Historical geography, climbing and mountaineering: route setting for an inclusive future

Abstract

This article seeks to review work broadly defined as the historical geographies of mountaineering and climbing. As such, it outlines the links between mountaineering, colonialism, and vertical ascent as well as the historical geographies of rock climbing which speak to the culture, practices, and technologies of climbing. In outlining past work, particular attention is paid to the hidden and gendered histories of climbing and mountaineering. This moves discussion beyond common place tales of white privilege and Western philosophies of conquer through ascendancy to tackle the broader ways by which mountaineering and climbing have been explored by academic geography. A holistic appreciation of work on this topic, it is argued, can not only help the geographical discipline to deal with its colonial past but also show how the historical geographies of mountaineering and climbing fit within efforts to decolonise the discipline, include wider voices, and utilise archives unknown.

Place dialogue

“…Through such attunement it can feel ‘as if the whole landscape's been magnetised and polarised along a certain course, so that your steps, as an element of that landscape, are being gyrated forward as much by an external force as impelled, by you, from within’ (Lorimer & Wylie, 2010, p. 6). Climbing a mountain also involves power relations we would not want to deny: Indigenous names for mountains have often been displaced by conquest (Rose‐Redwood, 2016) and mountain climbers have flaunted the masculine conceits of conquering nature and claiming territory (Hunt, 2019). Geographic fieldwork can likewise be celebrated as colonisation of territory and domination of nature (De Leeuw & Hunt, 2018).…”

Unique Geology and Climbing: A Literature Review

“…The on-line bibliographical database Scopus includes >320 papers mentioning rock climbing in their titles and >380 papers mentioning mountaineering (state as at mid-May, 2020; some of these papers deal with geoheritage, but the majority do not). In the literature, mountaineering is often treated in regard to industry and society [57][58][59] and places [60,61], but chiefly to personalities (physiology and emotions) [62][63][64][65][66][67][68][69][70][71]. Environmental effects are also documented [72,73].…”