Page 45 - 2017 AMA Winter

ART OF FREEDOM – THE LIFE AND CLIMBS OF VOYTEK KURTYKA – BERNADETTE MCDONALD (VERTEBRATE PUBLISHING)
“Voytek Kurtyka is an artist and his art is alpinism’ – Barry Blanchard
Where to start in a book of very significant mountaineering cultural and historical value?
How about at the start in which Bernadette McDonald recounts the efforts of Christian Trommsdorff, mountain guide and Chair of the Piolets d’ Or Awards (essentially the Oscars of the mountaineering world, recognising the boldest and most innovative climbs) writes, repeatedly, to Kurtyka, to invite him to the Awards ceremony. The initial invitation is as a member of the Jury, and latterly, as a recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award. The extracts from the emails that Kurtyka wrote in response to the invitations give a glimpse of the psychology, shyness and character of the man. The finest alpinists in the world are desperate to induct Kurtyka in to the Piolets d’Or Lifetime Achievement Award hall of fame, and he refuses, confused by the attention and objecting to any form of competition or hierarchy in mountaineer- ing.
It would be fair to observe that mountain- eers can be a) idiosyncratic, b) averse to rules, and c) have a penchant for suffering. It would be fair to opine that Polish moun- taineers generally, and Kurtyka in particular, led the mountaineering world in these qualities. From raising the grade of hardest known winter climb by a Polish climber in the Tatras in 1970, aged 23 (from VI to VI+), to climbing The Empire Strikes Back (8a) aged fifty six, Kurtyka did things very much his own way. The hard way. The very hard way. His ‘CV’ includes eleven of the hardest greatest walls in the world, six of them on 8000m peaks. However he didn’t log his climbs, he only logged his bivouacs, seemingly the more unplanned and hideously inhospitable the better.
The book follows the ‘traditional’ route of a biography from childhood, via the ‘first climb’, to the progression through grades in Poland, Europe and the Greater Ranges, and on towards the latter years of Kurtyka’s life. Notice I never used the phrase ‘slowing down’.
Stand out bits of the book for me include: the resourcefulness of Eastern European climbers in the 1970’s, his first winter ascent of Trollveggen (the Troll wall), and, in particular, the ‘night naked’ ascents of Cho Oyu and Shishapangma (“on this second 8,000er they would again climb night naked – one single push with just four chocolate bars, three bottles of liquid, thirty metres of seven-millimetre rope and four pitons. They even left their harnesses behind”). Additionally the chapter on the 1984 ascent of Gasherbrum IV illuminates
why that climb is still often regarded as the stand out ascent of the last century. Fast and light alpinism at the very very edge of the humanly possible.
In the 1970’s and 1980’s Poland produced a significant number of very high calibre mountaineers, particularly in the realms of super fast ascents and winter ascents of the world’s highest mountains. However the line, the style and the ethics remained more important to Kurtyka than the summit. Additionally, the book casts light on a number of occasions when, for whatever reason, Kurtyka returned to base camp to sit out an ascent. This spiritual awareness, intuition and, it could be argued, elitist approach to unique lines on the worlds biggest walls ingratiated him in different ways, then and now, to the mountaineering community. The book goes a long way to situate Kurtyka in the hierarchy of greatest ever alpinists.
The book closes with a success for Christian Trommsdorff in managing to persuade Kurtyka to attend the Piolets d’Or Awards in 2016 and receive the Lifetime Achievement Award. Of course Kurtyka tweaked the cho- reography of the event, and invited
his fellow climbing partners from his major ascents up on to the stage during the ceremony. Still doing things his way.
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