Paul Preuss (climber) - Beginnings of An Ethics of Pure Style

Beginnings of An Ethics of Pure Style

Preuss gained renown in the summer of 1911 with his second ascent of the West Face of the Totenkirchl. This climb at that time was reputed to be one of the hardest in the Alps. The first ascent took seven hours. He climbed it solo in two and a half, including a new variation. This was rapidly followed by a solo first ascent of the East Face of the Guglia di Brenta. In the next few months he made the second ascents of Angelo Dibona's routes on the Croz dell'Altissimo and the Northwest Ridge of the Grossen Ödstein, making a point of not using any of the pitons left by the first ascensionists, thereby putting into practice his desire to climb as his predecessors Georg Winkler and Emil Zsigmondy had: in a pure style, meaning without any artificial aids (without guides in Zsigmondy's case and solo, in Winkler's). Pitons and carabiners were just starting to be effectively adapted for use in the mountains. At first they were just used for protection or securing a rappel line, but then increasingly became used for upward progress, for instance as hand or footholds, or to secure the rope for a pendulum or tension traverse. To Preuss this was nothing less than cheating. You should have to bring yourself up to the level of a difficult new route by improving your abilities; you shouldn't have to bring the mountain down to your level by improving your technological gadgetry. Preuss prized human achievement, measuring ourselves against the mountains, not technological achievement, reducing the mountain to the measure of our tools: With artificial climbing aids you have transformed the mountains into a mechanical plaything. Eventually they will break or wear out, and then nothing else will be left for you to do than to throw them away.