The Illusion of the Summit

A few people may read my previous posts and conclude that I became disillusioned with mountaineering.

That is not what happened.

I became disillusioned with institutionalized mountaineering.

There is a difference.

The mountains never disappointed me.

Wilderness never disappointed me.

Long journeys through remote landscapes never disappointed me.

What disappointed me were many of the institutions, certifications, schools, and educational philosophies surrounding mountaineering.

My experiences at NIM, HMI, and later NOLS gradually revealed a recurring gap between reputation and reality.

NIM is regarded as India's best mountaineering school.

I left the NIM Basic Mountaineering Course halfway through due what I perceived, even as a newb in 2010, as sketch safety standards.

Years later, multiple students and instructors died during a NIM course. Expereienced instructors who had even summitted Mt. Everest. Bollocks!

I take no satisfaction in saying that, but it reinforced concerns I had already formed regarding institutional competence and safety culture.

Then came HMI - Himalayan Mountaineering Institute, Darjeeling. Pathetic to its core!

What disturbed me most was not merely the training itself but the conduct of some of the people entrusted with leading it.

I personally witnessed instructors, senior course staff, course leader, Kushang Sherpa, showing up drunk during the program.

That experience left a deep impression on me.

Mountaineering is an activity in which mistakes can kill people.

If those responsible for teaching judgment, discipline, and risk management cannot consistently embody those qualities themselves, then what exactly are they teaching?

The contradiction was impossible for me to ignore.

The longer I stayed within the system, the more I felt that much of institutional mountaineering was producing obedience rather than independence.

Load-carrying rather than judgment. HMI is also infamously known as porter training institute.

Certification rather than wisdom.

Compliance rather than self-reliance.

By the end of the course, I was so disappointed that I gave away most of my expensive mountaineering equipment at the institute itself, to other students who were unlucky enough to show up for a HMI course. I felt that if this is how one is supposed to climb a mountain, then I don't want to climb at all.

I seriously considered walking away from mountaineering altogether.

Then came NOLS USA. The big daddy of Outdoor Leadership.

Ironically, the Trip Leader India course in the autumn of 2012 was excellent.

Had my NOLS experience ended there, this chapter might never have been written.

Instead, in the Spring of 2013, I enrolled in the NOLS Himalaya Glacier Mountaineering Expedition.

The course consumed virtually all of the savings I had accumulated during my corporate years.

I was the only Indian participant.

Twelve participants had travelled from the United States and one had travelled from Brazil.

People had crossed oceans and spent thousands of dollars to be there.

Expectations were understandably high.

What followed was one of the biggest disappointments of my outdoor career.

The issue was not the weather.

Inclement weather is part of mountaineering.

The issue was leadership.

The issue was consistency.

The issue was integrity.

The issue was the growing gap between what NOLS claimed to be and what I was actually experiencing.

Many participants returned frustrated and disappointed.

During the final debrief in Ranikhet, NOLS India Director, Ravi Kumar made a remark that stayed with me.

He said that whether the course was mountaineering, sea kayaking, backpacking, rock climbing, or something else, NOLS courses were fundamentally camping courses.

I found the statement astonishing.

For years I had imagined NOLS as one of the world's great repositories of outdoor wisdom and leadership development.

I had once dreamed of becoming a NOLS instructor.

I had exhausted my savings attending their wilderness and medicine courses.

And now I found myself asking a simple question.

Had I really spent years chasing an institution that was essentially teaching people how to camp?

Perhaps there was more nuance to what he meant.

But that was how the statement landed.

And once that thought entered my mind, I could not unsee it.

Increasingly, much of outdoor education began to appear as branding, mythology, certification, and institutional prestige wrapped around skills that were often far more ordinary than advertised.

But eventually I came to realize that there was an even deeper layer to my disappointment.

The institutions were not the only illusion.

Mountaineering itself could become one.

Over the years I have done solo mountaineering, solo climbing, solo mountain biking, solo trekking, and long journeys through remote wilderness.

Some of the finest experiences of my life took place outdoors.

I remain grateful for all of them.

Yet I gradually began to see another form of Maya operating within the outdoor world itself.

Like every tribe, the outdoor community has its own mythology.

Its own heroes.

Its own ambitions.

Its own status hierarchies.

Its own definition of success.

Its own ideas about what constitutes a meaningful life.

It is remarkably easy to become convinced that climbing harder routes, travelling farther, surviving harsher conditions, pushing greater limits, and taking bigger risks somehow brings one closer to truth.

For a while I believed some version of that story myself.

Many people do.

But eventually I began to question it.

One can spend an entire lifetime pursuing ever greater adventures and still remain fundamentally confused about the nature of reality and about oneself.

One can cross deserts, traverse glaciers, climb great mountains, and survive extraordinary hardships while remaining completely trapped within one's own projections.

Adventure does not automatically produce wisdom.

Risk does not automatically produce understanding.

Achievement does not automatically produce freedom.

The outdoor world often celebrates those who continuously push the envelope.

There is certainly something admirable about courage, commitment, and mastery.

But there is also a shadow side.

The logic of perpetual ambition has no natural endpoint.

The next climb.

The next expedition.

The next summit.

The next record.

The next challenge.

The next horizon.

The machine never stops.

Eventually, if carried far enough, that logic consumes the individual.

The mountains are filled with the ghosts of ambitious men and women who believed the next objective would finally be enough.

Many of them were extraordinarily talented.

Some paid for that pursuit with their lives.

Ambition itself contains a subtle trap.

The ambitious person is rarely at peace.

He is constantly attempting to become something other than what he presently is.

His attention is fixed upon the next achievement, the next identity, the next destination.

And because the destination continually recedes, contentment remains elusive.

The tragedy is not merely that some ambitious people die pursuing their goals.

The tragedy is that many never arrive where they already are.

This realization gradually transformed my relationship with mountaineering.

I still love mountains.

I still love wilderness.

I still admire skill, courage, competence, and self-reliance.

But I no longer see these things as the summit of human possibility.

They are experiences.

Valuable experiences.

Sometimes beautiful experiences.

Sometimes life-changing experiences.

But they are not the destination.

The deepest questions remain exactly where they have always been.

Who am I?

What is consciousness?

What is reality?

What is truth?

Compared to those questions, even the mighty Mt. Everest, eventually becomes a very small hill.

That, perhaps, is the deepest lesson mountaineering ever taught me.

The mountains were never the destination.

They were merely signposts pointing beyond themselves.

Master TM from 'the' Globally Top-Rated Teacher

Disclaimer: Information on this website is provided for general purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. TM is not a substitute for professional medical care; individual results may vary.

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