Aat Vervoorn

Mountain Solitudes, Solo Journeys in the Southern Alps of New Zealand by Aat Vervoorn (pp 163). Because the only mountain climbing I’ve done has been via high mountain paved roads, I caution any reader of this review to take my inexperience into account. That said, this is an impressive set of essays about individual climbs that do not require mountaineering experience to enjoy. Vervoorn’s descriptions of his hikes and climbs are devoid of false bravado and, if anything, understate the difficulties of the routes he describes. I realized that when I compared what he wrote with photos of the astoundingly difficult high alpine terrain he travelled, including ice walls, high peaks, snow fields, glaciers, crevasses, bogs, sometimes fordable rivers, scree slopes, and other challenges. Chapter two makes the entire book worth reading. In it he discusses the nature of risk, objective danger, accomplishment, adversity, judgement, and other elements of perceived success. With knowledge gained from hard won experience, he discusses how we consider and rate what we do in high risk adventure, and questions whether we overrate our accomplishments when we extract ourselves from self-inflicted errors. Among other things, but important to me as a soloist (in a different sport), he explores the act of soloing, including what it takes to solo safely (and contends going alone is often less dangerous than going with others), solitude, preparation, and other things soloists think about. In two chapters the author totally lost my interest—when he conjured up conversations with long dead personalities—but they were incidental to an otherwise fine volume. Great book!… (mehr)

Solo mountaineering is Aat's spiritual journey. He explores the theme of "gaining mastery IN rather than OVER the mountain environment". Rejects notion "that a good mountaineering trip has to have close shaves and suffering to be successful." Quotes Vilhjalmur Stefansson: "ADVENTURE IS A SIGN OF INCOMPETENCE."
This author was born in The Netherlands in 1945 but grew up in Australia and New Zealand. Worked as a mountain guide in the 1960's and 70's. He is an academic at the Australian National University of Canberra with particular interest in Asian and Pacific studies.… (mehr)