Journey to the Clouds

Wynne Hedlesky
Ra'iatea, Society Islands, French Polynesia
2004 local time, 0704 GMT

I hope that in retrospect, I will be able to say that on August 14, 2011, I became a mountain climber. I grew up in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, and spent plenty of time romping about on forest trails. Despite this, or perhaps because of it—maybe due to some alpine misadventure of my youth which is now lodged deep in my subconscious—I have for many years had a mild phobia of steep slopes. Not heights; I don’t mind being on the edge of a cliff looking into deep gorges, or climbing up the shrouds of a hundred-foot mast. But I’ve had nightmares about scrambling up crumbling, impossibly huge mountains of gravelly earth, or trying to force my sputtering vehicle up a mountain road that magically increases in steepness until the car hangs still, pedal to the floor; up is impossible, and down is certain death.

            In Mo’orea, Kristian and I met a Frenchman, Philippe, who was willing to take us to a nearby island, Ra’iatea. He wasn’t leaving for a few days, and before we left he proposed that we all go for a hike. In addition to being an experienced sailor, he had also been a mountain guide in his younger days. He’d not only sailed around the world a couple times, but had climbed the highest mountains in the Andes. So we knew that for him, a “hike” wasn’t a stroll along a well-cleared path designed for pudgy, panting tourists. Considering his history, I suspected he wouldn’t be interested in a trail unless it at least got his heart rate up for a few hours. We would be climbing Mt. Rotui, a mere 899 meters compared to the 7000 thousand meter Andean giants Philippe had conquered in his youth. Kristian hadn’t hiked up a mountain in quite a few years, but it was a pastime he’d enjoyed often in his childhood on vacations with his parents in the Alps, and he was excited for a challenging hike. As Philippe and Kristian shared mountaineering stories, I stared up at the north face of Mt. Rotui, which loomed over the beach where we were camped. The near-vertical slope blotted out a third of the sky. As I studied the mountain, whose ferns and small trees defiantly took advantage of what little horizontality they could find, I foresaw trouble. But I didn’t want to be a wussy girl, so I gave the plan my enthusiastic consent.

             On the appointed morning of the hike, we bought a baguette for lunch, and set out to find the trailhead. Starting in someone’s front yard, we hiked up behind their small house to a trail that ran along a dry ridgeline populated by scrawny saplings. As we wound through this forest of tiny trees, I thought, hey, this isn’t so bad. I mean, it’s exercise, but not impossible.

            Soon enough we were scrambling up our first rocky slope. I carefully sought sturdy holds for my hands and feet, places where the crumbly, red earth lodged between the rocks wouldn’t betray me. I dared wonder what it would be like if it got more difficult, and suppressed the thought, telling myself that my body would find a way. It simply had to be so.

            We passed a spot where our ascent was made possible entirely by the tangled roots of wind-deformed pine trees. Climbing through the patch of pines was exactly like ascending an irregular, maze-like ladder. After that, the path continued along the narrow ridgeline, and it was like walking along the edge of an enormous serrated knife. The trail ascended steeply, requiring one to climb near-vertically for several meters, often relying on the roots and branches of flimsy vegetation for hand holds. Even Philippe said the hike would be difficult or impossible without the help of the vegetation. The periods of steep ascent would alternate with level, nearly level, or even occasionally dropping stretches of trail. I use the word “trail” rather generously to refer, at best, to six inches of cleared ground nearly hidden beneath ferns and small trees. The ground at times became spongy underfoot, and you knew that all that was keeping you from a dizzying and, if not fatal, then at least rather unpleasant descent down the near-vertical slopes on either side of the ridge were the roots of the mountain ferns.

            When we came to a resting place, I would allow myself to look around. It was hard to understand that I was really seeing the world from the mountain’s perspective. I could see clearly the underwater geography of the island—the midnight blue of the deep bay, the glowing turquoise of the shallows, and the inlets through the reef that let in the sailboats, which freckled the postcard-perfect lagoon. It was beautiful and familiar. Oceans, sailboats, beaches; that was my habitat. Down there was home.

When I looked at the mountain, above, below, and to each side of me, I became disoriented and afraid. How had I gotten here? The trail was invisible under the foliage even a few meters ahead or behind us. The knife-edge ridge by which I’d reached this spot seemed such an improbable place for human footsteps. Although, up to this point, my body had indeed found a way to proceed, I’d had to constantly repeat to myself the clichéd advice that characters in the movies always give to those afraid of heights—“don’t look down.” In fact, I didn’t let myself look left or right, either, but paid attention only to which rock was the next home for my right foot, and which clump of ferns I would hang onto with my left hand. I was afraid if I looked around, I’d experience vertigo, forget which way was up, and tumble right off the mountain.

Our destination was not the mountain’s true summit, but a peak a few meters shy of the mountain’s full elevation of 899 meters. As we approached, we entered the cloud that almost always rubs its belly on the jagged peaks of Pacific islands. I’d often been drawn by a desire to enter that cloud, like a child wants to enter a forbidden room, without really knowing what I thought I would find there. The power of this urge made me understand why the ancient Greeks placed the home of their gods atop Mt. Olympus, and what might have inspired Hemingway’s “Snows of Kilimanjaro.” Inside the cloud is anything you want, whatever is precious to you, too precious to wander among mortals in the lower altitudes.

            We were hoping to enjoy a god’s-eye view of Mo’orea and nearby Tahiti from the peak of the mountain, but instead, when we finally reached our destination, we found ourselves isolated in a place beyond time or physical location, inside the secret. It was a lot like being in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It was an impossible place, built up in my mind to contain something profound and life-changing. In reality, standing there as a human being, it was simultaneously overwhelming, and boring. Whereas perhaps the Olympian deities had marvelous palaces and storerooms of nectar and ambrosia hidden in Olympus’ clouds, and the opacity provided privacy where they could carry out their divine dramas more or less unmolested by the presence of mortals, there was nothing on this peak to interest a human being, just a few square meters of rocky red earth, rimmed by scrubby vegetation dripping with the cloud’s drizzly moisture.

            Inside the cloud, I also had to confront the fear I’d been struggling against for the entire three hour climb. Beside the exertion of the ascent and my fear that my body would suddenly fail me and I would go tumbling to my death, I was terrified at the thought of having to do it all again, in the other direction. Just thinking of the descent almost ruined my ability to enjoy the views we had of the lagoon, and the sense of accomplishment I had when I finally reached the summit. In fact, hesitant to add even twenty minutes to the descent back down the mountain, I had almost decided to stay behind at our last resting place, but, unwilling to admit defeat even in front of my boyfriend and our gentle and supportive guide, I pushed myself up a few more vertical scrambles. At the top, we all congratulated each other on our day’s accomplishment. Philippe said that I had climbed well, even if I was a bit cautious at times, and asked if I would like to do it again some time. Thinking back to the points where I was nearly in tears, and the prospect of a grueling descent, I’m sure I was a little more hesitant than Philippe would have hoped with my, “Yeah…probably.”

            To my delight and relief, I found the way down to be far less mentally and physically exhausting than the way up. I basically scooted down the mountain on my bum, and only my filthy shorts and my somewhat cramped toes had any reason to complain about the much-feared descent. Just as it had on the way up, the trail, invisible at a distance, appeared in front of my feet. This time, its tricks were familiar. I knew to expect the patches of spongy, fern-rooty fake earth and the rocky, near-vertical scrambles which were defeated like plastic soldiers before my invincible strategy of bum-scooting. By the time we reached the ladder of pine roots, I’d begun to confidently descend even the steep parts of the trail with the dignified upright posture appropriate to a human being, and by the bottom I’d decided I wanted to be a bona fide mountain climber.

            Standing, proud but afraid, awe-struck yet bored, at the peak of Mt. Rotui, it occurred to me that perhaps climbing mountains is very much like crossing oceans. Drawn as I am to crossing oceans, I feel almost obligated to become a mountain climber as well. I love being on the ocean. I love it for its unfathomable ability to be simultaneously fascinating and painfully dull, to show infinite variation and yet be the definition of eternal sameness. And I even appreciate it for its occasional fits of temper. Unlike Kristian, I’d never say, “I like it gnarly.” Such hubristic statements seem, to me, to warrant a swift triple knock on the nearest wooden object. But I feel boldly alive by having a relationship with something I know could take my life with no provocation, and without the slightest emotion passing over its eternal face. On a boat, days away from land, you are living in an element normally fatal to human beings. All that is between you and certain death is a little piece of buoyant fiberglass or metal or wood—the boat, offspring of the ingenuity and recklessness of human beings.

            Clinging like a bug to the side of a mountain, your relationship to your surroundings is quite similar. Your body tells you, “I don’t belong here,” and you ignore it. Compared to the Andes, the Alps, or the Himalayas, Mt. Rotui is a gentle green giant, sleeping in the tropical warmth, nestled in a blue lagoon, lower slopes blanketed with pineapples and bananas. But even this gentle mountain’s peak is still just an uninviting patch of rocks surrounded by deadly, or at least very, very painful, drops. But just as people willingly send themselves into the middle of the watery desert, people want to climb these mountains, want to put themselves in a place where humans cannot normally survive, and surround themselves with the constant threat of death. They may as well want to visit the Mariana Trench, or the moon. And, in fact, people try to do these things as well.

Whether you’re a sailor, a mountaineer, a diver, or an astronaut, your situation is the same. It is through courage, strength, and human technology that you bring your relationship to nature into a new dimension, overcoming the limitations of the body, as well as fears rooted in our instinctive desire for security and comfort. As a reward for your exertions, you get to see the parts of the world normally off-limits to human beings. In these remote places, you experience nature’s near-complete power over each individual human, a power that is easy to forget when we huddle in environments specially designed to isolate us from the effects of storms and seas and wild beasts. But you also learn that human beings have secret reserves of strength and ingenuity that are rarely called upon because we rarely allow ourselves to confront a worthy adversary.

I’m not saying that I, personally, have survived hurricanes at sea or nearly frozen to death on airless mountains. It’ll be a while before I’m ready for the Andes, or Cape Horn. But how can I suppress the urge to go up into the cloud?