Pushing the Limits

Pushing the Limits
An Interview with Chic Scott, chronicler of Canadian climbing
by Sarah A. Zimmerman
Appeared in Outpost, November/December 2000

While researching Pushing the Limits: The Story of Canadian Mountaineering (Rocky Mountain Books) in 1997, Chic Scott was so broke that he camped out in the Yamnuska meadows because he couldn't afford rent. Today, he has ditched the tent for a home in Cochrane, Alberta, and has compiled the definitive history of mountaineering in Canada. Pushing the Limits takes the reader on a journey dating back to the early frontiersmen and explorers of the 1700s, all the way up to the sport and gym climbers of today, and illustrates the trip with a stunning collection of photos.

Born and raised in Alberta, Chic Scott felt the call of the mountains as a 16-year-old on his first ski trip in the Rockies. Taken with the beauty, serenity and magic of the mountains, he went on to devote the next 38 years of his life to mountain culture. Scott was the first Canadian to climb a mountain in the Himalayas. He was also one of the first to do the high-level ski traverse of the ice fields and glaciers along the continental divide between Jasper and Lake Louise.

His numerous expeditions have taken him from northern Canada to Europe as both a lone adventurer and a guide. Scott also founded the Canadian Himalayan Foundation, which has raised a quarter of a million dollars for mountaineering adventures out of Canada.

In 2000, as the Banff Mountain Film Festival celebrates its 25th year, Scott—one of the festival's originators—will be the recipient of the prestigious Bill March Summit of Excellence Award. The award is given annually to a person who has contributed significantly to mountain culture, a person who exemplifies the spirit of the mountains—in essence, a person who is willing to push the limit.

Q: Tell me about the process of researching and compiling Pushing the Limits: The Story of Canadian Mountaineering.

A: It took me five and a half years but I enjoyed the process. I have read everything ever written about any significant climb ever done in Canada or by a Canadian. I read every magazine article, every journal article, every book. I've looked at probably ten thousand images sitting in kitchens with people all across Canada, and I recorded 158 hours of interviews. I spent two months in Quebec and three months out on the west coast. I enjoyed the process of meeting people and uncovering stories. I really got a thrill out of doing it. You can't just be looking forward to the day you hold that book in your hand. It's like climbing a mountain: if you are only interested in getting to the top you probably won't do a lot of mountain climbing, but if you enjoy every day along the way, you will.

Q: Having sifted through the history and climbed for a long time yourself, what, in your opinion, has been the biggest change in climbing over the past 40 years?

A: The biggest change has been the popularity and the commercialization—this is the era of commercialized mountaineering. The [positive aspects] are that there is money available for the sponsorship of young climbers. It does make a lot of things happen: film festivals, movies, guidebooks. When I started climbing there were no guidebooks for Yamnuska, so if you wanted to climb Yamnuska you went and asked somebody who had climbed the route. Now there are guidebooks to everything which is nice, but there is a price: we have lost control of the representation of our sport.

Q: What is the plus side of increased popularity?

A: What I would like to say to the young climbers today is that it is still possible, it is still almost as easy as it ever was to have a traditional experience–to have the experience that I had back in the early '60s, to experience what all of the great mountaineers of the world have had. You still can put your pack on and go out, find a big exciting mountain somewhere, climb it and climb it in good style. You don't have to tell the world about it, you don't have to take a rack of 32 cams and 27 nuts. You can still go light and still do it in style. When you come back you can go back to your office or go back to school and be modest about it.

Q: Isn't that the essence of climbing, just going out for the love of the experience?

A: Oh, absolutely. You can still have the same experience that Reinhold Messner or Alex Lowe had. They just went out and did it. These people didn't even think about writing a magazine article or selling pictures until they had been at it for 10 or 15 years. That was not the point at all.

Q: A defining attribute of the '90s is the fascination or obsession with Mount Everest. The events on Everest in 1996 remain a hot topic.

A: The events of 1996 on Mount Everest, a hundred years from now, will simply be a footnote in the history of mountaineering. They will only be important in the way that the O.J. Simpson case was important, or the way the death of Diana was important; they are media events of the time. But one hundred years from now, Maurice Herzog's expedition to Annapurna in 1950 will still be big in the history of mountaineering. Reinhold Messner or Hillary on Everest, these events will still be the great events of mountaineering.

Q: What do you think is going to be the Everest of the new millennium?

A: What is happening now with the real hardcore climbers is they are climbing peaks of more modest elevation that don't have the big famous names; doing exciting new routes and doing them in good style. But I think we may have passed the era where we have a big plum at the top of the tree. I think the last great plum was Reinhold Messner on the last of his 14 8,000-metre peaks. In a symbolic way it is sort of the last great plum. He completed perhaps the greatest single feat ever in the history of mountaineering. The way the first ascent of Mount Everest was a great milestone and the first ascent of the Matterhorn in 1865 was a great milestone and, of course, the North Face of the Eiger back in 1938. But six Americans dying in a storm on Mount Everest in 1996 will be a footnote.

Q: That said, were their deaths in vain?

A: Obviously nobody's learned from it. The lineups to take incompetent people up Mount Everest, into a place where, in my opinion, they really don't belong, are longer than ever.

Q: It seems that so often, and particularly with Everest, there is too much emphasis on getting to the top of the mountain in an effort to conquer it. What do you think about the notion of conquering a mountain?

A: There is a great line from Mallory that goes, "Have we vanquished an enemy? None but ourselves. Have we gained success? That word means nothing here." That is such a beautiful quote. The idea of conquest and conquering the mountain is something that belongs down on Bay Street and Wall Street and Eighth Avenue in Calgary. It doesn't belong up in the mountains.

Q: Who contributed the most to the beginning of mountaineering in Canada?

A: It would be hard to ignore Conrad Kain. His achievements as a climber were so great. He had a panache, a charisma, a way of doing things that caught the imagination. There is [enough for] a book about him and it would be one of the great classics of North American mountain literature, not only because of his great exploits but because of his great personality.

Q: What is unique about Canadian climbing?

A: All the Canadian climbers that I interviewed were conscious of themselves being Canadian climbers. I asked them all the same question—is there anything special about Canadian climbing?—and most of them felt that there was. It is our competence without arrogance. We are meant to be competent climbers, whereas Americans are very brash and bold and it is part of their culture to get involved with great epics. But Canadians are expected to be competent and pull it off well, that's just our psyche. That comes partly from our Swiss and Austrian guiding history. They taught us how to do it right from the beginning. The Americans never really had any good instruction in mountaineering from the old country, from Europe. So there is the competence and then there is the understatement, the modesty. Canadians are understated. I know it's an oxymoron, but Canadians are very proud of being modest. We don't put people on pedestals. Who are our big heroes in Canada? Well, Pierre Trudeau, that's one. But we have a very short list, there is Wayne Gretzky, Terry Fox, there's three. But beyond that we have no heroes, we don't put people on pedestals. We are not a nation of stars.