Banff Mountain Book Festival 2006
Book Excerpt
Strange and Dangerous Dreams: the fine line between adventure and madness
by Geoff Powter (Mountaineers Books, August 2006)
Special Jury Mention
at the 2006 Banff Mountain Book Competition
Every culture, in every era, has its adventure myths: the golden hero willing to walk through fire elevates us all beyond our fears and limits. But more often than commonly recognized, there are darker reasons for dangerous pursuits. Where does the line fall between adventure and madness? In Strange and Dangerous Dreams, Geoff Powter, a psychologist and climber, examines the lives of 11 adventurers who straddled, and sometimes crossed, that line.
The book’s final chapter recounts the story of conservationist Guy Waterman and his climber/explorer sons Bill and Johnny — each of whom succumbed to his own wilderness demons. This excerpt recreates Johnny’s epic 1978 solo expedition to Mount Hunter.
Thursday June 15, 1978, the southeast spur, Mount Hunter, Alaska, Day 83. It was personal from the beginning. He called the climb a ‘vendetta’, but he approached the battle with a samurai’s rules of honor: fight with everything you have, but fight virtuously.
That was how he had been taught to climb: to meet a mountain on its own terms, rather than subjugating it with force. He was filled with respect and awe for his opponent. He was terrified, but committed to stay through the fight; and he understood that the storms and the frostbite, and falls and misery, were just part of the rules of engagement. Climb the mountain by forging a hard new route. Climb the entire mountain, up one side, down the other, hitting the main and satellite summits on the way. Climb alone.
It was the only way, he believed, to measure himself and to get the true measure of the mountain.
… After a time it was little surprise that he started to anthropomorphize the mountain. It is written into our nature to see faces in clouds and hear voices in the wind, but he saw darker forces in the mists around him. The gargoyles of rock and ice that drifted in and out of view for weeks became his “Judges”. They assessed him, they questioned his right to be there, they threw things at him and judged how he handled the fear.
In time, the storms became the breath of mountain demons that had already taken so many of his friends, they tore at this tent, kept him awake for days, threatened to simply whisk him off the mountain, but he couldn’t just lie down in his tent and wait for them to pass. He had to fight. He’d saddle another load and walk out into the teeth of the gale, shrieking at the top of his lungs: “Take me then!”
He was nearly ninety days into the tortuous odyssey, exhausted, doubting his fate, almost completely out of food, with no sense that he still had another sixty-two days left before he would touch flat ground again. It was enough to break anyone, but it was exactly the test Johnny Waterman has been searching for.
Left: Sage’s Ravine, Connecticut. Guy and Johnny Waterman on Johnny’s first ice climbing trip (photo courtesy Laura Waterman)
Right: Don Black, Johnny Waterman, Dean Rau, and Dave Corman on route to Mount Hunter, 1973 (photo Dean Rau)