How to Build Snow Walls to Protect Your Basecamp or Alpine Climbing Camp in Winter

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Booo! Another camping video!! Can’t we get back to the things about knots, slings, fall forces, and safety in the vertical world??!!

In 2013, the New Zealand Film Commission released a film called Beyond the Edge, about the first successful summit of Mount Everest as completed by Tenzing Norgay and Sir Edmund Hillary. In that film Sir Hillary’s son, Peter, hypothesizes that part of the reason the two climbers were able to reach the summit is simply because of their ability to - believe it or not - camp. He says, “High altitude climbing is all about being comfortable in uncomfortable places. [My dad] was very good at basic, day-to-day survival, as was Tenzing. I think that’s where they really scored.”

How far can you go in a day? How many miles, how many vertical meters? Once you start taking on big objectives, you are going to be spending multiple days. That means nights spent in camp. And that means camping becomes a supremely important skill. It is, after all, the basis of your recovery, and that recovery (or not) impacts your ability to carry on well (or not) the next day.

Early in my climbing career, I thought of camping simply as a means to an end, a thing I had to do in order to get on with the climbing. To some extent, that is true. But when my mind started to shift towards trying to enjoy camping for what it is, I found that I did it better. And when I camped better, I climbed better. In reality, I can thank my kids for my mental transformation, rather than some spark of self-awareness. My kids loved the outdoors and wanted to spend as much time there as possible even before their little bodies could cover much milage or vertical gain. So, we would go camping, just to camp. That allowed me the time to tweak my camping systems and run the little experiments that tested one change to a gear system or another. I dialed in systems. I dialed in tactics. Everything from where I put my items in the tent to more consequential things like my sleeping bag/mattress/pad setups.

I have a friend who wrote a book about “respecting activities for what they are,” complete with the constraints and our seeking mastery of - or at least efficiency within - those activities. To him, that is the essence of “play.” Once I began learning to respect camping for what it is, I find more enjoyment and more benefit from a good camp.

So, don’t be too dismissive of camping like I was. You don’t have to love camping, but if you can learn to respect camping for what it is and put some modicum of effort into improving your skill in camping, it will payoff, not only in camp, but up on the mountain, as well.