Imperial Ascent : Mountaineering, Masculinity, and Empire / Peter L

IMPERIAL Mountaineering, Masculinity, and Empire ASCENT PETER L. BAYERS Imperial Ascent Imperial Ascent MOUNTAINEERING, MASCULINITY, AND EMPIRE Peter L. Bayers UNIVERSITY PRESS OF COLORADO © 2003 by the University Press of Colorado Published by the University Press of Colorado 5589 Arapahoe Avenue, Suite 206C Boulder, Colorado 80303 All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America The University Press of Colorado is a proud member of the Association of American University Presses. The University Press of Colorado is a cooperative publishing enterprise supported, in part, by Adams State College, Colorado State University, Fort Lewis College, Mesa State College, Metropolitan State College of Denver, University of Colorado, University of Northern Colorado, and Western State College of Colorado. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials. ANSI Z39.48-1992 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bayers, Peter L., 1966– Imperial ascent : mountaineering, masculinity, and empire / Peter L. Bayers. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-87081-716-7 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Mountaineering—Psychological aspects. 2. Masculinity. 3. Men—Identity. I. Title. GV200.19.P78 B39 2003 796.52'2'019—dc21 2003000591 Design by Daniel Pratt 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 For Tracy Contents List of Illustrations / ix Acknowledgments / xi Introduction: Mountaineering and the Imagining of Imperial Masculinity / 1 1: Frederick Cook, To the Top of the Continent (1908), the Alaskan “Wilderness,” and the Regeneration of Progressive-Era Masculinity / 17 2: Belmore Browne’s The Conquest of Mount McKinley (1913), Alaska Natives, and White Masculine Anxieties on the Alaskan Frontier / 39 3: Save Whom From Destruction? Alaska Natives, Frontier Mythology, and the Regeneration of the White Conscience in Hudson Stuck’s The Ascent of Denali (1914) / 59 4: Resurrecting Heroes: Sir Francis Younghusband’s The Epic of Mount Everest (1926) and Post–Great War Britain / 75 5: Sir John Hunt’s The Ascent of Everest (1953) and Nostalgia for the British Empire / 99 6: No Longer Sahibs: Tenzing Norgay and the 1953 British Expedition to Mount Everest / 115 7: Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air (1997), Postmodern Adventurous Masculinity, and Imperialism / 127 Notes / 143 Works Cited / 157 Index / 167 vii Illustrations 1.1 Frederick Cook / 20 2.1 Belmore Browne (1912) / 41 2.2 Frederick Cook’s “fake peak” / 42 2.3 Belmore Browne’s “fake peak” / 43 3.1 Hudson Stuck / 61 4.1 Sir Francis Younghusband / 78 4.2 George Mallory and Andrew Irvine / 96 5.1 John Hunt / 102 5.2 The South Col, Everest in background / 105 6.1 Tenzing Norgay / 117 ix Acknowledgments N MARCH 1999 I WAS LYING ON MY COUCH two weeks after shattering a leg and breaking an arm while ice climbing. Completely miserable and full of self-pity, I pulled my copy of Frederick Cook’s To the Top of the Continent off the shelf and began to read. Because of painkillers, the Iwords were occasionally blurry, but out of this blur a long-overdue project slowly came into focus, the end result of which is this book. Now that the project is finally completed, however, it is time to feed the rat—the mountains are calling. Steve, George, Erik, Bob, Jim, Heather: saddle up. Many people helped shape this book, beginning with John Leo at the University of Rhode Island, whose initial guidance was invaluable in helping to lay the groundwork of a dissertation that finally morphed into this book. The University of Rhode Island’s Maury Klein was always hovering in my mind as I wrote, encouraging me to write clear, accessible prose. I hope my prose reflects this clarity. Thank you also to the University of Rhode Island’s Josie Campbell, who taught me how to think and always believed in me. I would like to thank others who read all or portions of the manuscript, in- cluding Phil Auger, Craig Kleinman, Mike White, Bob Epstein, Leslie Bayers, and Elizabeth Petrino. Mike’s prodding reminded me to “get the book published,” and Bob encouraged me to write with confidence. My wife, Tracy, xi xii Acknowledgments deserves considerable thanks for taking on the unenviable task of checking the accuracy of the book’s sources. Thanks to Jim Mullan for helping me gain full-time employment at Fairfield University, and thanks also to the English Department and the university for continued support these past several years, without which I would have been too busy trying to make a meager living as an adjunct to have any time to think, let alone write. To my students—you energize and inspire me and are very much a part of this book. To my editor, Kerry Callahan, thank you for your insights and encour- agement. I’m sorry we didn’t get to see the book through to its completion together. Good luck. Thanks to Darrin Pratt for his suggestion that I write a chapter on Krakauer’s Into Thin Air. Thanks also to Darrin and the editorial and production staff at the University Press of Colorado—especially Laura Furney and Dan Pratt—for their patience and guidance while seeing this book through to a timely completion. I’d like to thank the archivists—Laura J. Kissel at Ohio State University’s Byrd Polar Research Center Archival Program, Justin Hobson at the Royal Geographical Society, and Sarah Hartwell at the Rauner Special Collections Library at Dartmouth College—for track- ing down and helping to secure permission to reprint photographs from their library collections. Thanks also to the University of Nebraska Press for giving permission to reprint the photo of Hudson Stuck from 10,000 Miles With a Dog Sled. Thanks also to Audrey Salkeld for her generosity in sending me a copy of the classic photo of Mallory and Irvine aboard the RMS Califor- nia. Thank you also to Hodder & Stoughton and The Mountaineers for permission to reprint material from John Hunt’s The Ascent of Everest. A version of Chapter 1 was published in Western American Literature, a version of Chapter 3 in ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environ- ment, and a version of Chapter 6 in Aethlon: The Journal of Sport Literature. The readers for these journals were tremendously insightful and helpful, which improved these chapters as articles and, ultimately, the book itself. Jim Carmellini, thanks for the fishing expeditions to help clear the mind. Steve Toman, Heather Smith, John Tower, Ann Hartman—thank you for your support and interest in the project. To my parents, Loretta and Al, my in-laws, Dick and Pat—no son or son-in-law could have more love and support. To my beautiful children, Benjamin, Helen, and Samuel, Daddy’s sorry that even when he was home his mind was often elsewhere. I’m back. Most of all, I would like to thank my wife, Tracy, for her endless patience, support, and love. Acknowledgments xiii Imperial Ascent Introduction: Mountaineering and the Imagining of Imperial Masculinity N THE SPRING 1994 ISSUE of the mountaineering and adventure maga- zine Summit, an article by Richard Bangs salutes the first man to stand on the summit of Mount Everest, Sir Edmund Hillary. Lamenting what he sees as the end of an era, Bangs explains, “Hillary was . part of a Ihistorical narrative that is essentially over. He was a figure in that great story of heroic adventure that includes Marco Polo, Columbus, Lewis and Clark, Stanley and Livingstone, Peary and Scott, Amundsen, Lindbergh—all those manly men with knives in their teeth and icicles in their beards and whatnot” (49). Com- paring Hillary’s achievement to contemporary mountaineering, Bangs complains, “When Ed climbed . he belonged to a time when ‘because it is there’ was good enough reason to climb a mountain. But this was 1993. Man-against-nature has taken on a new meaning, I told myself ” (49). Bangs’s sentiment alludes to the antiseptic version of contemporary mountaineering. Climbing routes up major peaks such as Mount Everest and Denali (Mount McKinley) are so well estab- lished that the mystery of the unknown and thus the “manly” prowess formerly necessary to confront the unknown have been lost. Moreover, with enough money and time, virtually any fit person can pay a guiding service to be led up the mountain, even if—as was illustrated on Mount Everest two years after Bangs’s article appeared—clients and guides might occasionally perish.1 1 2 Introduction Bangs may be correct in his assessment of contemporary mountaineering. But his albeit humorous romanticization of adventurous masculinity and the seemingly innocuous nature of mountain climbing—that to climb mountains was to climb them “because they’re there”—obscure the ideologi- cal context of heroic masculinity and mountaineering adventure. It has, after all, become commonplace in literary, historical, and cultural criticism to regard Columbus, Lewis and Clark, Stanley and Livingstone, Peary and Scott as “manly” icons of imperial or national identity or both. As a member of this famous group of male explorers in the “great story of heroic adventure,” Hillary is no exception, and the same can be said for many other heroic mountaineers. Although these mountaineers were shaped by a variety of cultural media, this book focuses primarily on how classic mountaineering adventure narratives helped to create these heroic masculine figures. At the same time, I argue that other mountaineering narratives contest received norms of heroic masculinity and its imperial and nationalist underpinnings.2 The first three chapters of this book concentrate on American narratives that recount expeditions to Alaska’s Denali (Mount McKinley)— Frederick Cook’s To the Top of the Continent (1908), Belmore Browne’s The Conquest of Mount McKinley (1913), and Hudson Stuck’s The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) (1914).

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