Mountaineering in the Southern Alps of Aotearoa New Zealand
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“It’s Beyond You, But You’re A Part of It”: Mountaineering in the Southern Alps of Aotearoa New Zealand By Morgan Scully A thesis submitted to the Victoria University of Wellington in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Cultural Anthropology Victoria University of Wellington 2020 Abstract This thesis provides a phenomenological exploration of the lived experience of mountaineering in New Zealand. Based on fieldwork completed in the Southern Alps and Mount Ruapehu, it offers an analysis into how mountaineers construct the mountain environment through their climBing, while also Being shaped in turn By the vital mountain. At the heart of this thesis is the movement of mountaineering. I argue that the experience of mountaineering cannot Be divorced from our embodied sensory perception. Through climbing, mountaineers Build a depth of emBodied, living knowledge, making sense of technical information and strengthening their judgement to help them climB and manage the risks. That knowledge transforms the mountains for experienced mountaineers. Furthermore, I argue that the viBrant and potentially deadly fluxes of the mountains form their agency and thus the vitality that my participants sense. To climB in the mountains is therefore to enter into a reciprocal relationship with the vital mountain environment. The mountaineers ultimately Become a reflection of the mountains in which they climB. This thesis comprises a written thesis and immersive podcast recording. The episode can Be found in the link Below. https://drive.google.com/file/d/12m9TD6xTSWoDu6OCdj0LwnwMyQfpu2MH/view All work included in this thesis is my own, except where otherwise stated. ii Acknowledgements There are many acknowledgements to Be given for making my thesis possiBle. I am indeBted to my supervisors, Caroline Bennett and Eli Elinoff for guiding my journey and helping develop and expand my thoughts, my writing and my podcast. My thesis involved various challenges, such as the complexity of completing mountaineering fieldwork, the creative project of a podcast episode and the upheavals and challenges of Covid-19. I thank them for their commitment to this thesis, their Banter and constructive discussions. I also appreciated Being able to discuss my thesis with Eli, then get into the esoteric specifics of Boulders I was currently projecting. My participants were all very generous with their time and showed a genuine interest in my research. I thank them for waiting up for my tired legs at times or for stopping to save and record yet another soundscape. I met many amazing people over the course of my research, and I feel lucky to have done so. To my wife Coraline, I cannot thank you enough for your support in a myriad of ways. EmBarking on this thesis required sacrifices from the both of us and it meant that you had to spend all of your time in the city, while I wrote about the mountains. Without your encouragement, reading, reality-checks and all-around support I would not have completed this thesis. You are and will always Be a continuous inspiration. I want to thank my mother, RoByn for her proof reading and the interest she took in my writing, as well as the support from my father, Jim and sister, India. I would also like to thank Willow Milligan, for our discussions at Raglan Roast on sensory ethnography and the works of Steven Feld during undergrad, that helped to inspire the podcast component of this thesis. To the mountains I owe the impetus for this thesis. Through my time spent in their forests and on their fractured glaciers I have Been shaped into the person I am today, learning not only to climB and endure, But also to Be still and open myself to a world full of Beautiful possiBilities. iii Table of Contents Abstract ………………………………………………………………………………………….…………………….…………….ii Acknowledgements ….…………………………………………………………....…………………….……………………iii Table of Contents……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..…iv Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………1 Background ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..……2 Methods and Methodology………………..………………………………………..…….…………………………2 Participants……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………5 Fieldwork………………………………………………………………………………………………….……..……….…..8 Situating the Research ………………………………………………………………………………………………..14 Podcast ……………………………………………………………………………………………….………………………17 Chapter Outlines …………………………………………………………………………………………………………21 Chapter One: Climbing in the Shining Snows: The History and Developments of Aotearoa New Zealand Mountaineering…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………23 Early Mountaineering in Europe: Science and Masculinity………………………………………………24 To the Shores of Aotearoa New Zealand: Early Mountaineering in the Southern Alps ……..………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….……30 Modern Mountaineering in the Southern Alps ………………………………………………………………34 Conclusion ……………………………………………………..………………………………………………..……………37 iv Chapter Two: Climbing in the Mountains: Practical Mastery through Embodied Knowledge ………………….39 Phenomenology in the Mountains……………………………………………………………………………….…41 The EmBodied Knowledge of Mountaineering: Kinesthetic Intelligence in Ice ClimBing …43 Forming a Practical Mastery of Mountaineering: Risk and Judgement …….…….……...…….…47 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..………52 Chapter 3: The Vital Agency of the Mountains ……………………………………………………………………………………53 The Concept of Agency in Anthropology: Human, Nonhuman, Beyond-the-Human ……….55 The Vital Force of the Mountains: Weather and Geology …..………………………………………….58 A Relationship of Mutual Inscription: The Mountain and the Mountaineer ……………………64 Conclusion ………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…………67 Conclusion …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………68 Reference List ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..….73 List of figures Figure 1 – Picture taken during the ice and mixed festival in Queenstown………….Cover page Figure 2 - Map situating fieldwork trips from figure 3 and 5…………………………………………….8 Figure 3 – Map of ski touring and ice climBing at Wye Creek during fieldwork 1………………8 Figure 4 – Map of the climB of Mount Armstrong with Sam during fieldwork 1………………..10 Figure 5 – Map of climbing on the Remarkables during fieldwork 2………………………….……..11 Figure 6 - Map of ski touring on Mount Ruapehu……………………………………………………………13 v Introduction In this thesis I consider how the mountaineers construct the mountain environment as they climB, while also, in turn, Being acted upon By the mountain. I focus on mountaineering, mainly in the Southern Alps of Aotearoa New Zealand with a group of Pākehā mountaineers1. As all of my participants, myself included, are Pākehā, my thesis explores mountaineering in Aotearoa New Zealand through a distinctly Pākehā genealogy. I therefore do not enter into discussions of the naming of mountains, the tapu or sacred nature of some summits as it is not something that arose from my research with my Pākehā participants or with the wider and largely Pākehā mountaineering community. A thesis that engaged with Māori mountaineers would likely yield a very different set of conclusions and provide a host of important insights. While all of my participants have climBed internationally, the Southern Alps are their ‘home ground’ and have Both literally and figuratively defined them as mountaineers. My research places the lived and sensorially emBodied experience of mountaineering at the center. Mountaineering is an intensely emBodied experience. When my participants climB, they Bring with them a mountain epistemology shaped By the developments of mountaineering style, ethics and technology. Through their countless hours of climBing in the mountains, their epistemology is reworked as they form a relationship with the mountains’ vitality that is otherwise negated By the very structures of the enlightenment- influenced English language (Cruikshank 2010). My participants emBody and internalize a wide degree of experiences and skills through climBing that transform the mountain environment and their potential to interact with it. As I argue in this thesis, to climB in the 1 As I detail in my fieldwork section, I conducted a two-day trip to Mt Ruapehu in addition to the fieldwork I completed in the Southern Alps. The mountaineering I am focusing on is therefore not high-altitude mountaineering, as Aotearoa New Zealand’s highest mountain, Aoraki/Mt Cook is only 3724 metres high. What it does entail though is a variety of disciplines. All of my participants practice multiple disciplines both for training and enjoyment, such as rock climbing, climbing mixed ice and rock routes in winter, tramping, long distance mountain running, ice climbing, ski touring and mountaineering. For example, climbing ice can be seen as training for encountering ice on a technical mountaineering route, or it can be the goal itself. 1 mountains is to enter into a reciprocal relationship with a vital environment. In an attempt to Bring my analysis closer to the relationships my participants have with the Southern Alps, I have also created a podcast episode as part of my output. This utilizes the specific sounds of mountaineering to offer an immersive and sensorial mode of analysis.2 As anthropologist Sarah Pink writes, “sound is inevitable in ethnography and even silences are laden with meanings” (Pink 2009, 13). Background Sitting around a small table on the Banks of the Yangtze river, in Sichuan, China, I was first introduced to anthropology By one of the Americans I was sharing a BarBeque with. He was an anthropologist from