lifted up in con­ junction with the Caledonian fold 400 million years ago. Stetind has been named Norway’s national mountain, a status awarded to it by a survey of Norwegian radio’s listeners.

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SAN DSTONE

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Sandstone mountains often have smooth cliff walls like granite mountains. The fact is that the most vertical and polished precipices in the world consist of either sandstone or granite, both resistant rocks but not related to one another at all. The granite derives from solidified molten rock in the hot depths of the Earth. Sandstone is formed on the surface of the Earth in sand beds that have solidified in cool conditions. Watercourses are the mother of sandstone, bringing sand and other rock fragments to lakes and seas. On the bottom one grain of sand is stacked upon another. Then they are cemented by the hardening pressure. Liquid carrying sediment or calcium seeps between the grains of sand and bonds them together. The properties of the sandstone vary with the chemistry of the bonding agent.

When coarser rock fragments than sand are consolidated other, rather similar types of rock are formed. Greywacke is a kind of sandstone that contains unsorted gravel masses from weathering.

In a mixture with sand and small stones, smaller particles act as a combining mass that holds the greywacke together. If a bed of rounded stones is hardened in a similar way, a conglomerate occurs but if the embedded stones are angular instead, breccia is formed. Ground-down lava becomes tuff if it is petrified. Petrified moraine soil is called tillite.

And so on.

All rocks have their distinctive character; sandstone is sedimentary, granite igneous. The geological classification is reminiscent of the biological system but rocks are not nearly as consistent as flora and fauna species. Sandstone can vary widely from one place to another. Often one type of rock gradually merges into another closely related one and as a geologist one has to be flexible. If the tectonic plates push down older bedrock with sandstone in, it is transformed into hard quartzite in a process called metamorphosis. For laymen geology may seem complicated but we all need some understanding to be able to answer the questions: Why do the peaks look as they do? Where do the colours come from? What do the cliffs consist of? Why is that mountain there precisely? How old are they?

Not least the design of the mountains affects us, both consciously and intuitively. Sandstone peaks have the purest lines of all. In many cases they are located in hot, dry areas with a mild climate. The shifting character of sandstone generates a broad spectrum of colours and shapes. The crags are picturesque and fire the imagination – artists can discover a wealth of motifs. Climbers know that they offer challenging tours up smooth rock faces.

And a hiker can readily tramp across the flat slabs that spread out around them.

Saxon Switzerland on the border between Germany and the Czech Republic is a fantastic sandstone landscape. The Romantic painters travelled here at the beginning of the nineteenth century, among them the famous Caspar David Friedrich. These mountains are called the Elbe Sandstone Mountains and can reach more than 700 metres above sea level while the River Elbe flows 500 metres below these ramparts and towers. The topo­ graphy is fascinatingly fragmented.

Altogether there are more than 1,100 cliffs and columns in this area, which has become a Mecca for climbers. Numerous trails also attract hikers. People who spend the night in the open air under the shelter of the cliffs are called “boofers”. A feeling of wilderness emanates from the Affensteine area even though it is in Central Europe.

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< Films set in the Wild West have made

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the mountains in Monument Valley world-famous. The local Navajo people space between the rocks. West and East Mitten Butte are the best-known profiles, and to the original inhabitants they are two hands left behind by the gods, who are going to come and collect them one day. Sandstone strata as hard as concrete have protected the mountains from the river erosion that wore down the valley for 50 million years. Under the surrounding desert terrain lies broken-down soft argillaceous rock.

> Kata Tjuta is a sedimentary massif in the central Australian desert. The Aborigine name means “many-headed mountain”. It consists of a collection of domes that erosion has not affected.

The bedrock contains a conglomerate with inclusions of granite and basalt fragments, which was buried under other sediment 500 million years ago.

This thicket has grown in one of the fissures that split the massif.

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call the scenery Tse’Bii’Ndzisgaii – the

LIMESTONE

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Few mountains are as brutally rocky as those that consist entirely of limestone, just looking at the precipices makes you feel dizzy. Earth’s most prominent example is the Italian Dolomites, a range named after the dolomite rock that is a particular variant of limestone. It also contains magnesium, is harder than normal and more tolerant of mechanical weathering. The precipices have very rugged surfaces and the peaks stand like memorial stones on a base of long rocky slopes. Other pure limestone mountains get their outward form from chemical degradation, water having eroded the slabs. Caves and bowl-shaped scars are formed, also vertical precipices, in a phenomenon called karst that has created the famous sugar loaf peaks at Guilin in China and the steep-pointed islands in Ha Long Bay off Vietnam and the Pang Nga Bay on the Thai west coast. Borneo, New Guinea and Sulawesi also have high limestone mountains and karst landscapes. Some folded mountain ranges contain big limestone massifs, for example the Rockies, Alps, Pyrenees and Balkans.

Here and there more tightly defined limestone crags can be enfolded in other bedrock. An example is the yellow bands near the summit of Everest.

All limestone has its origins in relatively shallow seas; skeletal fragments with calcareous shells, chiefly corals and foramens, drift to the bottom where they build up thick layers. With time the sediment is petrified but limestone can also form where the

mineral calcite is deposited in water through a chemical reaction. Homogeneous limestone mountains are less common than mountains that contain other unmixed sedimentary bedrock, such as sandstone or shale. Many limestone mountains derive their rock from the Coal Age, just over 300 million years ago.

The Dolomites were formed 250 million years ago by huge coral reefs that were buried in lava. Africa collided with Europe and the Alps were raised up; the lava wore away while the reefs remained and were transformed into dolomite; the name is a tribute to the French geologist Déodat Gratet de Dolomieu, who analysed its chemical content at the end of the eighteenth century.

Through extreme tours in the Dolomites Emilio Comici developed the sport of climbing, inventing new aids: rope ladders, hanging bivouacs, rope slings and more. With two brothers he climbed the vertical, 500-metre north face of the Grosse Zinne, the highest of the Drei Zinnen peaks, a revolutionary climb because it was based on the new equipment. Colonel Strutt of the British Alpine Club wrote that the “expedition was reduced to a wretched level of disgusting farce”. But he was wrong. Comicio’s climb was just the beginning of a develop­ment that has made all the world’s “impossible” rock faces possible to climb, whatever rock they consist of.

The Vajolet Towers in the Dolomites are very slender summits. They consist of a hard limestone, known as dolomite, and are located in the Rosengarten massif that is said to be named after the story of the dwarf king Laurin. He had a rose garden in front of the gateway to his rocky stronghold. When he was captured he put a spell on his roses so that no-one should see them, but he forgot about dawn and dusk in his spell. That is why the mountains glow at those times.

There are actually six Vajolet Towers but these three dominate. The foremost one in the picture is called Delago and like so many other peaks in the Dolomites it has a popular climbing route.

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< Petrified coral reefs make up the Raja

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Ampat archipelago in eastern Indonesia.

The 50-million-year-old limestone was coral reef was pushed up in this turbulent collision zone between the tectonic plates. In time chemical weathering gave rise to karst phenomena with labyrinthine topography and sugar loaf shapes set in a turquoise sea, with the world’s richest marine life. Low-growing tropical jungle with scant animal life covers the mountains. There are hollowed-out lagoons and cave systems and most of the crags are rugged with sharp edges making them almost impassable. These distinctive islands, almost 100 metres high, belong to the Dafalen group off the island of Misool.

> The high massif of Gunung Api in northern Borneo is just over 1,700 metres high and contains thick layers of compact limestone. These needlelike crags, eroded into shape by the rain, are close to the top. The bedrock was formed when calcareous marine sediment was pushed here from the South China Sea. The peaks are the biggest of their kind on Earth, up to 50 m high.

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formed in the Tertiary period, when the

DARK MOUNTAI N S

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In The Lord of the Rings J.R.R. Tolkien describes the evil Mordor where black mountains loom against the sky like gloomy spectres. Even in real life dark-coloured mountains can evoke dread. Seen from below, steep crags seem threatening – an impression that is reinforced if the precipice has a subtle patina. The experience of nature becomes more stark and mystical in the presence of dark mountains, though the peaks can look lovely in their black attire. Most of the world’s mountains probably have a dark-coloured bedrock, which affects us more than we realise.

From a geologist’s perspective the dark rocks do not constitute a homogeneous group, they have different origins and the chief common denominator is their dark hue. If basic magma hardens quickly on the Earth’s surface or just below, basalt occurs, if the same magma petrifies slowly in the bowels of the Earth, gabbro is formed instead. Both rocks are usually soot-coloured and distributed across the world, their darkness deriving from basic minerals containing limited silica but a lot of iron. Basalt is considered the Earth’s commonest rock and dominates the seabed. When the tectonic plates collide basalt and gabbro are transformed into greenstone or amphibolite – generic names for similar metamorphic rocks with dark variations.

Resistance to weathering varies in dark rocks, causing different-shaped peaks. Fine-grained basalt

sometimes results in solid rock walls, perhaps elegantly split with columns. Dome-like peaks can also be formed of basalt and are reminiscent of granite.

Many of the world’s biggest plateaux are dominated by basalt formed when molten magma flowed out across large areas and then solidified, including Iceland, the Indian Deccan Plateau and the Ethiopian highlands. Gabbro is coarser grained than basalt and constant weathering in cool, dry climates grinds the slabs to gravel. Gabbro originates in the depths of the mountain ranges and only emerges when the bedrock on top is weathered away, therefore it is not as common as basalt on the Earth’s surface.

Amphibolite and greenstone crack open more easily than basalt and gabbro, the rocks being more fragmented. Amphibolite often occurs in the older mountain ranges where the overlying bedrock has been chiselled away over millions of years. Shale lends a dull shade to mountain landscapes and is always formed from converted sediment from the seabed. Its hard or soft consistency determines the shapes of the terrain: soft shale produces rounded heights with gentle slopes whereas hard shale makes the rock more rugged and steep. Limestone and sandstone peaks can be dark, sometimes blackened by chemical deposits or colonised by dark algae and lichen. Sandstone may become black from petrified sand.

The highest massif in Ireland is called MacGillycuddy’s Reeks after a clan that owned the land for years. The dark colour of the rock comes from a sandstone from the Devonian period. The mountains originate from the Hercynian folding 375 million years ago when a sea was obliterated as Gondwanaland was formed in the giant continent of Pangea.

In Irish this massif is called Na Cruacha Dubha, which means “the black stacks” and it contains the island’s three peaks over 1,000 metres. Lough Gouragh is sited just below Beenkeragh, 1,010 metres, which is Ireland’s secondhighest mountain. The massif lies in the south­western part of the island, in Kerry, a popular area for walkers.

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< Lapland’s high fells look very sombre

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owing to the amphibolite. In summer the mountains flank the valleys like dark in Sarek and is one of the most jagged mountains in the area. The name means “madman’s peak” from a Saami legend about a youth who disappeared in the mountains. Amphibolite was originally a basalt lava that was transformed by pressure and heat when it was pushed eastwards under the Caledonian fold 400 million years ago. After that the amphibolite lay for a long time under rock strata that have been weathered away over time.

> The Ethiopian highlands make up Africa’s biggest high-altitude landmass, some of it over 4,000 metres in altitude.

The highest and most spectacular parts are in the World Heritage site of Simien, on the northern edge of the highlands.

Basalt lava flowed out into the area and solidified 30 million years ago. To the north a long fault line defines these highlands. Deep ravines and dark plugshaped mountains make this a singular landscape.

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spectres. Bierikbakte, 1,789 metres, is

SN OW MOUN TAIN S

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We can divide the world’s mountains according to the types of rock they consist of. Other distinctions can be their age, where they are or their height above sea level. Snow mountains belong together just because they have a lot of snow on the summits: they are united by their appearance, not by their basic rock or location. The snow creates a bright sheen that makes them the archetype of natural beauty in a mountain landscape. In sunshine, snow mountains are crystallised into glittering diamonds. When it is cloudy the contours dissolve and blur the lines.

There is scarcely any more inhuman environment than these ice-cold slopes. No tribe has ever settled in the permanent snows and we are awestruck by their majesty. At their most beautiful snow mountains sing to the stars. Peter Matthiessen wrote: “The emptiness and silence of snow mountains quickly bring about those states of consciousness that occur in the mind-emptying of meditation … ”. He was walking in the Himalayas where the white peaks have a strong effect on the mind of the walker. Snow mountains occur all over the world, even in the tropics. The lowest level for true snow mountains is called the snowline and varies according to the locality. The greater the distance from the equator the lower it is. Many mountain ranges are only snowy in winter, others bear their white mantles all year round, at least on the upper slopes. On relatively low summits where there is a lot of winter snow it lies like

whipped cream on the ridges. Over 5,000 metres above sea level cold grips the mountains continuously. The wind and sun ripple the hard-packed snow that constantly clings to the slopes. To the beholder it looks as though a giant had ploughed furrows on the mountain walls, the snowfields are like graphic reliefs and snow is stacked on crags in treacherous cornices that can give way. Most of the Earth’s distinctive peaks with ever-white caps are found in the highest mountains in Asia, South America and Alaska. Lower mountains with long, cold winters acquire a more curvaceous physiognomy with the snow cover. The valleys swell up and rise up to the peaks by degrees. During the cold season these plump landscapes turn into extremely light, white expanses. In tropical latitudes the snow has a different effect, the contrast seems unreal when you are walking in the lush green and looking at snowy mountains hovering above like unearthly craft high in the sky.

No matter how ice-cold frosty snow mountains may be, they are always an aesthetic sight. In 1689 Matsuo Basho, the master of haiku, captured the experience in his Japanese travel book Journey to the Interior of the Land: Blessed you are The faint aroma of snow In this South Valley

Southeast of Everest this peak stands proud, 6,243 metres. It has no name but is sometimes called the Chukhung Glacier, which actually refers to the icefield that hangs suspended from the summit on the steep west face. Many of the glaciers in the Himalayas originate from the avalanches that regularly crash down.

This frozen mountain has extraordinary amounts of ice and snow. We do not fully understand how the corrugated surfaces of the snow are formed. The strong winds, low temperatures, subli­ mation when water vapour is turned directly to ice and evaporation when the sun’s rays are intense probably all play a significant part.

Following pages: Skiers glide towards the heart of Sarek and pass below the un­usually spiny Lapland massif of Ähpár.

The sides of the mountain are hidden by the winter snow except on the steepest faces. These snow-covered fells are pale queens compared with the dark monarchs that they become in summer.

The topography in Lapland is perfect for cross-country skiing. You can glide easily through the wide valleys where snow levels the terrain.

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< There is no easy climbing trail up Pirámide, 5,885 metres, in the Cordillera Blanca, it is one of the most rugged

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snow mountains but surprisingly little known. Close by is the far better known Alpamayo that was chosen as the world’s most beautiful mountain in 1966 by a number of expert climbers. In my opinion Pirámide is in the same class.

The Peruvian Andes have many wonderful snow mountains.

> The wind blows hard across the peaks of Ähpár in Sarek. On the left is Nilas Ridge, 1,745 metres, and on the right Bireikbakte, 1,789 metres. The snow on the ridges is whipped up into the air, forming a plume along the contours of the fell.

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< A strong wind is blowing across

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the world’s third-highest mountain Kangchenjunga, 8,586 metres, on the There is a lot of rain from the monsoon in this part of the Himalayas. The world’s biggest avalanches have crashed down below Kangchenjunga, in an uninhabited region. I photographed the south face from Dzongri Peak, 4,500 metres below the summit.

> Tawllirahu, 5,830 metres, is one of many steep snow mountains in the Cordillera Blanca, a 200-kilometre-long chain in the Peruvian Andes. Its Spanish name indicates that the peaks are usually clad in snow. Thanks to the tropical location the snow is wet and sticks to even the steepest rock walls. However, climate change has reduced the snow cover on the peaks in recent years.

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boundary between Nepal and Sikkim.

GLAC IERS

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Glaciers are transient land features which can last a long time: the development of the ice mass is climate-dependent. Out on the icefield you may wonder whether you are standing on firm ground or a morass, the ice feels as hard as concrete but is also as brittle as broken glass. With every step broken crystals crunch and there is always a degree of uncertainty – in areas where the snow has melted you feel safe, the crevices are clearly visible, but where it still lies traps may lurk beneath – deep cracks, terrifying springs, awful risks. Yet glaciers offer enticing routes into the mountains, their pale surfaces lighten up the landscape and screen the sharp boundary of rocks and groups of boulders, like beaches round an island, making them attractive to an explorer.

In heavily ice-bound mountain chains labyrinths are formed, with tongues of ice that run together like rivers meeting. “The glacier was God’s great plough …” wrote Louis Agassiz, a nineteenth-century scientist, the first to realise the ability of ice masses to break down and transform the landscape. Believing in the Ice Age, ice sheets were his explanation of the traces he had seen in America and Europe: moraine crests, rivers of pebbles and rounded boulders shaped by enormous ice masses.

Glaciers are born from snow, large quantities fall in the same place year on year and it is gradually converted into ice. Every glacier has a symbiotic relationship with the climate; its health depends

on the weather and vice versa. The glacier is like an organism: in cold weather with a lot of snow, it grows, during a hot period with a strong thaw it shrinks. This is called the mass balance, new ice is formed, old ice disappears. The mass balance reflects climatic changes – with a time lag. At present, most of the Earth’s glaciers are melting, a couple of hundred years ago they were growing. Almost all the ice on Earth is in Greenland and Antarctica, bound in the ice sheets, only a fraction of the world’s total volume of glacial ice is found in mountain icefields. Between the tropics glaciers only occur in the highest mountains, the biggest in the Himalayas and Andes, and a few small ones on isolated peaks in Africa, Mexico and New Guinea. In temperate areas lots of glaciers exist even in lower mountain chains. Near the poles the ice can stretch down to the sea.

The weight of the ice causes glaciers to move downwards. The ice forms solid matter 50 metres down inside, even deeper it plasticises due to the pressure. The ice mass, lubricated by meltwater, slides over the terrain; ice that is formed high up is constantly carried towards the front but can recede if the climate warms. Obvious local variations, including the slope, the wind, the direction and the volume of snow all determine its development.

A glacier always adapts to the prevailing climate.

Glaciers crack owing to the unevenness of the underlying bedrock and the Grosser Aletsch Glacier looks cracked.

Gravity causes the ice to glide downwards like a brittle dough. Sunshine and warm winds affect the lower parts where the glacier melts. In the upper parts the winter snow is turned into ice crystals that contribute more ice every year. The icy surface in the picture is free from snow and the coarse crystals that have emerged have been mixed with gravel and dirt to form a graphic pattern. This is the biggest glacier in the Alps, in an area in Switzerland that has been designated a World Heritage site.

The upper part of the glacier is almost a kilometre thick.

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On Malchin, 4,050 metres, you can see

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the Potanin Glacier. It is named after the Russian botanist Grigorij Potanin who mid-nineteenth century. The massif as a whole is called Tavan Bogd; it is the steepest and highest part of the Altai Mountains and is protected as a national park. The glacier rolls out towards a steppe, which betrays its geographical location. It is almost in the middle of Asia, as far from the sea as you can get on Earth. Around it the frontiers of Mongolia, Russia, China and Kazakhstan meet. The upper part of the glacier has several snow basins, each of which feeds an ice stream and when these glide beside one another gravel and stones are carried to the surface where a medial moraine is formed – the dark strands that stand out.

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travelled to the interior of Asia in the

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< An iceberg from the Upsala Glacier is

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floating around in Lago Argentino, the biggest lake in Argentina. This glacier Patagonia. On the lake the ice has a deep cleft where the iceberg is calving.

This glacier takes its name from the fact that Uppsala University gave financial support to the first studies here.

> Meltwater is collected in the streams on the Knud Rasmussen Glacier in eastern Greenland. Here and there the water tumbles into deep wells towards the innermost part of the glacier. When this picture was taken the winter snow cover had melted. The dirty white surface is made up of ice crystals with particles of gravel.

Following pages: Knud Rasmussen Glacier is linked to Greenland’s ice sheet through a labyrinth of ice streams that penetrate a mountainous area. An incredibly complex bedrock enhances these steep mountains in Schweizerland. On the right is the pointed peak of Tupilak. The Inuit name indicates its likeness to a handmade figure with magic powers that could destroy enemies.

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belongs to the big icefield in Chilean

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< The icefall in the Swiss Z’Muttgletscher shines in the morning sun, while the north face of the Matterhorn is in

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shade. An icefall with its many cracks and towers occurs when the glaciers glide over a rocky sill, creating tensions in the ice mass.

> Rebman’s Glacier is on Kilimanjaro.

As the sun reaches its highest point at the equator the ice crystals are split vertically by radiation energy, which produces pillars at the edges of the ice mass. In the nineteenth century Kilimanjaro was covered by an unbroken sheet of ice but today the remaining glaciers are melting rapidly. However, at this altitude, about 5,600 metres, the temperature has not become noticeably warmer. It is probably dry air masses that are causing the shrinkage. The air has become clearer and the intensity of the sun’s rays has increased. The glaciers on Kilimanjaro were in better health previously, in a more humid climate with more cloud. It is unclear whether this change can be attributed to global warming.

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LIGHT

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Towering cumuli fire the observer’s imagination.

Cumulus and snow mountains are in some strange way related. On summer days in the lowlands the clouds can be puffy and create an illusory mountain chain in the sky. Other kinds of cloud draw heavenly figures, almost like brushstrokes, hieroglyphics, fish scales, corrugated iron, optical lenses, flat roofs and more. The shapes of the clouds are like omens and the light changes as they do. The whole landscape is briefly renewed. Cloudy skies are as much like stage shows as the peaks themselves. The light pulsates in the vapour dancing above the rocks. Sometimes mist hangs like a fine curtain across a rock face, sometimes the mountain is completely swallowed up in the haze. Clouds create shadows that play tag on the slopes and at times they shroud the whole landscape in fog. A cloudy sky is an invaluable ingredient in the experience.

In Shobogenzo, a thirteenth-century Japanese work, the Zen master Dogen writes tellingly about the art of interpreting nature: “Since the mountains are high and massive, the way for the clouds always leads over the mountains; their incomprehensible power to glide with the wind comes naturally from the mountains.” Dogen’s sayings are permeated with poetry. Staying in the mountains is also a poetic experience, the clouds symbolise freedom, they rule the light. The mountains are where the skies travel.

Nowhere else in nature has such a wide range of

light flows as a mountain landscape. High peaks mould their own weather and by the grace of the sun’s rays the mountains are turned into a kaleidoscope.

The colours of the clouds and mountains shift according to the time of day and the refraction of the light in the airborne drops of water. At dawn and dusk the nuances are seductive; stormy weather tones the palette down to menacing shades. Every kind of light has an explanation. A rich mountain experience oscillates between the desire to feel and the will to know, between poetry and fact.

The nature of the mountain light is also determined by the season, the height above sea level, the latitude and the interaction with the clouds. Every area has its own fascinating spectrum. The light in the Alps is different from that in the Himalayas, which is not at all like that in the Scandinavian fells.

The low sun in northern latitudes shows the mountains in another light than the piercing tropical sun at its zenith. A thin, dry atmosphere above 6,000 metres shows the mountains more sharply than the humid air that surrounds coastal cliffs. The most memorable moments occur when the effect transcends anything we can imagine. The mountain landscape is constantly changing through the aspect of the air, the irradiation and the degree of humidity.

Sunrise on Poon Hill, 3,210 metres, is a tremendous experience for hikers walking round Annapurna in Nepal.

This is the view to the east, towards the Himalayan foothills where the early morning sun is hidden behind a cloud.

In the mountains extraordinary light flows occur regularly as the airborne ice crystals, water vapour and particles in the atmosphere interact with the sun’s rays. Photographs of the most extreme examples resemble the nineteenthcentury landscape painters’ mountain motifs, with their magnificent representations of light. You might think that these were born of their imaginations but similar situations occur in reality, as a mountaineer knows.

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< The Blue Ridge Mountains lie in the

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central part of the Appalachians. The picture shows an area near Clingman’s National Park, on the border between Tennessee and North Carolina. The height above sea level ranges from 1,500 to 2,000 metres. The blueish sheen of the ridges comes from the natural isoprene gas given off by the forest. The hills are covered by the most-species-rich deciduous forest outside the tropics, with about 100 different species of tree, some emitting isoprene.

> The Dolomites often suffer heavy rain showers that can happen suddenly.

Here hail is falling over the Geisler Group. When you are hiking you are often fascinated by the drama storms create, even though you have to take shelter. The optical effects in the air and sky are remarkable.

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Dome in the Great Smoky Mountains

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< The rainbow over the Jilavagge Valley and the Skårki massif put on a brief display in Sarek. The landscape is even

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more splendid than usual when the weather is conducting the performance.

On this occasion thunder was rumbling ominously at a distance.

> The Northern Lights, aurora borealis, are one of the two forms of polar lights, the other being those in the southern hemisphere. This display over Tornträsk and Lapporten was photographed from Björkliden one magical moment in September. The polar lights are created by physical phenomena when the solar wind bearing laden particles is sucked into the Earth’s magnetic field and collides with the molecules in the air.

The energy produced gives off coloured light, yellowy green being the commonest and it comes from oxygen molecules; higher up it can also be deep red. Blue and purple colours come from the nitrogen in the air.

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< A clear dawn on Aconcagua in the

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Andes, 6,967 metres high, the highest mountain in the western hemisphere. south wall are gilded and the low sun moulds the slopes. The mountain was climbed for the first time in 1883. The normal route can be walked but the great height above sea level makes it a taxing climb.

> Alpenglow occurs after the sun has gone down or before dawn, seen here on Dhaulagiri, 8,163 metres, in the Himalayas. The sun is still below the horizon but it causes the mountain to glow like a faint lamp. The rays have been carried a long distance through the atmosphere, touching down on the Earth’s surface before going back out into the universe, when they light up the high peak. Owing to the long distance the light is diluted by filtered air particles. The transmitted light is hot, the reflected light cold.

Alpenglow is chiefly seen on mountains more than 4,000 metres above sea level.

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The upper reaches of the 2,700-metre

M OUNTAIN FOR ESTS

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Mountain forests affect us differently from mountains. Throughout history the forest has given mankind shelter, a wood store, a source of food and a home. In mountainous areas the trees are a vital element in the landscape. Trees always try to conquer the bare heights, but the climate, the slope and the soil set natural boundaries – so far and no further.

Every mountain forest has an upper limit where the trees no longer join together. Single trees may grow higher up but the treeline cuts across the landscape, sometimes sharply sometimes unevenly. The whole ecosystem is affected, many plants and animals occurring only above or below the dividing line. Even the climate changes abruptly. In the forest the trees act like protective fur, on bare hillsides the wind rules.

Forests have almost as much effect on the mountain landscape as the peaks’ mass formations. Species of tree vary and adapt to the prevailing conditions in each area. How high the treeline is depends on the geographical location, thus it is higher near the equator than in the Arctic Circle. In Bolivia individual trees can be found up to 5,100 metres, the highest rooted in the world. Forests often grow at higher levels on mountains in the interior than on mountainous coasts of the same altitude. The ecological connections are complex. Treetops spread a curly carpet in the valleys and on the slopes, coniferous forest is a duller green than the deciduous kind. In the northern hemisphere coniferous trees dominate the

mountain valleys, sometimes they are still ancient woodland. Densely growing carpets of fir trees look like pincushions from a distance. One curiosity is the extraordinary fir tree on the Swedish Sonfjäll, discovered in 2008 and perhaps the world’s oldest tree, a stunted growth on the moors that has renewed itself with shoots from both root and branch. For 9,500 years it has grown in the same place and the trunk has the same DNA as the ancient roots found in the earth nearby. The oldest bristlecone pines on the White Mountains in Nevada are similar in age. Pines give the forest a lighter feel than firs, the landscape seems more open. The dwarf forests of mountain birch that are found in Scandinavia and a few other areas in the same northern latitudes are special – when the birches change colour in the autumn the landscape becomes a brilliantly coloured picture.

Larch trees that drop their needles at the end of the growing season become bright spots of colour in the Alps for instance. Mountain forests of rhododendron in the Himalayas become a riot of colour when they flower. On the heights of tropical mountains jungle is replaced with dripping cloud forest. In terms of natural history we find interesting species of tree on the mountainsides of the southern hemisphere. The most notable is the southern beech that originates from the ancient continent of Gondwanaland. In Patagonia and New Zealand these big deciduous trees form fantastic enchanted forests below the peaks.

This pine grove in western Scotland is planted, like most of today’s Scottish pine forests. The mountain in the background is Liathach. Natural forest once covered half the area of the Scottish Highlands but today only a quarter is tree clad. The original Caledonian forest consisted mainly of oak and birch in the west, while pine and birch dominated the east, but most of the timber was cut down in the ninth and tenth centuries.

Many landowners would like to have the trees back to make the landscape more attractive, while the forestry industry needs the raw material. Below the bare moors there are orderly plantations, mainly of pine. The remaining areas of ancient woodland species are preserved in reserves.

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< The colours of the mountain birches

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in Ladtjovagge in Lapland are very striking in mid-September. This dwarf that is unusual beyond the Scandinavian fells as it needs a humid and maritime climate. There are similar birch forests in Scotland, on Iceland and in Kamchatka.

In Scandinavia the treeline can be up to 1,000 metres above sea level in the south but it is lower towards the north and nearer the Atlantic.

> The Engelmann spruce in Banff National Park in Canada point up to Mount Ischbel, 2,908 metres. The vast coniferous forests in the Rocky Mountains contribute to the wild nature of the landscape where forest and mountains form an organic whole.

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tree dominates the low-growing forest

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Many factors determine the height of the treeline: the depth of snow, the length of the winter, wind conditions,

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the temperature range, the slope of the land, the soil and the intensity of the light. Even the naturally diminishing amount of carbon dioxide at higher levels is significant. The increased level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in the last century probably also contributes to the fact that mountain forests are growing ever higher up. However, the links are complex and the level varies widely throughout the world. In the western Dolomites, on the slopes below the south side of the Geisler peaks, trees grow up to 2,000 metres.

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< This tree-like columnar cactus, some­

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times called the Argentine saguaro or the cardon grande (Echinopsis Cardones National Park. It can grow to over seven metres and probably live for a couple of hundred years. Here, about 3,000 metres above sea level, the cacti are growing against a background of multi-coloured sedimentary rocks and in places they grow together in groups like forests. Wood-like planks can be made from the hide-like outer layer of the trunk, which has also been used for religious purposes by local indigenous peoples.

> A Utah juniper, Juniperus osteos­ perma, has taken root in a sandstone fissure in the Arches National Park. This species often grows in isolation and can be up to 650 years old. It is nature’s own bonsai, a compact dwarf tree that blends in with the barren environment. In the background you can see the famous Delicate Arch, a stone bridge.

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terscheckii) is found in Argentina’s Los

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< The Owen Stanley Range in the eastern part of Papua New Guinea is covered with humid jungle up to just

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over 2,000 metres. The name came from a British captain who explored the island’s coastal tracts in 1849. During the Second World War a front ran across these wooded mountains, Kokoda Track is a long and challenging path that was cleared by Australian troops; these days it attracts trekkers.

> At dusk the sun shines on Mount Inatye, 4,070 metres, in the northern part of the Ethiopian highlands. The strange plants in the foreground are lobelia and combine to form a park-like pygmy forest; they are not trees but giant wild flowers that have no wood cells. This species, Lobelia rhynchopeta­ lum, is unique to the area and can grow up to eight metres tall. Similar so-called afro-alpine vegetation is found on most of the high mountains of East Africa.

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The Nilgiri Mountains are in southern

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India; the picture shows a section of the Mudumalai National Park and the bare 2,207 metres. These heights are part of the Western Ghat Mountains that extend along the west side of the Indian peninsula. Although the mountains resemble a fold mountain chain, their origin is different: they emerged as an escarpment when Gondwanaland split and the land surface was raised up. The treeline is high, almost 2,000 metres, and the limited barren areas are only found on the uppermost parts of the mountains. A tropical monsoon climate makes the biodiversity extremely rich, with many endemic species. Large areas have been cut down to make way for tea plantations, while teak is a dominant tree species. Big game like elephants, sloth bears, tigers, gaurs and chitals live in this jungle.

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peak is called Karia Bantra yan Gudi,

CANYONS

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A canyon is the opposite of a high mountain massif.

It turns the topography upside down, with limits set by depth not height. Earth’s most magnificent example is the Grand Canyon. Approaching this gigantic abyss in clear weather, from a distance we can see a pale mass of air hovering over our direction of travel, like a warning. Carrying on over level ground reality is shattered at the edge – the first reaction is stupefaction. Before our eyes lies an inconceivable chasm; enormously long, surprisingly wide, dizzyingly deep and vast. The abyss appears to plunge straight to the depths of the Earth. Conflicting feelings well up – dizziness, wonder, terror and joy. We shudder with delight that nature has exceeded our wildest dreams.

With all the lateral ravines along the impressive main gorge, plus all the freestanding mesas of various sizes, the sunken terraces along its longitudinal axis and the unreal size of the whole complex, the Grand Canyon is an inverted mountain landscape.

From the edge we see the topography from above, in mountain chains we normally see the heights from below, a significant difference in perspective.

The Grand Canyon is Earth’s most extreme example of the natural phenomenon we call a canyon, a land form that belongs with mountain landscapes.

In other places there are similar canyons that interrupt the surrounding flat terrain: Copper Canyon in Mexico, Fish River Canyon in Namibia, Blyde River Canyon in South Africa, to name but a few. Deep

V-shaped valleys and bottomless ravines also belong to these upside down mountain landscapes, but how do you define a canyon? Cotahuasi and Colca, both in Peru, are said to be two of the world’s deepest, both cut to a depth of about 3,300 metres. The Grand Canyon is only half as deep but more special because the gorge has been hollowed out in a wide plateau with horizontal rock strata. It is terraced, with steep faces between the steps. In the deep, narrow V-shaped valleys of mountain chains, surrounded by continuous cliffs rising towards high peaks in a single line, the field of vision is more circumscribed than in the staircase-like canyons. The deepest valley in the world is the Indus Gorge in the Himalayas where the river runs 5,500 metres below the peak of Nanga Parbat, just over 8,000 metres high.

In some places there are also refined canyons that are extremely narrow, often winding and known as slot canyons. In breadth they may be only a few metres but in depth hundreds. It is as if the bedrock had been split with a knife. The biggest concentration is found on the Colorado Plateau, but slot canyons also occur in other places: Jordan, Morocco, Madagascar, Taiwan and Australia. Some of them are notorious for flash floods – if it rains hard higher up, large volumes of water can race down and carry everything along with them. Fatal accidents have occurred and people have drowned.

Wadi An Nakhur is often called “Oman’s Grand Canyon”. The ravine cuts deep into the side of a mountain below the country’s highest peak, Jebel Shams, 3,007 metres. It is relatively unknown in the world in spite of its impressive dimensions, above all the depth of about 2,000 metres from the top.

The appearance of the landscape and obvious rock strata are reminiscent of the American Grand Canyon but Wadi An Nakhur is scarcely ten kilometres long and consists chiefly of limestone where it borders the mouth of the Persian Gulf. In spite of the dizzying topography in the gorge there are some marked paths for trekkers.

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< Madeira is tremendously mountainous

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and in the interior of the island the rugged topography has been extra­ that lead to the sea. Manmade water channels, called levadas, have been built in most of them and these follow the contours of the ravines, Fajã da Nogueira being one of the deepest.

Lower down is a power station that collects water from two levadas.

> The enormous complex of gorges that is called the Grand Canyon is unequalled anywhere on Earth. One canyon leads to another and your eyes wander as you try to take it all in. The depths really seem like abysses. How long it took the Colorado River to carve out the system is debatable. Previously experts thought it had happened quickly, in about five million years, but new interpretations suggest 70 million years. At the Mohave Point viewpoint, 2,129 metres high, on the edge of the southern plateau, you can see the edge of the northern plateau about 20 kilometres away.

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ordinarily carved up by deep ravines

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Canyonlands National Park lies north of the Grand Canyon: the depths are not so deep but the expanses are bigger. The

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natural red-brown colour and terraced topography lend the desolate area a touch of the planet Mars, as seen in the pictures from space. The Colorado River’s tributary, Green River, runs through the area, both have their source in the Rocky Mountains. At Green River Overlook you realise what the water’s erosive power can achieve. The author Edward Abbey wrote about the Colorado Plateau: “As far as I know there is no other region on Earth much like it, or even remotely like it. Nowhere else have we had this lucky combination of vast sedimentary rock formations exposed to a desert climate, a great plateau carved by major rivers – the Green, the San Juan and the Colorado – into such a surreal land of form and colour.”

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< Zion Canyon is a sometimes hypernarrow and deep ravine that has been carved into the Colorado Plateau. It lies

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in Utah, north of the Grand Canyon and at a higher altitude. Its source, the Virgin River, is a smaller watercourse than the Colorado River. This section, “The Narrows”, is almost a slot canyon, a term for ravines that are far deeper than wide. Anyone wanting to get through here has to splash along in the middle of the stream.

> The Taroko Canyon on Taiwan is a wonder of nature and deserves to be better known in the world. An impressive ravine has been carved out a couple of thousand metres under the surrounding rocks and deep down it is called “the marble canyon”. The narrowest collateral ravines are formed as slot canyons, as here where the pale marble of the rock has been moulded by the Jili, a tributary of the Liwu River in the main ravine. Dense subtropical vegetation grows higher up on the walls, which makes it unusually green for a canyon.

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M OUNTAIN WATER

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The mountains are the birthplace of the rivers. In between all the peaks ripple small rills that flow in every direction, this is the watershed. These springs are very important to the water supply in the landscape further down. Abundant precipitation, melted snow and melting glacier ice, all this moisture in the upper reaches of the mountains supplies the area with life and energy. The water filters through the ground and the streams gather in ever-wider channels that run together and form bigger brooks, which, with their tributaries turn into rivers, which in turn rush down over thundering rapids and falls on their journey towards the sea, where the water comes full circle. This eternal cycle forms the basis for all land organisms. Ninety-two per cent of the moisture in the atmosphere falls directly into the sea, the rest ends up on land. Four thousand four hundred long scale billion litres of fresh new water are transported to the Earth’s lands every year by precipitation, an incomprehensible amount and yet that is very little water compared to all there is on our planet, but sufficient for our existence. Water, the life-giver, is also a primeval geological force with enormous power. Moisture reshapes mountain landscapes, it runs and wears down, freezes and blasts out. Small rock fragments and tiny particles are carried on the streams and colour the water, sink to the bottom in lakes and seas, build up deltas, change the landscape and rearrange the furniture. On his

journey to Lapland in 1732, Carl Linnaeus wrote: “The water in Lake Viruhaure was greenish white or just like water in a bowl where there has been milk before, that depended on its sum of puritas et livats, item pellucidatas [extremely great purity, low weight and at the same time great transparency]. It was colder than the snow water.” He observed but did not interpret. At that time nobody could explain why the lake looked as it did.

Nowadays we know more. Water absorbs the wavelengths of the light; blue penetrates deepest and that is why blue tones dominate when we look at the surface of water. If the springwater comes from glaciers the watercourse looks like veiled crystals with shades between blue-green and grey, sometimes light, sometimes dull. The colour is determined by the size and quantity of the whipped up particles. If the spring is born only of water and melted snow the watercourse instead becomes as clear as glass; in the shallow reaches it sometimes takes its colour from the bottom. Lakes can be the most peaceful elements in the mountain landscape, they soothe our senses more than challenging mountain peaks. In contrast to Linnaeus the Japanese Matsuo Basho was purely a poet. Concerning mountain water, in the seventeenth century he wrote: “When your consciousness has become ripe in true zazen – pure like clear water, like a serene mountain lake – then anything may serve as a medium for realisation.”

Morskie Oko is a popular mountain lake in the Polish part of the High Tatra, the name of the highest and steepest peaks in the boomerang of linked mountain chains called the Carpathian Mountains that runs through Eastern Europe. The lake fills a glacial niche below the peak Mie ˛guszowiecki Szczyt Wielki, 2,438 metres. Its name means “eye of the sea” and comes from a legend about a subterranean link to the sea. Hordes of Poles make pilgrimages to this pool. For a long time now Morskie Oko has been a revered gem in the country’s most dramatic landscape. From the lake it is 1,000 metres to the top of Wielki.

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< Moraine Lake and the Valley of the

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Ten Peaks is an astonishingly grand mountain landscape and one of the lake lies in Canada’s Banff National Park.

The glacial streams that feed it give the water an intense turquoise colour, you could almost believe someone had poured paint into the lake. The view is also known as the “Twenty Dollar View” since a picture of the panorama was used on the back of Canada’s twenty dollar bill between 1969 and 1979.

> In Abisko Canyon clear water pours over marble slabs. There is no glacier in the source area and that is why the water stays clear. The rocks beneath the surface are clearly visible. The jury is still out on the age of the canyon that the river has created – some people think it was formed after the last ice sheet melted away.

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world’s most famous of its kind. The

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< A waterfall means that the terrain must have clear differences in height and sharp edges. The best conditions

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are found in mountainous areas where there is a lot of precipitation. The falls can vary from delicate bridal veils to magnificent cataracts. In Venezuela’s Canaima National Park there are several of the world’s highest, including the highest of them all, the Angel Falls, which tumble in a single drop from a mesa 979 metres high. The picture shows the Chinak Meru Fall where the River Aponwao is flung just over 100 metres straight down into a horseshoe-shaped gorge. This river is always full, which makes the fall a reliable sight.

> Close to the mountain ranges’ highest peaks groundwater collects in mountain streams that grow bigger and bigger.

Prek Chu has its sources south of Kangchenjunga in an uninhabited Himalayan valley. On this occasion the red twilight on the holy mountain of Pandim, 6,691 metres, is reflected in the river.

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HIGH COAST

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No interface in nature is more magnificent than that between mountains and the sea. Where the mountains rise up directly from the flat expanse of the ocean, they seem higher than anywhere else. This meeting of the elements is implacable rather than loving. The sea does its utmost to take back the land that has come from its depths. Where mountains meet sea that onslaught of the waves can be explosive, they burrow inwards. There are also rugged coastlines where instead the land is rising above the grip of the waves owing to the balancing forces that were released in the Earth’s crust when the icefields disappeared after the Ice Age. Along the Gulf of Bothnia, on the Swedish World Heritage High Coast, the land is rising one metre a century, the fastest rate on Earth. Today the increasingly warm global climate is causing the sea to rise and in time flood low-lying coasts. The rise in sea levels and the rising land are two opposing movements, but the change occurs at the extremely slow speed that is typical of most large-scale natural changes on the Earth’s surface.

“Geological time is not money”, to quote the witty Mark Twain.

The effects of both waves and sea currents mean that steep coasts are weakened and sudden landslips occur. Salt from the sea crystallises in cracks that split the rock open. If ice forms it has the same effect and even tree roots can break the rock. Waves put enormous pressure on the bedrock, steep cliffs are

undermined and they suddenly collapse. Caves and cavities are hollowed out on the beaches. The coast is retreating and even stacks fall sooner or later.

Mountainous coasts and precipitous coastal cliffs are found across the world along many shorelines.

The mightiest of these meetings of mountain and sea are fjords, which occur only where ice sheets have ravaged mountain ranges by the sea and ice carves out long, flat valleys that are subsequently flooded. We find fjords in the northern hemisphere – in Alaska, British Columbia, Labrador, Greenland, Svalbard, Iceland, Scotland and Norway. In the southern hemisphere we find them in Chile and New Zeeland. But we should not forget Antarctica.

The depth of the water in these deeply cut inlets can be enormous. The Norwegian Sognefjord is just over 1,300 metres deep. A rocky sill always protrudes at the entrance. There the icefield was thinner and the eroding force that ground down the bedrock was weaker.

Elgol on Skye in the Inner Hebrides – a rock stands like a sentinel. Across the water the Cuillins rise 900 metres directly from the sea, the most challenging peaks in the whole of the British Isles.

The rocky black mountains of this massif are formed of gabbro that came to light long after the Caledonian orogeny. The coast is grandiose and salt encrusted, a Celtic area that was invaded by the Vikings. Some of the names are of Scandinavian origin. Cuillin is probably a distortion of the Scandinavian “kjölen”, the old name for long, low mountain ridge.

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< On the eastern side of Taiwan the

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mountains drop straight down into the Pacific. This stretch of coast is called highest. The Cianliyan peak climbs straight up from the sea to a height of 1,624 metres. Some of this coast lies in the Taroko National Park.

> The “Old Man of Hoy” towers 137 metres over the sea. This stack is on the western side of Hoy, one of the Orkney Islands. Four-hundred-year-old maps show that this place was once a projecting part of the island’s plateau.

Erosion has shaped the column since then and within a few more centuries it will be completely eliminated by the destructive power of the sea. In 1967 television history was made when in a live broadcast three climbers ascended to the top of the Old Man of Hoy.

Following pages: Few fjords in the world are as deep and narrow as Milford Sound on the South Island of New Zealand. The dominant mountain in the middle of the picture is Mire Peak, 1,692 metres, the world’s highest coastal mountain of this type that rises directly from the sea.

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Cingshuei and is one of the world’s

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DESERT MOUN TAIN S

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Steep cliffs also bound desert spaces. Sometimes mountains cluster together, forming an archipelago of high mountains in a sea of sand. The flat, arid surroundings make them look lost, especially where they are freestanding, and desert cliffs look akin to mountainous coasts. On the horizon peaks stand out like lighthouses to steer by but as you approach they take shape as stately hills that seem higher thanks to the sandy areas around. The landscape image always changes dramatically when horizontal lines intersect with the vertical. The light changes too. The sun’s rays pour over the sand and the cliffs act as reflective walls, the shadows lighten up, the contrasts soften.

Usually desert cliffs consist of fairly light sedimentary rock, sandstone that weathers down to the sand that surrounds the mountains. Sand dunes can also appear to grow considerably in height, at several hundred metres they look like real massifs but the ones that most fire the imagination are the desert mountains of mirages.

Since ancient times people have invested the desert with symbolism, it is our commonest metaphor for thoughts of death and divine visions, war and religion. The people who live in the world’s sandy wastes often worship prominent desert mountains.

Explorers of yesteryear saw deserts more as an ordeal by fire; one of the most energetic was Britain’s Wilfred Thesiger who in the mid-twentieth century led the way in exploring the Arabian deserts: “I knew

instinctively that it was the very hardness of life in the desert which drew me back there – it was the same pull which takes men back to the polar ice, to high mountains and to the sea.” A hundred years earlier explorers in Australia were spurred on by a similar desire to cross the continent’s deserts to prove their courage. The Swede Sven Hedin mapped the Takla Makan desert in Central Asia in dramatic conditions. All these macho exploits have to be viewed in the spirit of the age to be understood and respected today. As a woman the archaeologist Gertrude Bell was a shining exception in that male chauvinist age, her exploits in Middle Eastern deserts aroused admiration and during her many adventures she met another avid enthusiast, Lawrence of Arabia.

During the First World War Lawrence hid in the Jordanian Wadi Rum, “the Valley of the Moon”. He led an Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire. Later he wrote The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, a colourful story of life in the desert with a title taken from the biblical Book of Proverbs: “Wisdom has built her house, she has set up its seven pillars.” Lawrence wrote: “Landscapes, in childhood’s dream, were so vast and silent. We looked backwards through all our memory for the prototype up which all men had walked between walls toward such an open space as that in front where this road seemed to end.”

Cono de Arita, 3,689 metres, is a mysterious, 100-metre-high sandstone mound standing alone in the salt desert Salar de Arizaro in northern Argentina.

It is held to be the most perfectly formed of all the natural cones in the world. How it occurred is not understood, but one hypothesis suggests volcanic activity was involved. Ancient remains indicate that the Incas had a cult centre here. The flat expanse around the cone consists of salt crusts, sometimes dark but often white, when they look like snow from a distance.

Salar de Arizaro is the seventh-biggest salt desert in the world, with an area of more than 1,140 square kilometres, forming the bottom of a salt lake that dried out between five and ten million years ago.

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A jeep rolls over the desert in the

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Jordanian Wadi Rum, emphasising the mountains’ height and complexity. The sand is sharp, lending the landscape a clear structure. The high sandstone and granite mountains stand out like fortresses on the flat desert. Between them are wide inlets of sand, sometimes forming narrow channels. Clefts are common in the mountains. The landscape looks as if it were moulded from modelling clay, an impression enhanced by the consistent colour range of brown, yellow and ochre. The peaks reach 1,000 metres above the sand at most.

Wadi Rum is also the site of Jordan’s highest mountain Jabal Umm ad Dami, 1,854 metres. Bedouins have lived in the area for thousands of years and climbed the peaks to view the landscape. Today large parts are protected reserves, with visitors on camels crossing the plains. Rock climbers are also attracted to the area.

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intersection between the cliffs and the

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< This table mountain in the interior of

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Australia is still called Mount Conner, after the South Australian politician at Aborigines have always called it Attila and associate the mountain with their Dreamtime, when the Ice Men known as the Ninya set up camp by the precipice.

Stones found here suggest that the area was ice-covered during the last Ice Age. One idea put forward is that the Aborigines’ story dates from the time when the climate was colder and has been passed down through the generations for about 40,000 years. As distinct from nearby Uluru, where the strata run vertically, in Attila they are horizontal and consist of a hard conglomerate visible in the 90metre-high rock walls.

> Sossusvlei is a dried-up salt lake in the Namib Desert, which is held to be the world’s oldest, with five-million-yearold sand. On the exposed salt crust of the lake stand dead camel thorn trees Acacia erioloba. Near the salt desert are the highest sand dunes known on Earth, rising up like real mountains and reaching 350 metres at their highest.

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the end of the nineteenth century. The

SACRED MOUN TAIN S

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The idea of mountains as the home of the gods arose early in human history. Mahabharata, an Indian epic from the fourth century BC E , tells of Prince Arjuna who travels to the Himalayas to meet the god Shiva.

Arjuna says: “Mountain, your being is a refuge for gods who practise the law of righteousness, hermits who through sacred documents seek the way to the kingdom of heaven.” Another story tells of a man and a woman who climbed Sumeru to reach heaven.

This may be a mountain in Pamir that is believed to be a dwelling place for Brahma, the god of creation.

Sumeru was seen as the axis mundi, the axis at the centre of the universe, the link between heaven and earth. Similar ideas are found in many older cultures elsewhere in the world. Axis mundi often appeared in the form of a mountain but could also be a tree, a plant or a structure like a staircase or a tower.

Since the high peaks reached up into the sky and were cut off from the world below, they symbolised a heavenly existence. Strange-looking mountains could awaken strong associations: owing to its pointed shape the Shivling peak in the Himalayas embodies a phallus, for Shiva, the god of the mountains and the universe in Hinduism; Annapurna, the first 8,000-metre peak to be climbed, got its name from the generous goddess believed to live up there; the Nanda Devi, which is almost as high, was also called after its goddess.

For Hindus, Buddhists and even Jainists the

remote Kailash mountain in Tibet is the holiest of all mountains and therefore climbing it is forbidden.

It is located close to the sources of the Indus and Brahmaputra rivers and every year thousands of pilgrims walk 50 kilometres round the solitary peak in an act of worship, the most devoted by lying full length on the ground, making a mark with their fingers, getting up, walking forward to the mark and lying down again; they repeat this until the circle is closed, an extremely arduous progression that takes four weeks at over 4,000 metres in altitude.

Much lower mountains than the Himalayas were worshipped in other parts of the world, some as a result of important historic events. Mount Sinai became extremely important to the Jews because of the Old Testament story of Moses and the ten commandments. Mount Ararat in the Bible, where Noah beached the Ark, is an impressive conical volcano in eastern Turkey and still a sacred mountain for Armenians. At the top of Croagh Patrick Ireland’s patron saint, Saint Patrick, fasted for 40 days and nights in the fifth century, giving the mountain a solemn reputation which has lived on: every year about 40,000 Irish pilgrims walk to the top on the last Sunday in July. In Swedish Lapland, in the pre-Christian era, the Sami worshipped certain chosen mountains, such as Áhkká. In some of the massifs there were also sacrificial sites, among others Kebnekaise, originally called Bassejiekna, meaning “holy ice”.

Uluru can seem like an illusion, it is a monolith that steals all the attention in the heart of Australia; no-one remains unmoved when faced with the solitary majesty of this 350-metre-high, rockhard mountain in the flat desert. Why does it exist? Uluru is a residual mountain left behind when the surroundings were weathered away. The desert sand and sandstone cliffs get their red colour from iron oxide but when this picture was taken rain had painted the rock grey.

For the Anangu, the original inhabitants of the area, Uluru has been sacred since the beginning of time. Their stories of Tjukurpa begin with the creation. The sun, moon and stars poured light and heat over the land. In a later Dreamtime the good snake woman Kuniya became angry and killed the evil venomous snake man Liru. According to the Anangu a succession of mysterious events have left their mark on the landscape: rocky caves, dark lines, springs etc. The Anangu have interpreted these and their rituals at Uluru and keep the stories alive even today.

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< The New Zealand Maoris see mountains as places with wonderful powers.

They call their highest peak Aoraki, that was also the name for an important person in the Maori tribe Ngái Tahu that lives on the South Island. The English name Mount Cook was coined in 1851 by a ship’s captain. It is 3,724 metres high.

Maoris came to these islands from the South Pacific in the thirteenth century.

Some particular mountains were seen as petrified people, becoming final resting places for the ancestors who had sailed across the ocean. There is a legend that Mount Aoraki was a man carrying a boy on his shoulders and that together they formed this peak that was higher than all the others. Maoris have always had a spiritual connection to the nearby mountains: Aoraki/Mount Cook stands on the active tectonic plate that is pushing the Southern Alps up. The peak is said to grow seven millimetres every year but with a severe landslip in 1991 the peak lost ten metres.

From early times its divine beauty has given rise to thoughts about the eternal mysteries of life. The volcano has admittedly caused great devastation to the local population but Mount Fuji’s hollow lava that has hardened on the slopes is interpreted as a womb and hence a female deity. There are two other sacred mountains in Japan, Tate and Haku, and the three together are called Sanreizan.

In the western hemisphere the indigenous people also prayed to some mysterious mountains; Torres del Paine in Patagonia was believed to be the remains of a warrior killed by evil spirits. The Inca mountain gods were called apu and lived on the magnificent peak of Ausangate in Peru, among other places.

Above the town of Tenochtitlan (now Mexico City) stood two high volcanoes, Popocatepetl and Izzaccihuatl, that had a religious role for the Aztecs. North America’s original inhabitants also believed in the spirits of the natural world and many mountains were associated with supernatural stories. Australia’s aborigines and New Zealand’s Maoris had similar attitudes to the mountains.

Thus since time immemorial mountainous landscapes throughout the world have given birth to various forms of spirituality. Many of us in modern h ­ i-tech societies are also affected by the aura of mountains.

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meaning roughly “heavenly cloud”, and

Even in antiquity several mountains were worshipped as sacred. The Romans dedicated the volcano Mount Vesuvius to the demigod Hercules, and tradition had it that he had been reconciled with the gigantic “sons of the Earth” who had been spat out during the eruption. In Greek mythology Mount Olympus was home to the 12 most powerful gods and Mount Parnassus was consecrated to Apollo and Dionysius. When Greece became Orthodox Christian, Mount Athos became the holiest peak instead. Later, in large parts of medieval Europe, mountains were seen as the home of the evil spirits. After Christianity spread across the con­tinent few mountains had a religious significance.

In East Asia the early religious thinking took a humble attitude to nature. Taoism, Confucianism, Buddhism and Shinto set out the love of mountains in old documents. Several respected peaks from long ago are still venerated today. “The five Imperial peaks” in eastern China are lofty places where for a long time wise men have communicated with the stars.

These sacred mountains have left a strong imprint on Chinese culture. On Wutaishan there are 7,000 steps leading to the temple on top of the mountain that is said to represent the fertility that renews the world; the climate is wet and the surroundings are fruitful.

Mount Fuji is a perfect conical volcano and Japan’s highest point that since time immemorial has been a source of inspiration for artists and poets.

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< The exceptionally symmetrical volca-

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no Mount Fuji is a symbol of Japanese culture, with many attendant myths.

Lake. In 806 a shrine was built at Fuji’s foot in the hope of preventing fresh eruptions. A story from 1680 explains: “Here the gods are said to manifest themselves and protect our country”.

Mount Fuji is also a recurring theme in Japanese art. Almost 300,000 people climb it every year.

> The ruined Inca city of Machu Picchu in Peru stands on a narrow ridge surrounded by four sacred mountains. One of them, the sugarloaf Huayna Picchu, 2,720 metres, was probably seen as a deity and involved in religious ceremonies. A steep path was cleared to the top, where a temple was built and rites were celebrated to control the weather.

Even today the ruins and the shape of Huayna Picchu imbue the landscape with an ancient spirituality.

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Here the peak is seen from Kawaguchi

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< On the way to Everest Base Camp most trekkers come to love Ama Dablam, one of the world’s most

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beautiful mountains, often called the Himalayas’ Matterhorn. It stands in splendid isolation but is surrounded by an overwhelming host of other beautiful peaks. Ama means “embracing mother” and dablam is a divine image worn by lamas and Sherpa women on a chain round their necks. For the old Sherpas and Tibetans around here this is a sacred mountain.

> The view from Darjeeling towards Kangchenjunga, 80 kilometres away, is spellbinding and on this occasion in November visibility is unusually good.

The world’s third-highest mountain is glowing like an elegant fortress in the dawn light. Kangchenjunga means “the five treasures of the high snow”, referring to the five most prominent peaks.

For the people in Sikkim this massif is particularly holy, it is the abode of Vaisravana, the Buddhist god of prosperity. The boundary of Sikkim and Nepal runs across the highest crest.

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ROCK GALLERI ES

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On rocky slabs around the world prehistoric cultures have created pictures that remain to this day. Cave paintings and rock carvings are messages from distant times. Many occur in mountain landscapes and sometimes there are also carved stone figures. Together these relics constitute a heritage from different epochs and ethnic groups but to call it art is misleading. These works required creative skill but the aim was probably more to inform than to create an aesthetic impression, so perhaps the pictures served as a kind of visiting card. They were variously placed in the terrain: inside caves and rocky recesses, on freestanding blocks, steep cliffs and vast slabs, sometimes under overhanging rocks. Given their age the motifs are stylised and spiritual, often depicting hunting and fishing or religious ceremonies and customs.

The rock galleries acted as a link between the culture and nature and the pictures confirm that there were ethnic groups living in the mountains a very long time ago. Thousands of years have elapsed since the first slabs were decorated but in some cases the pictures still have a ceremonial significance for the inhabitants whose ancestors created them: the rock paintings confirm the heritage they still want to preserve today.

Apparently independently of each other, similar symbols were created in different places at about the same time. For example, the palms of hands have

been used universally. Rock carvings and rock paintings differ in their execution: the carvings were chiselled out, producing a recessed relief. A specially chosen stone was used as a tool and hammered into the rock, sometimes it was enough just to scrape the surface. The paintings were made with lightresistant coloured pigments, the soil produced red and ochre, charcoal black and limestone or pale clay white. Before the pigment was applied it was diluted with water, blood, urine or egg yolk.

Rock galleries are hard to date, the oldest-known image so far, a silhouette of a hand, was recently found in a limestone cave on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi and is calculated to be around 39,000 years old. Previously experts thought the oldest rock paintings were found in Europe, chiefly in the French Chauvet cave with its 35,000-year-old paintings of animals. However, in Australia there are many probably equally old paintings on sandstone lying under the open sky. The wear and tear of weather and wind makes it difficult to date them.

The dancing kudu in Twyfelfontein depicts a person who had been changed into an animal, like a shaman in a ritual dance. The figure was carved on sand­ stone covered with a glaze of clay particles. The oldest rock carvings here in Namibia’s Damaraland are about 10,000 years old. Unusually they are mostly placed on big blocks and not on fixed slabs. About 2,500 motifs have been found. There is also a large number of rock paintings made using ochre in various places. Twyfelfontein lies in a sheltered valley with cool springwater, which early on became a meeting place in the dry desert environment. The San Bushmen probably came back here regularly for many thousands of years to carry out their rites and creative activities. They were hunters with a strong connection to the land and rock pictures were among their customs.

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long rock painting on Mount Borrodaile in the Australian Arnhem Land, it had was called “Major Art” and many styles are represented. The “X-ray images” of kangaroos and fish, which are shown with bodies and innards, are unique to Aboriginal art. This mural was probably completed at intervals over thousands of years and even into modern times.

There are some rock paintings nearby showing Indonesian sailing ships, interpreted as a message from their creator.

Arnhem Land, which is a quarter the size of Sweden, is the biggest autonomous Aboriginal area in Australia. It is the northernmost part of the continent and a partly mountainous sandstone plateau with many rocky nooks and crannies decorated with rock paintings.

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only just been discovered. At first it

M OUNTAIN P EOP LES

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Ten per cent of the Earth’s population lives in mountainous areas. Many belong to small ethnic groups and often constitute a minority in a country’s population. Some mountain peoples were completely isolated until well into the last century when nation states administered and explored their most remote territories. When westerners began to organise walking trips in the 1960s and the term trekking took hold, some of these mountain cultures were affected. Trekkers from rich countries went off on long trips and encountered peoples living the traditional way in Asia, Africa and South America.

For the trekkers, a meeting with mountain folk and their customs was as great a part of the experience as the magnificent scenery. The local inhabitants’ lives were also affected, as the strangers came to their remote villages with new gadgets and technology. The contact was mostly friendly but the presence of the trekkers brought unavoidable consequences for the local economy and living conditions.

The home territory of mountain peoples often extends across national boundaries although mountain ranges have long constituted natural barriers between different political and economic territories.

The eminent Roman Pliny the Elder believed that the mountains had been created as a dividing line between peoples. In the sixteenth century Spain claimed that big countries had to be framed by mountain ranges and that the Pyrenees were Spain’s

wall against France, but in reality the mountains did not have the screening effect that feudal lords believed.

Early nation states had little control over their domains. In the mountains people lived by themselves and their economy was based on subsistence farming and trade with their neighbours; mountain communities were based on religion and language.

As a rule spirituality and bravery were prized virtues in these societies but their leaders were often autho­ ritarian and their attitude to the outside world could be hostile. For warriors the mountains offered strongholds and excellent hiding places. In 1897 the social geographer Friedrich Ratzel commented: “The tough life in the bracing highlands time and again creates brave mountain people, who come down to conquer and rule over the lowlands.” He observed that many mercenaries came from mountainous areas, such as Switzerland, Scotland and Nepal. His view is controversial but in some of the Earth’s most rugged areas intractable political problems still persist. In many cases the divided terrain has delayed the modernisation of mountain peoples and perhaps some of them want to keep their old lifestyle for as long as possible.

Many peoples in New Guinea live in the island’s mountainous interior, the men are hunters in the luxuriant rainforests that climb high up the tropical slopes.

The topography has separated the tribes from one another and almost 800 languages are spoken on the island.

The man in the picture belongs to the Huli people in Papua New Guinea, he is dressed for battle with feathers from the bird of paradise and a wig. From time immemorial the men have fought over land, pigs and women. Short-lived outbursts of aggression, including elements of headhunting, were common between the tribes. The area had its first contact with the outside world as late as the 1930s. Today modernisation has reduced the traditional violence but it has not entirely disappeared.

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< Mountain dwellers in Tshoka, Sikkim,

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gathering beasts of burden in for the night. The animals have carried to Kangchenjunga. Many Tibetans and Nepalese immigrants live in Sikkim and there is also a Lepcha minority ethnic group whose origins are unclear. As a whole, the Himalayas are home to many ethnic groups. On the northern side the Mongolian races dominate, while the areas south of the highest mountains are populated by immigrants from the Indian subcontinent. In Nepal alone there are 19 ethnic groups.

> The “White House” ruin is hidden among the cliffs in Arizona’s Canyon de Chelly. The ancestors of today’s Pueblo Indians, who were previously called Anasazi, developed a unique architectural style in the arid mountain landscape on the Colorado plateau.

They probably arrived around the seventh century and left the area 700 years later owing to climatic changes.

Today’s Pueblo Indians object to the name Anasazi because it derives from the Navajo language and means roughly “the enemy’s ancestors”.

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equipment for trekkers on their way

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< Since the Middle Ages the fells of northern Scandinavia have been home to the reindeer-herding Sami people.

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On the tundra and in the forests further east towards the Bering Strait there are several other ethnic groups that have also domesticated reindeer. The animals wander in large herds between their summer pastures on the fells and the forests in winter.

> In various places in the world mountain dwellers have transformed their landscape. One fascinating example is the terraced rice fields that have been planted in many Asian ranges. In the village of Bahundanda southeast of Annapurna these terraces have turned the topography into a green and hilly farming landscape.

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< Tourism is creating ways of making

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an income for those living in or around the world’s mountains. On a trek in the highlands, this man with a Kalashnikov was playing his part as a park warden.

His job was to protect us from game and untrustworthy people.

> Hay is gathered in from the meadows around the tourist destination of Gavarnie in the French Pyrenees.

Traditional farming is disappearing in Europe’s uplands but some mountain dwellers manage to combine their animal farming with work in the tourist industry.

If the character of the landscape is to be preserved in areas with strong cultural traditions, older forms of land use must be kept alive.

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Simien National Park in the Ethiopian

PIONE E RS

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The Earth’s mountains have seen many heroic deeds but heroes can easily be toppled. Exploits are best admired from a distance because achievements can be eroded. Yet we like being impressed by alpine feats, especially those that were carried out in former times. Primitive equipment, time-consuming travel and unknown terrain made many a historic journey a hazardous undertaking that to me seems more exciting than today’s exploits. The pioneers withstood almost inhuman tribulations, achieved the goals they set and hunted down places that no-one else had seen, apart from any possible inhabitants. Few have the privilege of being the first and they deserve respect. There is an immense catalogue of literature about mountain climbs, treks and expeditions. The texts and pictures often cover pioneering adventures to chart the “blank spaces” for us westerners.

Lapland’s wildest mountain tract, Sarek, is associated with an eminent pioneer, Axel Hamberg. He did not become an international star as a climber but was an experienced fell-walker and geographer with amazing general knowledge, who also possessed technical skill and great energy. He loved Sarek. In summer 1895, at the age of 32, he set off on his first journey to that inaccessible mountain territory.

A growing interest in natural resources was in the spirit of the age, together with increasing insight into the effects of the ice sheets on the landscape.

Hamberg wanted to study glaciers and was backed

by the scientific establishment. The next year he went back and in 1901 he started a broad-based study of Sarek, with state support. One of the aims was to make a detailed topographical map of the area, which led him to climb many of the peaks.

For 32 summer seasons he was active in the area and climbed almost 50 fells, most of them never before climbed. Towards the end of his career it became obvious that Hamberg could not fulfil his ambition – admittedly there had been publications from some cooperating biologist colleagues but Hamberg did not admit anyone else into the field of physical geography, his own speciality. On one occasion he is alleged to have said “Sarek is mine” thus deceiving himself by claiming it as his territory. The comprehensive data that he had collected through the years was never collated, not even the map was completed. If it had not been for the inspiring guidebook he wrote in the autumn of his life, Hamberg would probably only have been remembered within narrow academic circles, but his book A Guide to Travel in the Mountains of Sarek, published in 1922, made him a legend in Swedish mountain sports. Until the 1970s he was the only person to have described the area in detail.

Axel Hamberg was the first to climb Várdastjåhkkå, 1,830 metres, in Sarek, in August 1902. This picture was taken from the same peak 111 years later. On the left you can see the northern peak Sarektjåkkå, in the middle Stortoppen (the big peak) and on the right the South Peak. Hamberg had already been up Stortoppen, 2,089 metres, several times. It is Sweden’s third-highest mountain and was climbed for the first time by the cartographer G. W. Bucht in 1879.

The Frenchman Charles Rabot was there in 1881 and Hamberg became the third to climb it, in 1895. They were accompanied by Sami guides. Hamberg writes of Sarektjåkkå: “The view was particularly far-reaching and magnificent and the peaks you could see from there could be counted in thousands.” A year later he climbed the peak again and in 1901 he spent three days up there, waiting for better weather.

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The Matterhorn is one of the exclusive band of mountains that have a rugged profile from all angles. Seen from the to a sharp point at the top. On the right is the ridge Hörnligrat that the Whymper group climbed up on that fateful day in July 1865. The climb ended with four people falling to their death on the way down. At that time the Matterhorn was one of few high Alpine peaks that had not yet been climbed.

There was a competition and the same day that Whymper reached the top a group with the Italian guide Carrel was on its way up. From the top Whymper could see them a little way down on the Italian side. Afterwards he wrote modestly about Carrel: “He was the one of all those attempting to climb the Matterhorn who most deserved to be the first to the top.” The first ascent of this remarkable mountain was the end of the golden age of climbing in the Alps.

Jean-Antoine Carrel was on his way to the mountain with another group. The situation upset Whymper, who also wanted to beat his compatriot, the eminent authority John Tyndell. He therefore quickly travelled to the Swiss side, convinced that the mountain’s extremely steep gradient seen from that side was simply an optical illusion. Whymper joined forces with three other British climbers and three guides, apart from the aforementioned Croz and Taugwalder father and son, intending to attempt the ridge facing the village of Zermatt. The gradient was mostly less steep than it appeared from below. Just after half past one in the afternoon of 13 July 1865 they stood on the top but their triumph turned to tragedy on the way down. Suddenly four men fell headlong into the abyss when their rope broke.

A few days later an enquiry was held in Zermatt into the causes of the accident. False rumours were circulated that the rope had been cut. Later many people said that the group had lacked an appointed leader and Whymper was accused of recklessness.

In Europe the disaster was big news and the first ascent of the Matterhorn made Whymper famous far beyond climbing circles. For the rest of his life he sought to salvage his reputation. He stopped climbing but undertook expeditions, to Greenland, the Rockies, and Ecuador among other places. His rival Carrell reached the top of the Matterhorn two days after the fateful accident.

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Furggletscher Glacier the peak narrows

Sooner or later you discover the Matterhorn, if not in reality at least in pictures – the mountain appears both on chocolate boxes and in logos. The Swiss name can be translated as “the peak by the meadow”. On the Italian side it is called Monte Cervino, “deer-horn mountain”, owing to its resemblance to an antler.

The Matterhorn is the quintessential mountain, in the 1960s the American J. R. Ullman wrote: “There are hundreds of mountains higher than Matterhorn; there are hundreds that are harder to climb.

But there is none anywhere in the whole world, which has so stirred the imagination of men.” In the mid-nineteenth century there was a competition to be the first to reach the top, it was one of the century’s great adventures and the subject of conversations all over Europe. The Englishman Edward Whymper was obsessed with the Matterhorn: he worked as an illustrator in London and at 20 years of age, in 1860, he visited the Alps for the first time. In successive years he returned every summer and completed several first ascents of other summits with various guides. By then many mountain dwellers had become professional guides to the climbers, most of them British Victorians.

In summer 1865, after eight unsuccessful attempts from the Italian side, Whymper wanted to try the Matterhorn again from the same side as before and with his guide Michel Croz he made another fruitless attempt. At the same time the Italian guide

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Ruwenzori is a mysterious and inaccessible massif located between Uganda and the Congo, with peaks over 5,000 metres, slopes usually shrouded in mist and a few glaciers left. Ruwenzori was once known as the Moon Mountains and is enveloped in myths that arose around 150 years after Christ’s birth, when the Greek astronomer and geographer Claudius Ptolemy wrote the words Montes Lunae, “Moon Mountains”, on a map of Europe and Africa. The name came from Diogenes who 100 years earlier had claimed to have found the source of the Nile in mountains close to a couple of big lakes in East Africa. He said the mountains were covered with snow and known locally as the Moon Mountains. Ptolemy’s original map disappeared but had been copied by a monk in the fourteenth century. In subsequent centuries the Moon Mountains remained a mystery to Europeans.

At the end of the nineteenth century the riddle was solved by Henry M. Stanley, who claimed to be the first to see Ruwenzori, but an officer on the expedition had probably seen the massif a month earlier. “An optical illusion” said Stanley. Of his own sighting on 24 May 1888 he reports: “My eyes were directed by a boy to a mountain, said to be covered with salt, and I saw a peculiar shaped cloud of a most beautiful silver colour, which assumed the proportions and appearance of a vast mountain covered with snow. Following the form downward … then, as the sight descended to the gap between the

eastern and western plateaus, I became for the first time conscious that what I gazed upon was not the image or semblance of a vast mountain, but the solid substance of a real one, with its summit covered with snow… It now dawned upon me that this must be the Ruwenzori ….” Stanley chose the name from a local word that means “rain mountains”; naturally the local people had known the massif since time immemorial, but he was the authority.

Stanley returned with a new expedition the next year. William G. Stairs climbed to 3,000 metres on Ruwenzori but Stanley himself was no climber. As the leader of the expedition Stanley was recognised as capable and tough but he treated the Africans very badly and his posthumous reputation is sullied.

First to climb the massif was Ludvig Amadeo, the Duke of the Abruzzi, who had solid experience of mountains, reaching the highest peak in Ruwenzori in 1906, with three guides. The Duke, son of Amadeo I of Spain, had led expeditions to the Arctic and Alaska.

Inspired by Stanley he organised a big expedition to Ruwenzori with 300 porters, six scientists and four alpine guides. The party included the famous photographer Vittorio Sella. They climbed many of the high peaks, drew fine maps and Sella’s photographs became an overwhelming success, causing the climbers of the day to lose interest in Ruwenzori for several decades.

The peaks of Ruwenzori are rarely revealed as clearly as this because it is often misty. Furthest to the right the snow on Margherita, 5,109 metres, the highest point, stands out. The boundary between Uganda and the Congo runs across there and below you can also see the edge of the Stanley Glacier, Africa’s biggest ice mass. At the beginning of the twentieth century there were several small glaciers but now fewer than half are left. This picture was taken on Freshfield Pass and the black peak with a white bib of snow is Mount Luigi di Savoia, 4,977 metres.

The Ruwenzori Range is on the eastern edge of the African Rift Valley. It is young and was formed by a fault when a huge block of crystalline rocks, like gneiss and granite, was forced upward about three million years ago. One hundred and twenty kilometres long and six wide, it comprises six adjacent massifs with deep valleys between them. In conjunction with the first successful ascent the Duke of the Abruzzi named the most prominent peaks after important names in the exploration of East Africa.

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The world’s highest mountain, Mount Everest, catches the last, pure evening light, while Nuptse has retired into the at the monastery in Thyangboche with a long telephoto lens. On the right on the sunlit ridge you can see a bulge that is called the South Peak. The climbing route from the south leads over this bump and a little further to the left there is a notch that is called the Hillary Step, the 12-metre-high wall that is the last obstacle before the top. Edmund Hillary and Tensing Norgay followed this route on their first ascent on 29 May 1953. The seven British expeditions in the 1920s and 1930s came from the other side of the mountain, the north. The recorded height of Everest has varied; quite recently the Chinese measured the solid mountain as 8,844 metres, above which there is snow cover of varying depth. In 1999 the Americans used GPS and arrived at a height of 8,850 metres.

A few years ago China and Nepal agreed on a figure of 8,848.

Naturally the Sherpas and Tibetans who had worshipped this peak for so long have earned money from this development and Nepal needs the income, but what does the mountain’s goddess Chomolungma think about it?

George Mallory disappeared in the clouds in 1924. His well-preserved remains were found on the north face in 1999. “Just because it’s there” was his terse reply to the question of why he wanted to go back after two failed attempts. In letters to his wife Ruth and three waiting children he reveals both ambition and fear. He is crazy about the mountain, wants the prize but suspects himself that he will not come back. At the age of 33 he fell from the north face and nobody knows whether he had reached the top or not. Through a momentary gap in the clouds Noel Odell caught the last glimpse of Mallory and his companion Andrew Irvine, walking steadily along Everest’s northern ridge.

What happened to the inexperienced and much younger Irvine is even less clear. An ice axe with his initials on was found on the mountain in 1933 but that is all. There has been endless speculation and we will probably never have definitive answers. However, there is no doubt that about ten local porters lost their lives in Mallory’s attempt to reach the top.

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dark shadows. This picture was taken

No other mountain in the world has the same power of attraction as Mount Everest. Highest is after all highest, at any rate in western tradition. Everest’s alpine story began in the mid-nineteenth century when British surveyors, after years of complicated calculations, established that peak XV was higher than all the others. Nepal and Tibet were closed to foreigners and the measurements there­fore had to be taken from viewpoints in northern India.

XV was given the name Everest after the recently retired head of the Indian Surveyor’s Office, and it was much criticised even by George Everest himself. The British believed that peaks should retain the names local people had given them, but no foreigners knew the Tibetan name Chomolungma.

Much later, plans were laid for an ascent. Seven British expeditions between the world wars failed before the New Zealander Edmund Hillary took one of the iconic images of photographic history, that of Sherpa Tensing on the roof of the world in May 1953.

After that, interest gradually grew. Swiss, Americans and Chinese tackled the mountain and in the 1970s many more countries wanted to make the attempt, driven by advances in the world of climbing and dreams of national glory. In the 1990s the adventure became commercialised and nowadays guides from near and far lead anyone who wants to go and can pay their way up the mountain. To date more than 5,000 people have climbed up to the top of Everest.

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At dawn in Thyangboche Everest is visible as a sunlit hump above the back of Nuptse. To the right of Everest

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is the pointed peak of Lhotse. 8,501 metres, and the world’s fourth-highest mountain. The name is Tibetan for “south peak”. In the eyes of the local inhabitants this is actually the peak of the whole massif and not at all the little bump on Everest’s ridge that climbers call the “South Peak”. Nuptse means the “west peak”. The Tibetans call the massif as a whole Chomolungma, “the gods’ mother in the world”. To the right in the picture is Ama Dablam, 6,814 metres. You would have to put a whole Kebnekaise on top of the latter, to reach the summit of Everest. The perspective is deceptive. The first westerners to catch sight of this divine panorama were members of an expedition led by Bill Tilman in 1950.

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M OUNTAIN SPORTS

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The poet Petrarch and his younger brother Gherardo are said to have been the first westerners to have climbed a mountain just to enjoy the view. In 1336 they read Augustine’s Confessions on the summit of Mont Ventoux in Provence. But according to legend the Muslim warrior chief Al-Mansur climbed the highest peak in the Spanish Sierra de Gredos in the tenth century. The steep mountain is now called Pico Almanzor in his honour. If the story is true that rarely reported exploit is history’s first alpine adventure.

In the year 181 BC E Mount Haemus in the Balkans was climbed for strategic military purposes. In the eighteenth century, among Europe’s educated elite, it became fashionable to view mountain landscapes as beautiful and the peaks as challenges. The first ascent of Mont Blanc in 1786 was the beginning of a new era; from then on the mountains were also considered an arena for sporting adventures.

Mountain sports in our time are multi-faceted.

The pioneers would never have dreamed of what people can do today: climb Everest without oxygen cylinders, acrobatic climbing on vertical cliffs, extreme downhill skiing or snowboarding, base jumps with parachutes from cliffs, paragliding between jagged peaks, white-water rafting in kayaks, mountain biking on steep slopes, canyoning through extremely narrow ravines, fellrunning marathons, multisport etc. Extreme forms of mountain activities know no limits any more but the majority of

us mountain-lovers are trekkers. Adventures on the heights are a matter of personal choice: exercising, facing challenges, endurance training, overcoming fears, studying nature, experiencing beauty, sharing with like-minded people, managing with very light equipment, seeking the meaning of life … the list can be a long one.

The love of mountains can often become a lifestyle; mountain treks contrast with everyday activities. In the 1920s the legendary Everest climber George Mallory tried to get to the heart of the matter: “What we get from this adventure is just sheer joy. And joy is, after all, the end of life. We do not live to eat and make money. We eat and make money to be able to enjoy life. That is what life means and what life is for.”

There are as many attitudes to the mountains as there are philosophies behind the content and design of the activities. An adventure in the highlands can be good training for focussing on the goal and for stamina: useful experience for every­­day life. Others think that physical exertion has a subordinate value, you do not want to avoid it but you do not seek difficulties. Some challenges in the mountains are seen as attractive while others are best avoided. A vertical cliff face is the longed-for inspiration of a climber while a fast-running stream that must be forded is seen by almost everyone as an unpleasant obstacle.

The Drei Zinnen in South Tyrol are called Tre Cime di Lavaredo in Italian.

They form a solid setting in the Dolo­ mites’ most famous scenery. The landscape is an eldorado for trekkers and climbers. Mountaineering began towards the end of the eighteenth century in Europe. Nowadays, to a great extent, it is about our basic needs. We are exercising, improving our fitness and at the same we can enjoy the beauty of the mountains. The routes range from relatively easy to extremely hard.

When the gradient gets steeper the trek gradually becomes a climb. The desire to reach the top feels like an expression of our love of mountains. The difficulties inspire us and the fascination increases with the height. The views make us one with nature. From a summit we can decipher the terrain and acquaint ourselves with the topography. As a rule, when we trek through valleys the effort is a lot less and the experience more serene.

Mountain sports combine physical exertion and deep contemplation of nature with the joy of discovery, self-appointed challenges and classic outdoor life.

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< The boundary between trekking

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and mountain climbing is a fluid one.

This trail leads from the Schäfler hut of Appen­zeller. You follow a narrow ridge just over 1,800 metres above sea level, with airy drops on both sides. The feeling of height is strong but it is easy to walk the path if you are not prone to vertigo. Since the rock contains a lot of chalk there is plenty of vegetation even at this height. There are several huts in the area where you can stay overnight.

> Alpine climbing requires extra equipment, special skills, a good physique and courage. The safety rope anchors the climbers to the mountain and you have to have full confidence in your partner. The kit is important and nature fundamental to the experience.

Climbing tests our ability to cope with physical and mental challenges and you have to really concentrate. Few other activities in the wild are as comprehensively challenging to body and soul. This is the Delago edge of the Vajolet Towers in the Dolomites.

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to the Säntis peak in the Swiss canton

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The path winds its way about 5,000

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metres above sea level between big moraine ridges that have been formed Everest Base Camp and the trail is flanked by stately fells: from the left, Pumori (7,136 metres), Lingtren (6,713 metres) and Khumbutse (6,639 metres).

At this height there is a risk of altitude sickness: the pressure is low so the oxygen in the blood is low. The symptoms are headaches, loss of appetite, exhaustion, facial swelling and swollen hands etc. In the worst cases fatal oedema can occur in in the lungs or brain. The reactions to being at high altitude vary greatly from one person to another.

Acclimatisation can help the body to produce more red blood cells. You often need to stay for an extra day or so at a high altitude. About 40 per cent of all those who attempt to reach the Kala Patthar viewpoint, 5,545 metres, below Pumori, are forced to give up. In 2015 about 40,000 people trekked in this district south of Everest.

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by the Khumbu Glacier. It is not far to

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< The Gartl hut, 2,621 metres, sits on the Rosengarten massif. Here you can stay sheltered and in comfort in the heart of

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the Dolomites, surrounded by dramatic mountains. The system of huts makes staying in the mountains easier. Often the hut has a canteen offering hot food after the exhilarating day tours. Sometimes you can sleep in small rooms with a few beds, sometimes you are shown to bigger dormitories. The huts are also meeting places where you can make new friends.

> In Sarek tents are the best accommodation, even in winter. Some enthusiasts prefer snow caves or igloos when there is snow cover but tents work excellently well all year round provided you have the right model. One advantage of a tent is that you are living in the wild. You can follow the changes in the weather and the light uninterruptedly through the thin tent walls. The greatest advantage is that you can stop for the night almost anywhere you like, the freedom is immense. With modern comfortable air beds and warm sleeping bags you can be remarkably comfortable even in winter.

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< Trips on waterways surrounded by

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rugged mountains are a unique way of experiencing the landscape. When we on eastern Greenland the fells were like high walls around us and the icebergs in the water gave the landscape an extra lustre. This frog’s perspective does justice to the majesty of the peaks.

Inlets, lakes and rivers are also relatively easy ways into the mountain landscape.

Along the coast of Greenland the fjords are often the only way to get around.

> Many climbers prefer trips in the winter because the slopes are easier to climb when they are covered with snow.

With climbing skins under the skis you can get quite high up more easily than in summer. Then the reward is a wonderful run down the glaciers and mountainsides. The risk of avalanches can be a worry but on this occasion the conditions were good in the Ähpar massif in Sarek. The ridge you can see is called Favoritkammen. From a level of about 1,700 metres there was a 1,000metre drop down to the camp at the foot of the fell.

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paddled through the Sermiligaaq fjord

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Today we know that trekking is an excellent way of keeping healthy, but why walk in the mountains?

A witty reply might be that the hilly landscape gives us experiences at a higher level. When we trek and at the same time delight in the beauty of the peaks and the freedom of the wide expanses, we are taking the optimum form of exercise. Mountains require greater effort than level ground, the terrain is up and down, you can have a heavy pack or a light one, but the exertion is generally healthily low-impact, providing us with positive energy that strengthens us mentally and lingers on. When the exertion is over we can enjoy a feeling of wellbeing, the joy of having reached the goal and been in communion with nature. Mountain trekking offers us more than ordinary enjoyment. The rhythm is repeated daily. We wake up among the hills, pack up, trot off, struggle sometimes and finally reach our goal. It is the same every day but never uneventful. “Walking is the exact balance between spirit and humility” writes Gary Snyder.

In the eighteenth century Jean-Jacques Rousseau said that walking was both an exercise in simplicity and a road to contemplation. H. D. Thoreau wrote in the nineteenth century: “I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits, unless I spend four hours a day at least—and it is commonly more than that— sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields, absolutely free from all worldly engagements.”

More demanding trekking has been extolled by historically famous people. One statesman who loved mountains was Dag Hammarskjöld, his description of a trek in Sarek in the 1940s ends with the reflection: “A trek like this is always somewhat incomplete, it cries out for a continuation. When that is denied us it is as if we at some time try to overcome time and forgetfulness by setting down what we have encountered in words – that fall short under the pressure.”

Going off with everything you need for survival packed in a rucksack always brings a certain excitement. Life on these trips is easier than it used to be, the equipment weighs less and is more efficient. We can easily travel to the areas where we want to trek, almost regardless of where on earth they are. Countless trails have clear markings and huts to spend the night in; GPS can facilitate orienteering. We can choose how to set up the trips: to minimise the load, day trips are the answer; if we want to walk a long distance and still carry a relatively light pack, areas with huts are best. To go to the most inaccessible wildernesses, a tent is the answer but the pack will be heavier of course. With the right equipment you can go a long way, but not without a map. “I have heard that there are people who do not bother with maps, which I find hard to believe,” wrote R. L. Stevenson.

How true. A mountain lover loves maps.

Annapurna Circuit is one of the most popular trekking trails in the Himalayas.

You walk for three weeks round the supremely beautiful Annapurna massif.

After about nine days the energysapping slopes begin, up to the highest point, the Thorung La Pass, 5,416 metres.

The mountains close in and through the valley in the picture runs the Jharsang Kola stream. At this altitude, above 4,000 metres, breathing is harder but the climb is long-drawn-out and that aids acclimatisation. A road has recently been built round the whole massif, changing the conditions for trekking.

The locals need it but roads always affect the character of an area. Trekking next to a road often seems dull.

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< These days it is usually called sea

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trekking, when you travel along inspiring stretches of coast. There is no road to get there is on foot. The landscape is dramatic and inviting at the same time; the mountains rise straight up out of the sea and frame a Pacific-like sandy beach. The sea breezes bring cool air from the Arctic. If it is blowing hard the Atlantic can pound the beach with merciless waves.

> Some trails are enormously popular among trekkers. Besseggen in Jotunheim is Norway’s best known, a steep but not very difficult fell route beside the fjord-like Lake Gjende. Henrik Ibsen made the trail famous with his poem about Peer Gynt riding a reindeer over this mountain, and about 40,000 trekkers come here every year. In places you have to use your hands for support on this brilliant tour, but generally speaking anyone can manage it.

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to Kvalvika in Lofoten so the best way

CLIMB IN G

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A peak is the ultimate place in a mountain landscape and as an enthusiast you want to climb it just because – in Mallory’s words – it is there, but actually there are many reasons. The view is an obvious motive, the strongest in my world. At the top we can see the world from above and the views give us an enormous feeling of freedom. A mountaineer also sees the ascent as a physical and mental challenge. The climber Ed Viesturs sums it up: “The art of mountaineering is knowing when to go, when to stay and when to retreat.”

On many mountains it is possible to walk to the highest peak, but when the slope becomes steep we have to climb. When we are obliged to use our hands, walking becomes a form of easy climbing that the English call scrambling. If the risk of falling increases we need a safety rope to anchor us to the mountain.

How much exertion we want to undertake is a very personal thing. For some mountaineers the route is the goal, they are looking for challenges. The satisfaction lies in the climbing movements and solving the problem of the route, the triumph when difficulties have been overcome; a kind of physical union with nature. Other climbers would rather get up there as easily as possible, for them the summit rather than the route is the goal. You can also choose an option that combines the joy of achievement with the experience of nature. Among climbers the degrees of difficulty are graded. Sometimes we climb just on

rock, other times alternating with snow and ice.

The way of climbing mountains has developed tremendously since the time of the pioneers in the nineteenth century. When summits were climbed for the first time the simplest route was chosen, often just walking or scrambling. In the twentieth century climbing became increasingly advanced and the steepest faces became possible. Today there are many variations and the underlying ethical and aesthetic ideas have been fleshed out. Many climbers want to leave little trace in the landscape and challenge big expeditions. In my opinion an attractive option is that of the Bill Tilman and Eric Shipton team. In the 1930s they carried out impressive treks in the Himalayas with a few Sherpas. “A good expedition can be written on the back of an envelope” was Tilman’s laconic comment. He railed against the big companies with masses of porters, lots of climbers and a hierarchical organisation.

However, advanced climbing in small groups requires solid experience if you want to reach high mountains in inaccessible areas. For my part I prefer mountaineering with little kit. My main objectives are closeness to nature, photography and a closer relationship with the landscape. Even on an easy climb you have to touch the rock, which always gives you a strong feeling of affinity with the mountain.

On a summit we can all enjoy the views, regardless of how hard the trail has been.

An ascent of the Alps’ highest peaks usually involves long trips. You have to climb up cliffs and over boulders, get across exposed snowfields and sometimes steep glaciers. On this fractured ice field overhanging the northwest wall of Dent d’Hérens, 4,174 metres, you need a safety rope. In the background you can see Dent Blanche, 4,357 metres.

Dent d’Hérens is the Alps’ 32nd-highest peak, a handsome sight but not nearly as famous as the neighbouring Matterhorn; a long ridge connects the two.

Dent d’Hérens was climbed for the first time in 1863, a few days previously Edward Whymper and company had been obliged to turn back below the highest summit. Afterwards he wrote: “This is the only mountain in the Alps which I have essayed to ascend, that has not, sooner or later, fallen to me.

Our failure was mortifying … ”

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< Snow climbing on the Twin Ridge in

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southern Sarek, Saitaristjåhkkå can be seen behind. On this fine April day we then climbed over the mountain with our skis strapped to our packs. Trips to inaccessible wildernesses like Sarek involve fantastic experiences of nature.

> Margherita, 5,109 metres, the highest peak in Ruwenzori, requires climbing over a steep face below the highest summit. Climbing a face at this altitude, surrounded by snow and ice in tropical Africa, is a magical experience, not to be compared with tours on more accessible mountains. Ruwenzori draws you in with a mysterious aura and richly contrasting landscapes, ranging from dense jungle to glaciers.

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skied up to the foot of the ridge and

MOU NTAIN PHOTOG RAPHY

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Photography was invented in the 1820s and soon mountains became popular motifs. John Ruskin took a picture of the Matterhorn in 1849. The Bisson brothers climbed Mont Blanc in 1861 and took photo­ graphs with a huge wooden camera that had been carried up by 25 porters. Carleton Watkins also had a huge camera in Yosemite, his pictures contributed to the area becoming the USA’s first nature reserve in 1864. Another pioneer, Henry Jackson, photographed in Yellowstone, which became the first national park in the world in 1872.

Cameras were heavy and their glass plates susceptible to light. The number of plates carried per trip was low and the tripod was unwieldy, so mainly landscapes were photographed with long exposure times. However, the definition and tonal gradation were brilliant and are up to standard even now. In 1888 George Eastman introduced a hand-held metal camera that could be loaded with film rolls, which suited a growing number of amateur photographers, while the professionals continued to use wooden cameras for their landscape pictures.

At the end of the nineteenth century the Italian Vittorio Sella was the most famous mountain photographer; he had a handmade mahogany camera that weighed 20 kilos and every plate weighed one kilo. With difficulty he photographed in the Alps, Alaska, the Caucasus, Ruwenzori and the Himalayas, and his view was “big landscapes require big camer-

as.” In 1914 the trekker Oskar Barnack developed the first Leica camera for the small picture format. With the smaller models the style of mountain pictures changed. It became possible to photograph moving people and even landscapes in fluctuating light.

In the twentieth century photography underwent an obvious philosophical development, rather like other branches of art. The style became more important than the content; leading proponents felt that nature should be reflected by poets rather than technocrats. Pictorialism, with its freedom of expression, was born but a counter-movement soon arose. Ansel Adams advocated sharp pictures that did not imitate other visual arts, he was a conscious representative of classical photography and is one of the foremost landscape photographers in history, being most active between 1940 and 1980. Adams’ black-andwhite photographs of American mountain landscapes are skilfully created and characterised by his full control of the exposure and composition. He placed the camera carefully with a view to interpreting the shapes of the peaks and the details of the landscape he wanted to reproduce.

Digital technology has changed the basic options as most people who trek and climb mountains can now use a small, light camera. The sensor is very light-sensitive and produces more realistic images in the difficult light conditions of mountain landscapes.

Black-and-white photographs reveal an aesthetic that is different from colour photographs. Shapes and surfaces are highly significant to the composition, which is excellently suited to mountains.

With enhanced contrasts you can extract graphic effects from the landscape. Here the motif is Laddtjovagge in Lapland, where fresh snow had powdered the ground in September. In the infancy of photography pictures were all black-and-white. Colour photography emerged at the beginning of the twentieth century, opening up new possibilities, and in the mid-twentieth century colour pictures began to dominate. Since then black-and-white has had a role as an aesthetic alternative. Some nature motifs are better suited to black-and-white, others are best in colour. Thanks to digital photography we have the freedom today to choose between colour and black-and-white reproduction after the picture has been exposed.

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< Aerial photographs have both

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aesthetic and documentary advantages. Seen from above the topography patterns in the terrain become a world of unusual motifs. This aerial photograph shows the point where the ice in Skeidarárjökull and the side of Skadtafellsfjöll on Iceland meet. The camera angle is almost vertical. If you cut out the horizon the mountain landscape can become abstract.

> Trekkers struggling at a height of 4,500 metres to improve their acclimatisation on their way to Everest Base Camp. In the background is Ama Dablam. People are a natural element in mountain motifs: they give the land­ scape scale, and as silhouettes they provide a tried and tested image effect.

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becomes more comprehensible and

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From Sarektjåhkkå’s north peak, 2,050

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metres, you can see the most icebound landscape in Lapland. The picture is of the Swedish 1,000 kronor note that was issued in autumn 2015. About ten countries in the world have or have had mountains on their banknotes, an extremely unusual use for a mountain motif. Mostly we take photographs to keep as memories of our trips. The camera also gives us creative inspiration, it opens our eyes. Trekking in the mountains it is natural to take pictures of magnificent views and interesting details in the landscape, but we are always dependent on conditions. A photograph reproduces nature as it is at the time it is taken, so the weather is of decisive importance in determining what pictures we can take home.

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reproduced as an engraving on the back

LAPLAN D

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There are wide vistas in the Lapland fells, not least in the Swedish part of the area that makes up Sápmi, the country of the Sami. The land is not flat, it is covered with rolling moors and rounded massifs that often rise in curved, sometimes steep slopes.

The highest reach boldly for the sky. The contours can be imposing, in isolated cases 1,500 metres from top to toe. The Lapland fells are not to be under­ estimated just because the summits reach little over 2,000 metres above sea level. There are 12 peaks of that size.

The topography is characterised by a 150-kilometre-long ridge with steep massifs on the inner side and softly rounded heights on the sides. The high alpine areas are cut through with deep valleys. Three areas with distinct peaks make up the spine, from the south: Sulitelma, Sarek and Kebnekaise. Further south is the North Storfjäll, likewise steeply contoured. Together these massifs are home to just over 250 glaciers that are currently shrinking.

One hundred and fifty years ago the volume of ice was much bigger and over time the glaciers have carved out lots of troughs in the hard rock walls.

The transition from the wide expanses to the slopes is more apparent in summer when the moors’ variegated vegetation meets the dark rock of the massifs. Below the treeline are vast deciduous forests of gnarled mountain birch; in the most fertile valleys the birch forest may be as tangled as a jungle. Owing

to low pressure from the Atlantic the weather is very changeable, an advantage for photographers as the light varies a lot. The Arctic Circle cuts across Lapland and at the right time you can see the Midnight Sun and the Northern Lights.

Lapland’s trackless and uninhabited spaces, the biggest in the EU, are particularly precious to trekkers. The feeling of wilderness is palpable, the moors are mostly dry, the vegetation low-growing and the topography tempting to explore. Moreover, the water in the streams is drinkable. Compared with many other mountain landscapes in the world this terrain is unusually good for roaming free, even off the paths. Lapland is a wonderful realm, not least in winter, when it is much more accessible. Half the year the snow tucks the countryside up in a white blanket, and the landscape becomes more attractive for long-distance ski tours.

Dag Hammarskjöld was a devoted Lapland fan and sensitive portrayer of this mountainous world.

He blended statesman-like formal language with his own empathetic voice: “The long view from a ridge or over moors offers rest through its simplification of the multiplicity of detail. It forces us to keep a sense of proportion and rightly feel our own smallness and transience. It also gives a feeling of freedom: the land is open to us, it is ours – to the extent of our own capacity.”

The ground in Lapland is generally easily traversed but a few watercourses can be problematic. The volume of water varies but this time the glacial stream from Suottasjiegna was easy to ford; on the right is the peak of Suottastjåhkkå, 1,868 metres, in Sarek. Thanks to the vast moors with no tracks or settlements, Lapland’s countryside tempts us to make long treks. Wildernesses are amazingly vast and Sarek comprises several thousand square kilometres of alpine wilderness, Europe’s equivalent to Alaska. The highest massifs provide an inspiring variation in the landscape. The water in streams and lakes is drinkable, making life easier for trekkers. There is a comprehensive network of trails to follow, some with huts for overnight stays, Kungsleden being the most famous. From an international perspective the scope for experiencing genuinely untouched landscapes is Lapland’s greatest quality.

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The Vuoinesjekna Glacier offers enjoyable downhill skiing on a day trip to Sarek; in the distance you can see the

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conical Slugga mountain. The winter turns Lapland into an unusually beautiful mountain landscape with optimum topography for long ski trips. Thanks to the broad valleys that the ice fields carved out and the wide tablelands, you can avoid extremely steep slopes. The terrain below the massif has extensive slopes rather than sudden inclines and most of the high fells are rounded and hence attractive objectives for summit tours with skins under the skis. The risk of avalanches varies with the snow conditions and gradient but can be avoided if you keep away from the steepest faces. The weather is a treacherous risk because the snowstorms can be powerful. The best time for ski trips is from the end of March onwards, when nights are getting lighter and temperatures are rising.

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NOR WAY

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Norway has the most magnificent landscapes in Scandinavia. The fjords penetrate deep into the Atlantic coast and within their shores lie the Norwegian fells, extending further and with higher peaks than on the Swedish side. Both countries share the same mountain range, at 1,700 kilometres the longest in Europe after the Urals. Almost all Norway is mountainous yet much is inhabited; the trackless areas are smaller than in Sweden but the Norwegian fells are steeper. Trollveggen in Romsdal has Europe’s highest vertical precipice, with 1,000 metres of free fall. There are almost 200 peaks over 2,000 metres and just over 1,500 glaciers.

The geological history of the mountain range began with the Caledonian fold 400 million years ago. The Baltica continent collided with Laurentia, the North America of the time, when both landmasses lay near the equator. A sea between them was obliterated, the ocean bed was pushed down under Laurentia, the bottom sediment was pushed up on to Baltica where layers were formed like roof tiles on top of each other. When the two landmasses combined to form the supercontinent Pangea a mountain range was born – the Caledonians – but after 150 million years it had broken down, oblit­ erating perhaps 8,000 metres of high peaks. Some geologists think that erosion resulted in a flat plain, others that it was a lower but nonetheless hilly mountain range that remained when Pangea began

to crack. At the same time the supercontinent had slid up to the northern hemisphere. In the Cretaceous period hollows emerged in the landmass, which filled with seawater and gradually a new ocean was formed that became the Atlantic. Thanks to Pangea’s split and the emergence of the new ocean, the roots of the Caledonians rose. Balancing forces in the Earth’s crust had come into play. Along the Atlantic high plateaux were formed and about 65 million years ago new mountains began to take shape there and now the remains of the Caledonians are found in Wales, Ireland, Scotland, Scandinavia, Svalbard and eastern Greenland.

Thus the Scandinavian mountain range arose through rebirth, after which two higher areas arose, in northern and southern Scandinavia, both with big surface areas over 1,000 metres high. There is a lower middle area around Trondheim and in Sweden. In southern Norway, where the range is broadest, the fjords cut deep into the land and steep precipices with small, flat tops are evidence of the old plateaux. In Norway the northern range is narrower and more divided by deep valleys. The fjords are also shorter but many of the sharp fell profiles have their foot in the sea. In Nordland, Lofoten and Lyngen the landscape is fiercely dramatic in places. In the furthest north Norway calms down – in the vast Finnmark Plateau.

Sagfjord in Norway sparkles in the after­ noon sun while the mountain ridges form the background, one behind the other. Norway’s magnificent coast has many fjords, some long and narrow, others wide and short, and some are very deep and also cut deeply into the high mountain landscape. Norway has fully 55,000 kilometres of coastline if you follow it in and out of all the creeks and fjords and round all the islands.

That is more than the circumference of the Earth. What perhaps distin­ guishes Norway’s from other similar coastlines with fjords and mountains is the surrounding agricultural landscape: in Norway splendid fells and living farming settlements combine in an attractive union.

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one another in beauty. High alpine areas alternate with open mountain plateaux.

Sweden, there are extensive forests and further north, where Norway narrows to a finger between the sea and the Swedish border, there are magnificent groups of islands out in the Atlantic.

Lofoten is the best known, with about 80 tall islands. This picture shows the harsh topography of Moskenesøya. I climbed up the Reinebringen crag at nightfall and took photographs towards Kjørkfjord and the well-worn peaks encircling the water. The crag rises 700 metres from the sea. The settlement of Reine village is sensitively placed on the low islands that form a barrier at the mouth of the fjord. Lofoten has long been a paradise for artists; the landscape is picturesque and easily accessible, but beyond the roads and the few mountain paths it becomes bold and in places so steep that you cannot go on.

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In the southeast, along the border with

SCOTLAN D

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The king of the Scottish Highlands is Ben Nevis, 1,364 metres. In spite of its modest height in international terms, this mountain is no small hill. Visible from Loch Linnhe, it stands alone, with an imposingly high north face. Ben Nevis is in the western Highlands where the mountains present a grand spectacle, with a few sea lochs cutting in towards the land.

To the southeast is the Cairngorms’ windswept plateau, known for its sweeping expanses. Towards the south the Highlands end in a long escarpment, the Highland Boundary Fault, that reaches from the Isle of Arran in the west to the town of Stonehaven on the east coast. North and west of this diagonal across Scotland lie the country’s beautifully rounded mountains and winding line of valleys. The Highlands also include the Inner and Outer Hebrides. Almost everywhere you can enjoy a glen or a ben, two Scottish Gaelic words for “valley” and “peak” respectively. The whole area is marked by Celtic traditions, noticeable not least in the place names.

Uniquely, barren mountain slopes meet cultivated valleys, often featuring dense groups of fine deciduous trees. These leafy groves, mainly of oak, stand out against a background of infertile massifs that are almost Arctic in their coolness, a rare and sophisticated natural mix. Originally pine forests grew in most lowland stretches but the majority have been cut down long since. Today’s planted coniferous trees make the slopes look artificially patterned in places,

like chessboards. The contours are reminiscent of the Scandinavian fells and it is obvious that these mountainous tracts are geologically related to one another. Their shared mother was the Caledonian range, the ancient mountains named from the Roman name for northern Britain.

Towards the northwest a flattened landscape extends with isolated solitary mountains, threebillion-year-old Lewis gneiss, one of the world’s oldest rocks, dominates. Further south sandstone lies over the gneiss, composing the mighty massif of Liathach.

In other places younger molten rock has penetrated the older bedrock. The reddish granites in the Cairngorms have led to a considerably shallower mountain terrain. On the Isle of Skye black gabbro has been formed by volcanic activity and there you find the most jagged peaks in Scotland.

Long after the Caledonian mountains had broken down the ice sheet masked the Scottish landscape.

But there are no alpine massifs with glaciers now, instead the Highlands are dominated by tranquil mountain ridges and far-reaching high plains. The mountains’ height has generally been levelled and you see few prominent peaks in a view where the ridges lie silhouetted one behind the other. How­ ever, many mountainsides are strangely thickset, particularly those surrounding a “corrie”, the Gaelic name for the cauldron-shaped glacial niches. In some places Scotland is steeper than you might think.

At Quiraing on the northern part of Skye, inviting grassy areas and sharp mountain ridges create a naturally beautiful landscape that perhaps attracted Celtic scholars and druids, in former times. One would like to think so. Basalt makes up the just-over-500metre-high mountains in the landscape.

Faults have caused the strata to lean slightly to the left and created steep precipices towards the east. Big rockfalls have also made the topography more rugged. Owing to its appearance and the homogeneous vegetation the land radiates peace and quiet in a remarkable blend.

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< Buchaille Etive Mòr, 1,021 metres, is

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perhaps the most iconic and photographed mountain in Scotland, seen The Highlands consist mostly of long, continuous high ridges, sometimes with steep sides, but this mountain on the west coast forms a pyramidal peak that looks independent in this picture. This peak is classed as a Munro. The term refers to Sir Hugh Munro (1856–1919), one of the founders of the Scottish Mountaineering Club. In 1891 he published a list of all Britain’s peaks over 3,000 feet (914 metres). Since then the term Munro has become part of Scottish culture.

Scotland has 282 Munros and more than 5,000 people have climbed them all.

> In the Cairngorms National Park there are 15 Munros, including Scotland’s second-highest mountain Ben Macdui, 1,309 metres, the roof ridge on the right at the top of the picture. The rock in this area consists of granite that weathers to gravel where the slabs are exposed. The landscape resembles the Scandinavian fells, with wide high plateaux, rounded tops and a few deep U-shaped valleys.

There are fine walks and climbs here.

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here by moonlight with December snow.

GR EEN LAN D

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The world’s biggest island is like no other wilderness on Earth. The ice sheet covers 84 per cent of the surface and is 3,000 metres’ thick at most, but there is also room for a peripheral land area with permafrost that altogether comprises an ice-free area almost as big as Sweden. The topography of these bare areas is mostly very rocky and many fjords split the coast. In areas with high rocks, rivers of ice glide out towards the sea from the white plateau in the interior. You will rarely see a more sterile landscape than Greenland but anyone who has been here is often infected by “the Arctic bug”, a constant longing to return to this northern latitude with its crystal-­ clear high Arctic air in the light summer nights.

On eastern Greenland there are fjords and mountains with extremely old primary granites that display their hard facades on dizzyingly high rock faces.

The area around the capital Tasiilaq (Angmassalik) in the east also has patterned vein gneiss and sedimentary rock in the bedrock, producing beautifully coloured rock slabs.

There is scarcely a more desolate landscape on Earth than Greenland. The fact that the Inuit call their island Kalaallit Nunaat, “the people’s country”, may therefore be considered as much of a contra­ diction as the name Greenland. But the warmer cycles of the Middle Ages benefitted the vegetation and when the Vikings settled in the southern part at the end of the tenth century the country was quite

fertile, and in the same period the Inuit’s ancestors established more and more settlements along the coasts. So the island’s names are not so strange.

Today 56,000 people live in this sparsely populated land that is still part of Denmark. Even today we can carry out expeditions here in the classical sense but travelling among these mountains requires good planning and well-thought-out logistics. The reward is enormously strong impressions of an ice-cold Arctic wilderness.

North of the capital Tasiilaq in eastern Greenland the glaciers leave huge icefree areas closest to the fjords. You can trek there along the beaches, into the valleys with low-growing vegetation and take trips in a really desolate wilderness.

Deadman’s Valley is covered with river sediment from the glaciers’ meltwater, providing good growing soil for the mass flowering of white cottongrass.

From a distance the tufts look like snow.

Nameless 1,000-metre-high fells form a background to the valley floor. There can be big contrasts in the wildlife in Greenland. The modest flora has a short season.

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< On this nameless peak that very few have climbed, 1,055 metres above the fjord, we look down on Kárale Glacier,

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one of many glaciers in a network of ice sliding along from Greenland’s ice sheet through the coastal mountain range.

Further in, closer to the ice sheet’s endless expanses, the area is called Schweizerland. The ice on Kárale Glacier has receded several kilo­metres in recent decades.

> An iceberg floats in Angmassalik Fjord. Fifty kilometres further north jagged granite cliffs point skyward in the Trillingarna massif, just over 2,100 metres above sea level. Icebergs are “calved” when the powerful glacier lobes break off. Big icebergs live for a long time and float southward on the sea currents. Every summer only small ice floes are left from the winter sea ice, if they are pushed together by wind and waves they form slush that can clog the surface of the water.

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THE ALPS

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South of Central Europe stand the Alps, like a young, fresh-looking barrier, in the shape of a huge arc of impressive peaks. It extends first along the Franco-­ Italian border, from the Mediterranean northwards, curves off towards the east and then spreads out like a fan through Switzerland, northern Italy and Austria and finally brings the ridges together and subsides in northern Slovenia. As a whole the Alps are a 1,000-kilometre-long gathering in of lower lying areas to the south, the range culminating in Mont Blanc. More than 80 mountains are over 4,000 metres high. An inventory in the 1970s counted just over 4,500 glaciers but there is widespread melting The glaciers began to recede around 1910, probably owing to soot particles from Europe’s towns and industries, subsequently exacerbated by rising temperatures.

To the former mountain dwellers “alp” meant a high meadow. Nowadays the word is universally used to mean steep, high mountains.

Geologists studied the Alps as early as the eighteenth century and tried to understand how the mountains had been formed. Today we know that the range originated when Africa collided with Europe and the Tethys Ocean was eliminated. The ocean bed and the continents’ primary rocks were pushed together by the movement of the tectonic plates, the rock strata were pushed northward and stacked on one another like plates about 50 million years ago. In the same period several mountain

ranges were folded in a belt stretching from the Pyrenees in the west to the Himalayas in the east. The Alps were worn down and after 45 million years only low hills were left. Then a new uplift occurred and the Alps are still rising almost one centimetre a year, but breaking down even faster. All the jagged alpine tops, for example the Matterhorn, were created in the last five million years, just the twinkling of an eye in Earth’s history.

It was on Mont Blanc that mountaineering began.

In 1760 the naturalist Horace-Bénédict de Saussure offered a reward for the first person to climb it. In 1786, after several previous tries, Dr. Michel-Gabriel Paccard organised a fresh attempt with the dubious crystal-hunter Jacques Balmat as his companion.

After they succeeded, Paccard’s previous companion, the writer Marc Théodor Bourrit, was green with envy and induced Balmat to lie and belittle Paccard’s achievement. Balmat stole all the glory and took the promised prize. A statue of him was erected in Chamonix on the centenary of the ascent. On the 200th anniversary in 1986 Paccard was finally rehabilitated and also honoured with a statue.

The south side of Mont Blanc, 4,808 metres, reveals the most imposing view of the massif. Between the valley of Val Veni and the top the difference in altitude is about 3,200 metres, which is in a class with the Himalayas. The steep ice lobe is called Glacier du Brouillard and the black pinnacle on the right is the famous Aiguille Noire de Peuterey. The name Mont Blanc, “the white mountain”, was first used in a letter in 1603. Up to the mid-eighteenth century it was most often known as the Montagne Maudite, “the cursed mountain”. With the first ascent in 1786 Mont Blanc became the birthplace of mountaineering and it is still one of the most admired mountains in the world. On a trek round the massif, the classic Tour du Mont Blanc, this view appears. It is great to stop and look at what the English poet Lord Byron (d. 1824) described: “Mont Blanc is the monarch of mountains. They crown’d him long ago On a throne of rocks, in a robe of clouds, with a diadem of snow.”

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ing on a snow-covered ridge far below the Weisshorn peak. In the background proud. Both mountains are part of the mighty Wallis Alps range that is shared

by Switzerland and Italy. It has 35 peaks over 4,000 metres, all independent and very impressive leviathans.

> The Eggishorn viewpoint, 2,927 metres, offers an excellent overview of the big Grosser Aletschgletscher in the Swiss Bernese Oberland. You can clearly see the edges of a few medial moraines with ribbons of gravel on the surface of the ice. The upper part of the glacier is surrounded by high alpine peaks, on the left in the background is Mönch, 4,107 metres, and to the right Grosser Wannenhorn, 3,906 metres.

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Rimpfischhorn, 4,199 metres, stands

THE HIMALAYAS

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Himalaya means the “home of the snow”, the word is Sanskrit, poetically charged and factually correct.

Frank Smythe wrote of the Himalayas in the 1930s: “Confronted by them, a man loses his grasp of ordinary things, perceiving himself as immortal ….”

The combination of these colossally high peaks is more impressive than other mountain ranges.

A seventh-century text in the Hindu Skanda Purana explains: “Not even a hundred divine epochs would be sufficient for me to tell of the greatness of Himachal. As dew dries in the morning sun, thus are human sins in the presence of Himachal.”

These mountains are the world’s highest, their beauty is divine, the topography exceeds anything else on Earth. The range extends 3,200 kilometres, it forms a bastion between the swarming, populous floodplains in India and the desolate high plateaux of Tibet. To the west the row of peaks divides into several ranges that are sometimes counted as part of the Himalayas or sometimes considered as separate ranges, of which Karakoram is the best known. The Central Himalayas extend between the peaks of Nanga Parbat in the west and Namcha Barwa in the east, 2,500 kilometres across Pakistan, China, Nepal, India and Bhutan.

The Himalayas are the Earth’s youngest mountain range. When Gondwanaland split India slid over the Tethys Ocean in the direction of Tibet and ten million years ago the landmasses touched each

other. The Tibetan high plateau rose skywards in the form of mighty folds. The collision is still going on and the Himalayas are rising about one centimetre a year. Before the collision the rivers had established their paths on the Tibetan high plateau; when the mountains rose up the watersheds ended up on the northern side of the highest massifs. In parallel the rivers cut downwards to form deep breakthrough ravines, a unique situation among the Earth’s mountain ranges. In some cases you can trek through valleys 5,000 metres below the mountain’s crown.

With the trigonometrical survey of British India in the first half of the nineteenth century the world began to understand the scale of the Himalayas. In 1808 Dhaulagiri was considered the world’s highest peak with a measured height of 8,167 metres. For a while it was thought that it was Gauri Sankar and during a period up to 1852 Kangchenjunga was seen as the highest, but then Everest was established as the Earth’s highest mountain. The climbers were slow in coming, the first of all the westerners in the Himalayas was Britain’s W. W. Graham, who came here in 1883. During his trip he visited the area around Nanda Devi and climbed a high peak near Kangchenjunga. He did not rub shoulders with the elite climbers of the time and therefore remained unknown, but Graham’s approach was exemplary and he loved the mountains.

The dawn light in April lights up this exceptionally powerful mountain stronghold in the Himalayas. Foremost is the world’s fifth-highest mountain, Makalu, 8,470 metres, perhaps the most elegant of all the tops over 8,000 metres. Further away, on the left, the fourth-highest appears, Lhotse, 8,501 metres, and on the right is the snow palace Chomo Lonzo, 7,804 metres. Right behind Makalu is also Everest, but hidden from this angle. The whole forms a manifestation of unearthly beauty, 100 kilometres from Singalila Ridge in Sikkim, where this picture was taken. The Tibetan word Makalu means “the big black one” or alternatively the name may come from Sanskrit and mean “sublime”. Makalu was climbed for the first time in 1955 by a French expedition.

Following pages: The mountain on the left of the picture is Hathi Parbat, 6,727 metres, and lies in the Indian district of Chamoli in the Garhwal Himalayas. This mountain is also called the Elephant Peak because of its shape. The land­ scape’s agitated topography is unique to this section of the Himalayas and the area is often hit by earthquakes.

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the Marsyangdi River rises the Manaslu massif in Nepal, 8,163 metres, the world’s be translated as “the mountain of the soul”. After four expeditions, that according to the locals “displeased the gods” and thus set off avalanches, Japanese climbers managed to be the first to the top in 1956. The mountain is considered a dangerous peak. The picture is taken at a height of 2,300 metres in the temperate zone where the Himalayan pine (Pinus wallichiana) grows.

> When trees of the rhododendron family flower in the Himalayan forest the display of colour is stunningly beautiful. Rhododendron cinnabarium grows here on Singalila Ridge, at about 3,500 metres, in western Sikkim.

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eighth-highest moutain. The name can

JAPAN

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Since ancient times mountains have been seen in Japan as a home for gods, kami. Sacred peaks are called kannabi and the tradition lives on today. The Japanese continue to revere their mountains, among other things, with the rites that occur in the mixture of religions that underpin society. The native religion of Shintoism has mixed peacefully with Chinese influences from Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism. In Shinto kami is a force that permeates existence and is said to be found almost everywhere, for example in mountains and lakes. Volcanoes and well-formed peaks that dominate their surroundings have an important role and temples have often been built to worship them. To an outsider the people’s respect for their mountains is touching.

Japan comprises four large islands and almost 7,000 smaller islands. The complex topography magnifies the area and the climate ranges from temperate in the north to subtropical in the south.

Although the country is one of the world’s most densely populated, the mountainous areas are surprisingly devoid of people. Honshu is counted as the world’s seventh-largest island, being half as big as Sweden. Along its midline lie what have come to be called the Japanese Alps, a British name that became internationally known thanks to the missionary and mountaineer Walter Weston, who in 1896 published a travel book about climbing in Japan, which became a classic: “It is a fact worth noting that the Jap-

anese, almost without exception, choose the loveliest places on a mountainside for their worship.”

The Japanese Alps have 26 peaks over 3,000 metres high and the sides are often craggy; the winters bring a lot of snow but there are no glaciers. Around ten per cent of the world’s volcanoes are found in Japan.

At 3,776 metres Fuji is the country’s highest mountain and has been climbed by pilgrims since the seventh century. Perhaps the people who journeyed up there long ago were the world’s first mountaineers to climb a really high, dangerous peak. Fuji’s last eruption was 300 years ago, resulting in great devastation. Throughout the country the rock is extremely unstable, earthquakes occur regularly.

Japan is located on the Ring of Fire round the Pacific, which explains the restlessness of the tectonic plates.

On the large northern island of Hokkaido there are still impressively large wildernesses rich in wildlife. Here Japan has its biggest national park, Daisetsuzan. A couple of volcanoes in the area are among “Japan’s hundred famous mountains”, a list from 1964 compiled by the writer and mountaineer Kyuya Fukada who chose them according to their historical significance, beauty and individuality; with few exceptions they were supposed to be at least 1,500 metres high. Many Japanese try to “bag” them all during their lifetime, which is also an expression of their love of mountainous landscapes.

Sometimes the landscape in Daiset­ suzan emanates Zen Buddhist moods, as here by Lake Hisago. This area is on Hokkaido, the northernmost large island in Japan. Daisetsuzan is the country’s biggest national park, the name meaning “big snow mountain”, for obvious reasons. Hokkaido receives enormous quantities of snow in winter and is the skiers’ eldorado. One of the rivers in this area was explored in 1910 by Ryutaro Ota from the local area. He wanted to save the wilderness and thanks to his determined proposals the national park was created in 1934, one of the first eight in Japan. As a whole this protected area is the biggest in the country, with unspoilt countryside, but there are roads that penetrate the periphery. You can trek between the volcanoes in this meditative wilderness, which is also home to a large bear population.

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ima in southern Japan lies far out in the Pacific. The island has become famous World Heritage site. It rains almost constantly, which makes the vegetation unrestrainedly luxuriant. Granite forms the 1,900-metre-high mountains in the interior of the island, and here the River Tainoko runs down over the slabs in the waterfall Senpiro-no-Taki. The appearance of the vegetation prompts thoughts of Japanese gardens in a giant format.

> Trekking across Yakushima you walk through moss-clad enchanted forests with unique trees, chiefly the endemic Yaku-sugi cedar which, it is believed, can grow to over 7,000 years old. Many have been chopped down through history but in the interior of the island the trees were considered holy and allowed to stand. Hanayama Mountain Trail leads through one of these groves that has probably never been touched.

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for its magnificent wildlife and is a

TASMANIA

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In 1949 Tasmania’s and Australia’s most spectacular mountain was climbed for the first time. Surveyor James Sprent had seen “the obelisk” from a distance in 1855 and in 1901 the explorer T. B. Moore cleared a path close to the top, naming the mountain Federation Peak since the Australian Federation had been formed that year. In the 1920s an unsuccessful attempt was made to climb it and then nothing happened until some trekkers from Hobart succeeded a couple of decades later.

Federation Peak is a symbol for the island’s countryside, it is still extremely inaccessible in one of the Earth’s most difficult mountain areas. Tasmania is the 26th-biggest island in the world and the western half is a very harsh wilderness with long mountain ridges and impenetrable bush. The topography comprises mountain ranges that extend in a north–south direction, the highest point being Mount Ossa, 1,617 metres. The rock is light quartzite or dark dolerites (diabase). The geological history has been an interaction between continental drift, repeated folding, seabeds that have become petrified, invasive subterranean melt and ice ages with glacial erosion. This is how the island acquired this strangely wild landscape of a very singular character, made up of different kinds of rock, erosion and vegetation.

Aborigines lived on the island for 40,000 years before the British crown established penal colonies in the nineteenth century. Many years of cruel per-

secution and disease led to the Aborigines dying out, at the same time as the central parts of Tasmania were cultivated. The unique Tasmanian tiger was also eradicated, but the wilderness in the west remained largely untouched. Even today those rugged tracts are a remarkable world, with unique flora and fauna. The mountains, with quartzite precipices, look almost as if they were snow-covered from a distance and in the darker dolerite massifs there are cliffs with columns like organ pipes. The island’s forests, sometimes inaccessible owing to a tangle of shrubs, are equally strange and look as if they could be home to dinosaurs. Some species of euca­lyptus tree can grow impressively tall and there is also the southern beech, which is a relic from Gondwanaland.

The land beyond the few trails is a nightmare to get through. Open areas are often marshy and tussocky, in places the landscape has been cut up by deep river gorges, the climate is stormy. The countryside on Tasmania is hardly inviting for trekkers.

Thanks to its wild character western Tasmania has a more virgin landscape than most other mountainous areas on Earth. The area is a dream for those who want to visit a complete wilderness and an eldorado for experienced trekkers and nature-lovers. The well-established Overland Track is perfect if you want to embrace the island’s mountain terrain.

The Cradle Mountain–Lake St. Clair National Park is part of the World Heritage “Tasmanian Wilderness” that covers 20 per cent of the island’s area.

It is crossed by the famous trekking trail, the Overland Track. After a couple of stages on the trail, from the north, this wide-ranging scene opens up.

Behind Lake Holmes and ten kilometres south rises Mount Pelion West, 1,560 metres, and further to the left you catch a glimpse of Tasmania’s highest peak, Mount Ossa, 1,617 metres. The mountain is formed of 165-million-year-old basalt that is often split into columns in the precipices. Not least the carpet of vegetation seems exotic in this fascinating landscape. Dense forests of eucalyptus and southern beech alternate with open, marshy areas where various bushes and thickets grow tight together. The terrain is difficult away from the paths’ well-trodden tracks. The legendary Gustav Weindorfer is strongly associated with this area, and at his insistence the national park was designated in 1922.

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a sharp profile in the Eastern Arthur Range, located in the most inaccessible to reach the mountain from the nearest road, a very demanding trek that includes climbing sections. The bedrock is quartzite, which makes the mountain walls light in colour. Southwestern Tasmania is in the “Roaring Forties” and exposed to severe storms, making the whole area one of the most challenging for wilderness enthusiasts.

> This tiny path from Lake Leo in the Eastern Arthurs leads up to the Stuart Saddle Pass. The picturesque lakes among these mountains fill old glacial niches hollowed out in the latest ice ages. One interesting pioneer who walked here was John Béchervaise, an artist and writer. He led the first climb of Federation Peak in 1949.

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part of Tasmania. It takes almost a week

N E W Z EALAN D

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The mountain landscape in New Zealand is extraordinarily beautiful to look at and inspiring to trek in.

Up to the European colonisation in the nineteenth century the unique flora and fauna existed with little outside influence. The islands were sparsely populated by the Maoris from the twelfth century onwards and for a long time the landscape was untouched. In conjunction with the British colonisation alien flora and fauna were introduced and altered the ecosystem. The forests in the lowlands began to be chopped down and today much of the landscape has been remodelled – apart from the mountain areas. That is where we can still experience the islands’ original natural landscape.

The mountain range that runs 500 kilometres along the western side of the South Island was given the name “Southern Alps” by James Cook in 1770.

The Maoris called the mountains Ká Tiritiri o te Moana, meaning “the foaming water from the sea”.

West winds blow from the Tasman Sea and rise over the mountains. Tremendous precipitation falls on the Southern Alps and the highest peaks are covered with snow all year round. The climate east of the mountains is drier. Quantities of snow have given rise to almost 3,000 glaciers and some are very big, for example Franz Josef’s Glacier. Eighteen peaks are over 3,000 metres. Since many of the mountains rise straight up from the sea their stature is in some places absolutely monumental, in the same class as

the Himalayas. The topography around the highest peak Aoraki (Mount Cook) is very special. Below the mountainsides lie deeply carved wide valleys, allowing room for flat floodplains. The contact between the flat expanses and the surrounding precipices is an obvious angle, like a street meeting a house façade, and the topography is clearly broken up, with no gradual transition from the valley bottom to the mountainside. The floodplain looks like an enclosed courtyard.

South of Aoraki lies Fiordland. A map shows how remarkably convoluted the topography is in this strange area. The terrain is extremely difficult; only some valleys are accessible with paths, among them the world-famous Milford Track. The valleys branch into an extensive network. They are so narrow that in their depths they can feel like canyons. From the pass you can see tightly packed mountain ridges running off in different directions, like a matrix laid across the landscape. The area is just 200 kilometres long and almost 70 wide. The vegetation grows incredibly densely and large parts of Fiordland have therefore been naturally preserved like an in­accessible no-man’s land. There are probably corners that few humans have ever trodden. The whole forms a wonderfully beautiful world with a virgin mountain landscape, 15 narrow fjords and a number of high waterfalls. There is scarcely a comparable area anywhere else on Earth. A peerless labyrinth.

The Routeburn Track is one of the nine classic trekking trails in New Zealand and incredibly popular. In three days you can walk approximately 30 kilometres and cross a high ridge with small mountain lakes. Routeburn Flats is a flat floodplain in the bottom of a valley surrounded by steeply sloping mountainsides. These are covered with an enchanting forest with southern beech as a common species.

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New Zealand North Island’s perfectly shaped stratovolcano Ngauruhoe, 2,291 metres, is active and last erupted in 1977.

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This picture was taken from Tongariro, also an active volcano. The flat area below the mountain comprises the remains of a dead crater. Tongariro has given its name to the whole massif with all its fire-holes and lakes. There are a few poisonous green waterholes and steaming sulphur springs. The environment is totally volcanic, which attracts a lot of trekkers who walk the classic Tongariro Circuit. The volcanoes lie on the boundary between two tectonic plates. Eruptions have occurred now and again for two million years. For the Maoris the area is sacred and when the colonialists invaded the North Island in the nineteenth century a farsighted chieftain wanted to keep the landscape untouched. The British crown took over the land and in 1894 it became a national park, one of the first five in the world.

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Conical Hill, 1,515 metres, and the lower edge of the cloud cuts off this rounded of a jagged peak. Harris Lake a few hundred metres below the mountain is well placed in a basin. The Harris Saddle Pass, out of sight on the left, divides Routeburn Track into two halves. From here on there are downhill slopes to the temperate rainforest on the slopes on both sides.

> Mount Tasman, 3,497 metres, is New Zealand’s second-highest peak.

A narrow ridge links it to Mount Cook.

The Maoris call Mount Tasman Horo­ koau, which means that the mountain resembles the neck of a cormorant swallowing a fish. From Fox River, where this picture is taken, it is 3,200 metres up to the top; the difference in altitude is impressive. These snow mountains on the border between the national parks of Aoraki/Mount Cook and Westland/ Tai Poutini, together with the Fiordland National Park, form part of the big World Heritage site of Te Wahipounamu, altogether unparalleled world-class scenery.

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mountain so that it gives the illusion

PATAGON I A

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“My taste for foreign places gave me a strong desire to visit southern Patagonia.” Eric Shipton had seen many of the world’s most dramatic mountains. In 1958 he came to this destination for the first time.

Patagonia tempted him with widely talked of peaks in the storm-lashed desert that covers southernmost South America. On the Argentinian side there are endless grass steppes that spread west towards the Andes’ mighty mountain range. Behind the peaks in the west lies Chile with its Pacific coast, deeply divided by fjords and mountainous islands. Patagonia also has rich rainforests in temperate latitudes, and the biggest icefields outside the polar areas.

It is actually not a homogeneous region and the northern limits are vague. In his voyage round the world in 1520, for some obscure reason Magellan called people in this area Patagonians. They belonged to the Tehuelche tribe and were taller than the Europeans. Darwin also landed on Patagonia’s coast with his ship The Beagle, whose captain, Fitzroy, was honoured posthumously by having his name bestowed on the area’s most iconic mountain.

Mount Fitz Roy is one of several world-famous summits in Patagonia consisting of granite and it has become known for its suggestive shapes. Close to Fitz Roy stands Cerro Torre, an extremely rugged peak, slender as an incredibly tall lighthouse, rising 1,500 metres vertically up from the ice at its foot.

Further south, on the Chilean side, lies the Cordil-

lera Paine, comprising a cohesive group of equally astounding pinnacles. All these mountains and the areas around them are highly rated by trekkers and climbers but the trips are often tough owing to the unreliable weather and the strong wind. The climbing tours are among the most technically challenging in the world.

Personally I consider Fitz Roy one of the most spectacular peaks you can see. At a height of 3,405 metres the peak is 300 metres higher than Cerro Torre and it resembles a gigantic Gothic cathedral, standing by itself and radiating importance far in excess of its moderate height. The border between Chile and Argentina passes over the crown of Fitz Roy and to the west lies the southernmost of the two Patagonian ice plateaux. It is 350 kilometres long and sends out many glacial tongues towards the Pacific in the west and the big meltwater lakes in the east, among them the Perito Moreno Glacier that dams up a channel in Lago (lake) Argentina, as it pushes onward. The snow is scrunched up by the ice and the water rises up to 30 metres in one basin but when the pressure gets too great the ice wall bursts and the water surges out into the other part of the lake.

The process is repeated roughly every fourth year.

One of many expressions of the exceptional mountain landscape in Patagonia.

The middle of the three towers in Torres del Paine is the highest, 2,884 metres.

The trio is formed of yellowish granite and they are among the smoothest mountain pinnacles in the world. They rise above a cirque that you can trek up to unimpeded. A very varied trekking trail circles the whole massif. The climbing tours are extremely difficult. Two well-known British men, Chris Bonington and Don Whillans, made the first ascent of the highest tower in 1963. Then Bonington met his hero, Eric Shipton, who had just completed a long journey of discovery in Patagonia without any climbing at all. Concerning Shipton, Bonington subsequently offered an interesting insight into his love of mountains: “The mountaineer wants to see what lies behind a mountain range, look down from a pass and go on to the next horizon. The attraction of climbing the peaks is not of such great importance.

The mountaineer is more interested in the mountain range as a whole.”

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erably lower than Everest but still an equally powerful mountain to the eye. that it seems to be a pillar holding up the firmament. The picture shows the east face and behind the peak is the huge Patagonian icefield. The Frenchman Lionel Terray, who carried out the difficult first ascent in 1952, wrote: “In the French mountain massifs I have never seen a peak that is so elegant, majestically beautiful and with an equally incomparable position.” For a trekker just seeing the splendour is enough.

> The experience at the Perito Moreno Glacier is sensational because you can stand in dense vegetation with trees and bushes and see close by an iceberg calving, making you think of Antarctica.

The average height of this ice wall is 74 metres. Perito Moreno is one of three Patagonian glaciers that is still growing bigger.

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The peak is so steep and freestanding

TH E ROCK IES

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An old gold digger returning from the wilderness was asked what he had to show for all the lost years and replied spiritedly: “I have seen the Rockies.” The story is told by James Thorington, an American who had also fallen in love with Canada’s wilderness. He was one of the pioneers in the early twentieth century. Thorington wrote classic books about his experiences, of which The Glittering Mountains of Canada is the best known and named after the first travellers’ tales of all the rock crystals they had seen. Today we think first of the mountain range’s enormous wilderness and expanse, and the wonderful combination of huge forests, turquoise blue lakes, rushing torrents and steep mountains. Perhaps also a thought may be spared for the gold diggers and the fur traders associated with the Rockies, the trappers who lived the free wilderness life, with a romantic love of nature.

The Rocky Mountains are the long and unusually wide mountain range in western North America, 4,800 kilometres long with many connected mountain systems, from the northern part of British Columbia to New Mexico in the south. The Canadian section in Alberta and British Columbia comprises the national parks of Jasper, Banff and Yoho, making it a worthy representative of the range’s fantastic landscape. The highest peaks are between 3,000 and 4,000 metres, not especially high in global terms but the topography has a character of its own. In many places the mountains are separated by broad and

fairly flat-bottomed valleys. The dense coniferous forest acts like the scale line on a map and provides a reference for the mountains’ height. The carpet of trees points towards the mountains, almost accentuating how high they are. Many of them are very rocky in the upper sections but not always pointed even so. Many look like elongated steep fortresses.

The name Rocky Mountains is really apt; in the eighteenth century a French explorer coined the name Shining Mountains but that did not last long.

In the cliffs layers of sedimentary rock occur, chiefly limestone and shale. The layers often make the precipices look striped. The Rockies began to fold about 80 million years ago. The continental plate in this part of the world brought with it landmasses from the west and pressed them down under Canada’s primary rock at a flat angle, which explains the great breadth of the range. A 6,000-metre-long plateau was formed and weathered over millions of years to produce the present formations.

In the early twentieth century the Austrian Conrad Kain featured prominently in the Canadian mountains, he was admired for his many first ascents in the Rockies. In particular his aesthetic approach to the landscape is thought-provoking.

For Kain mountains were always beautiful, sporting challenges always somewhat subsidiary and it was sufficient just to be close to the peaks; he liked alternating between action and contemplation.

If you want to get close to nature in the Rockies you need to shoulder a backpack and go off on a tour. We have left the ski resort of Sunshine Village in Canada’s Banff National Park and are approaching Howard Douglas Lake.

The rules require you to have a permit to walk in “the back country”. Campsites with poles are recommended, as you have to hoist your provisions up the poles so that the grizzly bears cannot reach them. The landscape is a real wilderness, not just in appearance but also because there is a lot of game.

Grizzlies, pumas, black bears, wapiti and mountain goats live in these districts.

It is October and fresh snow has powdered the ground.

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crown of the Yoho National Park and reflects Mount Cathedral, 3,180 metres. combines with the steep precipices to form an archetype of the Rockies. The landscape looks like a picture postcard and in this area there is a tourist station by the lake and a road leading to it. The landscape around Lake O’Hara attracts a lot of tourists and the park managers have therefore regulated the number of visitors allowed to come to the area.

> Mount Assiniboine, 3,618 metres, is often called the Rocky Mountains’ Matterhorn. The peak is the seventhhighest in the whole range and lies far from the roads. Although the area is a haunt of grizzly bears, many trekkers are attracted to the vicinity of the mountain.

The peak was climbed for the first time in 1901. Mount Assiniboine is called after the Assiniboine (nakhoda) people.

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The sombre coniferous forest carpet

TH E AFRICAN R I FT VALLEY

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The movement of the tectonic plates in Africa along a long depression from Ethiopia in the north, south through Kenya, Tanzania and Malawi is slowly tearing the great continent apart. The rock in the Earth’s crust is thinning. A depression has been formed, of the type called a rift valley. This drama has been going on for over 20 million years and no human being is likely to experience the end in perhaps ten million years’ time, when two new continents will have been created, but today we can see symptoms of the revolutionary process. Many high mountains have been created in the rift valley through volcanic activity and deposits. Kilimanjaro, Mount Kenya and Ruwenzori, plus a number of lesser-known mountains, are all offspring of Africa’s ongoing split. The first named have small glaciers on top, the continent’s only icefield.

The missionary Johannes Rebmann was the first European to get close to Kilimanjaro. On 10 November 1848 he stood at the foot: “My guide called the white which I saw merely ‘baridi,’ cold; it was perfectly clear to me, however, that it could be nothing else but snow.” The establishment in Europe did not believe him but were spurred on to investigate the matter and the age of discovery in East Africa began in earnest. In 1889 when Tanzania (then called Tanganyika) was a German colony, Kilimanjaro was climbed for the first time and of course there was snow up there, right below the equator.

The roof of Africa, the world’s highest volcano

outside South America, has been a dormant dragon for a long time. A few hot gas springs indicate some volcanic activity. The last eruption occurred 150,000 years ago and nothing suggests any imminent activity. Trying to climb Kili, as it is known, has become a popular challenge. The peak is one of the “seven summits”, the highest peaks on the respective continents. Since the air pressure is always low at these heights there is a considerable risk of suffering from altitude sickness. About 40 per cent of all those who attempt to reach the top fail. Where the name Kilimanjaro comes from is disputed.

Africa’s second-highest mountain, Mount Kenya, has given its name to the nation surrounding it; it has a volcanic origin but is definitely extinct, the sides have weathered away and only the lava plug is left. A missionary was the first person to see this mountain too. In 1849 Johann Krapf wrote: “It appeared to me a gigantic wall, on whose summit I observed two immense towers, or horns as you may call them.” Mount Kenya is an unusually majestic mountain. No other sharp and icebound peak in the world stands so isolated. It is tempting to walk round it, which is a popular trek. To reach the highest point, Batian, one of the “towers”, open climbing is required and the same applies to the second, Nelion, but the third-highest peak, Lenana, is rounded and involves a simple trek.

Seen from the Amboseli National Park in Kenya, Kilimanjaro seems to hover like an airship in the sky. The flat terrain with acacia trees and bush savanna emphasises the mighty stature of the mountain.

Kilimanjaro is in Tanzania and its height has been established as 5,888 metres.

As a landmark the volcano stands in sovereign solitude. On clear days it can be seen from viewpoints 300 kilometres away. The top crater is 2.5 kilometres in diameter. The first attempt to climb Kilimanjaro was made in 1861. After a further seven attempts in 28 years, geologist Hans Meyer, mountain guide Ludwig Purtscheller and the local porter Y. K. Lauwo succeeded in becoming the pioneers to reach the highest point, now called Uhuru, “the freedom peak”.

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< During this two-hour-long exposure

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the stars drew streaks of light over Kilimanjaro owing to the rotation of streaks are almost vertical when the camera is facing east. The picture was taken during a trek along the Machame route across the Shire Plateau, which is a collapsed crater. From here you can see the west side of Kibo, the central, highest and most recently active crater on Kilimanjaro.

> Nelion, 5,188 metres, forms a steep cone on Mount Kenya, which is the hard plug in a collapsed volcano. The Lewis Glacier and all the other nine small icefields on the massif are currently melting and may disappear within 30 years. The first ascent of Nelion was carried out in 1899 by the large-scale expedition led by H. J. Mackinder.

Together with the mountain guides C. Ollier and J. Brocherel he managed to climb both Nelion and the ten-metrehigher peak Batian.

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the Earth. This close to the equator the

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Two million lesser flamingos have

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gathered in Lake Bogoria, which is in Kenya. On the other side of the lake forms the edge of the African Rift Valley. Around the lake there are about 80 hot springs and also Africa’s biggest concentration of geysers. The average depth of Lake Bogoria is only about ten metres and it has no outlet. The water is alkaline with an extremely high pH value, its salt content is twice as high as in the oceans. The incidence of cyanobacteria (blue-green algae) is enormous and that attracts the flamingos.

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you can see the escarpment which

WILDE RNESS

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Of course there are heavenly places hidden among the world’s mountains but the story of paradise has its origin in the Garden of Eden mentioned in the Bible. And that is scarcely alpine territory. The dream of Shangri-La, based on old Tibetan legends of an iso­lated and everlasting land of happiness in sheltered valleys, Shambhala, where people could live to be extremely old, comes closer. In the British novel of 1933, Lost Horizon, this myth was given a modern rendering and the term Shangri-La spread across the world.

However, the term I most associate with mountain landscapes is “wilderness”, areas with a natural landscape. Large areas of the world’s mountain ranges are still untouched and original, but now they have been called into question. Critics say that there are no longer any untouched areas, that mankind has affected all the natural world on our planet. And that is true. Cultivated fields, built-up industrial centres, infrastructure and cultural landscapes cover enormous areas and our emissions of airborne pollution have reached all the corners of the Earth. But in spite of that there are still large areas that remain in their natural state, not just in the most inaccessible mountain ranges but also in parts of Africa, the interior of Asia, Siberia, northern North America, central South America, the heart of Australia, the whole of Antarctica and so on. Global inventories show that almost half of the Earth’s land area is physically unaffected

by human activity. These remaining wilderness areas have no roads, cultivated fields, mines, clear-felled land, built-up areas or similar incursions. Few people live there.

How do you define a wilderness? From a global perspective the vegetation should be intact, the roadless area should be at least 10,000 square kilometres and the population density not more than five people per square kilometre. A strict definition that excludes most of the untouched countryside left in Europe, where the areas are too small. For example, in Sweden there are seven protected, uninhabited and roadless areas of fells that are over 1,000 square kilometres but only two of them, Sarek-Mavas and Kebnekaise-Sjaunja, meet the criteria in a global comparison and they are the only ones within the boundaries of the EU. But the term wilderness is not just about measurable geography and ecology. Most people have an emotional understanding of what it means: wilder­ ness is what we feel to be a wilderness, arousing moods that are widely depicted in art. The impressions it makes are not dependent just on scientific facts. The nature of wilderness varies the world over, different landscapes offer different experiences. On inaccessible mountain peaks the mood is different from that in the depths of extensive ancient woodlands. I love the definition that was incorporated in the American Wilderness Act of 1964. The first

Road R 344 crosses the moors below Maumturk Mountains in Connemara, Ireland. These mountainous tracts have been inhabited for thousands of years and the road can therefore be seen as a natural element in the landscape. It is quite a different matter if we now build new roads in uninhabited wildernesses, the consequence would be a murderous encroachment on untouched nature.

Experience has shown that the character of the wilderness disappears across much wider areas than the immediate surroundings of the road. A road creates the conditions for exploiting natural resources and building settlements. Often that is the first step in a gradual process that breaks up the landscape and limits the living space for game and plant life.

Of course the opportunity for people to experience genuine wilderness is also destroyed.

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Around Carrara in Italy marble has been quarried since Roman times. Marble occurs in the chalk-rich Apuan mountains been used in many famous buildings and statues. The benefit of quarrying is obvious but this marble quarry, Colonatta, also illustrates man’s great capacity to remodel nature. The 900-metre-high peak is in the process of being blown up, changing the appearance of the landscape. People have become a geological force that can alter the surface of the Earth.

tourists, but philosophical ideas of man’s relationship with nature also had a bearing. A view of life called transcendentalism emerged at the beginning of the nineteenth century, influenced by Hindu legends. Its advocates thought that untouched nature was of central importance to man’s maturity and religiosity. The movement’s most eminent figures, writers Ralph W. Emerson and Henry D. Thoreau, wrote renowned books about nature worship. Both men paved the way for John Muir, who became the first pioneer in the world with a vision combining different aspects of wilderness: aesthetic, romantic, ethical, adventurous, biological, geological, scientific.

At the end of the nineteenth century Muir published many popular texts about his experiences in the Sierra Nevada in California. He contributed much to the passion for the wilderness that is still part of the American self-image. Muir’s pen could be cutting: “Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, overcivilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity …”

In the twentieth century wilderness was at the centre of American social debate. National parks were set up, conflicts arose with exploitative interests. In 1921 a respected visionary like Aldo Leopold suggested that a wilderness worthy of the name must be a continuous area that took at least two weeks to cross on foot. In 1930 another prophet, Robert Marshall,

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that are part of the Apennines and has

paragraph has an interpretation that is as much poetic as factually precise: “A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his own works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.”

During the development of civilisation up to industrialisation the wilderness was what lay beyond villages and cultivated fields. The world’s peoples had a relationship with the wilderness chiefly through religion. In the east the attitude was often humble, in the west for a long time it was coupled with fear.

In the eighteenth century the European view was affected by scientific advances. Increasingly high standards of living and trends in art and literature caused growing numbers of people to be inspired by dramatic and untouched nature, and in nineteenth­ century USA bold ideas emerged that in the long term changed the meaning of wilderness for people and societies the world over. America, with its Wild West, had become fertile soil for innovative ideas on nature conservation. The Yosemite Valley was inaugurated as the world’s first modern nature reserve in 1864 and just ten years later the first national park, Yellowstone, was born.

Behind these American decisions lay economic interests in the budding tourist industry. People wanted to preserve sights worth seeing to attract

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emphasised that everyone who stayed in the wilderness must be self-reliant and that roads, motorised transport and settlements should be banned. Later attitudes were refined by writers like Edward Abbey, Gary Snyder and others. Feeling and respect for nature were fundamental to their approach to wilderness.

Why it was the USA and not Europe that thought more deeply about the role of wilderness in an increasingly technological society has a natural explanation: European immigrants saw North America as an endless wilderness when they arrived, but for several centuries the wilderness shrank, buffalo were exterminated and native inhabitants were relentlessly driven out. Only when the original landscape began to be visibly destroyed did visionary ideas emerge among far-sighted people. Development had been rapid, even in the mighty wilderness of the west. Natural monuments were to the newly awakened nation of the USA what cultural monuments were to the old countries of Europe. The national park was an American innovation copied by the rest of the world.

Today most wildernesses are seen as havens for flora and fauna and playgrounds for people, with large areas preserved as national parks, but most of the Earth’s wildernesses remain unprotected. Two significant global trends are running in parallel: rural areas are becoming depopulated and will perhaps return in the long term to a natural wilderness

state, while companies and national powers are increasingly exploiting all the natural resources.

Economic interests destroy untouched areas: roads are built, new communities arise, forests are cut down, mines are dug, oil and gas are pumped out of the ground, watercourses are controlled, power lines and wind farms line the horizon. Intervention in nature has grown enormously in recent decades, affecting the climate, the air, watercourses, flora and fauna and landscapes; the wilderness area is shrinking, erosion damage is occurring, all to an extent that may never have happened before. That is why many experts are calling the age we are now living in Anthropocene – the era of humankind.

But there is still real wilderness left. The glass is half empty or half full, we can choose how we see it. In the light of what is happening, barren and infertile environments that do not provide useful things like food, raw materials and energy can take on a new practical, emotional and philosophical role.

Where do we find them if not in the mountains? I believe wilderness has the best chance of survival in inaccessible mountain massifs with no economically valuable natural resources. But a lot more is needed to preserve the Earth’s biodiversity. Huge areas of forest and fertile ecosystems must also be preserved in their original state. All of this is a great challenge for humanity.

The highest peak in Papua New Guinea is called Mount Wilhelm, 4,509 metres.

The name was established in the German colonial era at the end of the nineteenth century. The massif comprises a high-altitude wilderness that has not been of any great value to the people who have lived in the vicinity.

For at least 60,000 years New Guinea has been an inhabited island but up on these barren peaks in the mountainous interior Stone Age people found nothing worth taking. It is the same with most of the high mountains around the world.

They are inaccessible and for the greater part of history have remained untouched by human activity. However, our age’s need for natural resources has changed the situation. There are minerals, ore, water power and other useful natural resources. Tourism and its infrastructure is spreading. Yet it is not improbable that huge areas in remote mountain tracts will remain economically worthless. Perhaps it is there that the last wildernesses will remain…

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EPI LOG UE

From the Kuari Pass you can see Nanda Devi, 7,816 metres, the second-highest mountain in India. This is one of the peaks and it stands by itself in an extremely inaccessible and uninhabited “courtyard”, encircled by high mountain ridges. To reach this exquisitely beautiful peak on foot you have to push up a deep and narrow ravine, something that Bill Tillman and Eric Shipton, together with three Sherpas, managed in 1934, probably the first people in history to do so. Today Nanda Devi and its “court­ yard” are a World Heritage site that nobody is allowed to visit.

Since then my love of mountains has been an important guiding star in my life, in my leisure and at work, as a traveller and a nature-lover.

The places and thoughts I present here are far from new – there is plenty of literature about the world’s mountains, spanning a considerable time.

The mountains have their own canon. I have made selected views based on my own experience as a trekker, climber and photographer. But one thing is changing all the time: the world is shrinking, not literally but mentally. The Earth’s topography will soon have been charted down to the last crevice, there will be no unclimbed peaks left and most philosophical ideas about humanity’s relationship to mountains and wilderness have been turned upside down so many times that there is nothing new and revolutionary left to be said. I cannot believe it but new methods for travelling in the mountains are still being invented. However, those of us who follow the stream of information about the world’s mountains know that it is the same driving forces, historical events, themes and motifs that recur, even in this book, but the last word about the mystery of the mountains will however never be said, the last picture of these magnificent landscapes will never be taken. Even in the future we shall be able to encounter the peaks and valleys through new people’s eyes and voices.

Claes Grundsten

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steepest of the really high Himalayan

“The mountains are where you go to have a dream.”

That old saying from New Guinea makes me think.

The phrase sounds wholesome; it suggests respect for nature. We who enjoy modern welfare often do the opposite, head for the mountains because we already have a dream. We fantasise about beautiful mountains and tempting trails, about freedom and adventure. In trekking and climbing we can fulfil our dream and thus ourselves. I know no other landscape that offers me the same possibilities. In hilly landscapes I feel a strong sense of solidarity with nature. The mountains also unlock our character, revealing many sides: adventurous, spiritual, rational, emotional, aesthetic, ethical, elitist, hedonistic, salubrious, temperamental and perhaps even more – our real self. Mountains have also become the prime symbol for mankind’s striving for perfection. A peak is the most-well-tried metaphor for something big, important or perfect in the world.

“If the mountain cannot come to you, you must come to the mountain”, an old Turkish saying, whose origin is obscure, describes my own development.

I grew up in an undramatic landscape in middle Sweden. There were no high peaks within sight, no snowy mountains to fix my gaze on. Yet early on I felt a strong yearning for steep mountains and vast wildernesses. It was pictures and stories in books that aroused my enthusiasm. In my teenage years the dream became reality with several trips to Lapland.

CLAES GRUNDSTEN Claes Grundsten (born in 1949) has trekked, climbed and photographed mountains ever since he was a teenager.

He is one of the foremost authorities on Lapland’s fells and over the years he has hiked in many mountain tracts around the world. For many years he worked as a nature conservation officer until in 1993 he became a photographer full time.

He has published just over 30 books and has an honorary PhD from Stockholm University.

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The mountains stir our imagination, the world’s high places call to us and challenge us to adventures. We want to get to know the terrain with all our senses: explore, trek, conquer peaks, climb precipices, get under the skin of the landscape and find peace. The photographer Claes Grundsten takes us with him to six continents and around 40 of the world’s most spectacular and beautiful landscapes. We encounter the breathtaking variation of mountains, whether highest or lowest, snow-laden or desert-like peaks, from the South and North Islands of New Zealand to the Lapland fells. Grundsten tells us about the geology of mountains, about climbing, the diversity of mountain cultures and the aesthetics of mountain photography. With its magnificent scenery, this book is an inspiration for all who yearn to experience the most remarkable mountain landscapes on our planet.

BERGTAGEN TR EK K I NG I N S PI RAT IO N

C LA E S

G R U N D STE N

ISBN 978-91-7126-429-9

MAX STRÖM

9

789171 264299

MAX STRÖM

C LA E S G R U N DST E N