I looked in the mirror. Soul patch. Unibrow. Face either about to sneeze or cry. I said to my reflection, “Why do we climb?” then quickly turned away. This existential crisis was sheer torture! I picked up Ed Whymper’s skull, which I had recently acquired in Chamonix. The Guide de Haute Montagne had organized an auction to raise the 4 billion euros that were needed to reconstruct the Bonatti Pillar on the Dru. The French guides were selling croissants, Eigerwand grappling hooks and Ed Whymper’s exhumed remains to help pay for the massive albeit totally necessary reconstruction. I was lucky and had gotten the skull—“Sold! To the man in the candy-apple Gore-Tex onesie!”—before Glen Plake could get his shit together and put up a bid. Suddenly, the skull began speaking to me. “Why we climb isn’t some unexplainable enigma too profound to articulate,” Ed Whymper said. “It’s simple. We climb […]