A Basic Course Outline and Reading List in the History of Mountaineering and Climbing : Articles : SummitPost

Page Type:	Article
Activities:	Mountaineering, Trad Climbing, Sport Climbing, Aid Climbing, Big Wall

Comments

DrJonnie - Mar 2, 2008 11:02 am - Voted 10/10

Good coverage

well done, I tried to find a missing book but failed, you have all the clasics there, good work. My favourite for what it is worth is "The White Spider" by Harrer.
cheers Dr Johnnie

Nanuls - Mar 13, 2008 9:15 am - Voted 10/10

Great page

I really like this page it's come on a long way since you created it, although you could still add a lot to the visual media section. In the 1920s and 1930s, back in the days of silent cinema, Germany had a genre known as ‘Bergfilms’ which were essentially dramas set around mountaineering, climbing and skiing. Directors such as Odo Deodatus Tauern, Bernhard Villinger and Rolf Bauer were churning out dozens of films during this period, most of them rubbish, but all set around the theme of mountain sports.

The most famous of these films is probably Der heilige Berg (The Holy Mountain) by Dr Arnold Fanck which has some fantastic early climbing scenes, and is notable as having the first screen appearance of Leni Riefenstahl, a skilled climber herself (and she used to do it barefoot!) as an actress. Leni Riefenstahl is of course the german director who went on to create the famous Nazi propoganda films Triumph of the Will and Olympia. Fanck also created several other early mountain films including The White Hell of Pitz Palu, Stürme über dem Montblanc, and S.O.S. Eisberg (which was filmed off Greenland).

What makes these films so remarkable is that the actors and actresses were all accomplished climbers in their own right and did all their own stunts and action shots away from sets and in the mountains (mostly the Alps). In The White Hell of Pitz Palu the production team purposly started a proper avalanche which drops onto Riefenstahl. In an interview Riefenstahl says "We didn't know how to fake it then, so we really did it". Essentially these early german films are the forrunners of all subsequent mountain movies, and have been a major influence on films such as Touching the Void and The Dark Glow of the Mountains, as well as countless populist films such as The Eiger Sanction, Vertical Limit and Cliffhanger.

Cookie Addict - May 19, 2009 5:15 pm - Hasn't voted

Names

Clarence King/James Todd was a funny little man, but his classic about Sierra Mountaineering is good. There are a couple of biographies about him that are great as well.

Send me a list of the titles and I will take a look

adventuretactical - Jul 31, 2009 10:30 pm - Voted 10/10

Thank You!

After a 12 year absence from climbing, this post has inspired me to get out and at it again.

Cookie Addict - Aug 14, 2009 11:35 am - Hasn't voted

Re: Thank You!

Glad you liked it. I will be updating it soon as there are some books and movies/documentaries from the BBC on old hardmen that are now available and I want to tweak the top list a bit.

to post!

A Basic Course Outline and Reading List in the History of Mountaineering and Climbing

Why this Artical Exists:

Book List

Films and Visual Media:

A hundred or so worthwhile Mountaineering books for further reading:

Web Resources

Images