How to become and Alpine Mountaineer, Part 4: Learn to Climb
I said in Pt. 1- “I’m not a climber, though I think this might have to change.”
Well, I’m currently in the middle of a self-absorbed identity crisis, partly the fault of the Scottish Crag-Rat I keep climbing with, and partly because I usually have just half days off. I climb, but I don’t want to admit that I’m a climber.
I still maintain there is a difference between climbing as a mountaineer and climbing as a climber. There is a saying, that nobody seems quite sure where it came from;
“A mountaineer takes the easiest route up the hardest mountain. A climber takes the hardest route up an easy mountain.”
But, the distinction in the Alps in not the same as in the UK. Alpine mountaineering is the dream for both climbers and people who climb mountains. Even if, for one the idea is to climb a mountain and for the other, it’s to climb a route, in the the overlap often makes the difference indistinguishable. I’ve always been a summit kinda girl, even if I’ve not made many summits so far this season, but I need to accept that climbing is important all the same.
So, here I am. I go to the crag several times a week, I even go bouldering indoors. I climbed Hotel California, high altitude multi-pitch sport climbing route on Brevent last week. It was not what I was used to. It was out of my comfort zone, but easily escapable; a route set up by a ‘climber’ with no obvious summit, but several nice rock climbing pitches on various spurs with some sections of walking in between. Not a life changing route, but possibly it would be unfair to put that down to climbing and more because we chose the escapability over some dramatic exposure. I’m really keen to climb the Aiguillette d’Argentiere though, and maybe that will change things- or I’ll just panic and never want to climb again.
How to be an Alpine Mountaineer: Be good at everything, even rock climbing.
What I found out is that I am a very slow climber, not just in terms of ropes, but actual physical climbing speed. Like really slow. Also, although I have a tendency to not do things by-the-book if I feel safe (i.e. a secure belay), the ‘technical’ reasons for doing certain things, that I get bored of when I’m not too far off the ground, make much more sense up there. So, probably this is what I need to practice. I also learnt that telling Fraser, mid pitch, that I had a bee on my leg, was probably not the best idea; one of those things I ought to keep a secret, at least until he had finished climbing.
I shouldn’t complain though- this is the way to train for the mountains. The Aiguilles Rouges and then the Mont Blanc Massif. Almost all of the classic routes have pitches that are definitely ‘climbing’, amongst easier scrambling, with some snow slopes and glacier traverses thrown in. Climbing is the bit I’ve not done so much of and considering the amount of faff involved when I do go climbing, I definitely need to practice “being a climber”.
So, it turns out that however much I like to cling onto labels in the UK, it just won’t work out here.
How to be an Alpine Mountaineer: Be good at everything, even rock climbing.

