Danny Vagnozzi interviews Andrew Bisharat on the role of writing in climbing...

The history of climbing and mountaineering is saturated with emotionally intense stories. From tales of succeeding against the odds, to betrayals or deaths in unexpected circumstances, these stories have touched and inspired climbers as well as the general public. Writing is just one of many ways to bring these stories to life and share them with an audience. While the painstakingly slow and introspective nature of writing is the antithesis of the fast-paced modern world, the process of putting a story into written words can drive the author to uncover details often ignored by other forms of media.

To understand more about the power of sharing stories and, in particular, the role of writing in climbing, I spoke to Andrew Bisharat, a well-known climbing journalist and podcaster. Andrew is based in Colorado, USA and is the publisher of Evening Sends as well as the co-host of The Runout Podcast. He has written articles that have been published in Outside Magazine and National Geographic, and recently appeared in the ReelRock film Resistance Climbing as a central character and narrator.

Tell us about your story: how did you get into climbing and why did you start writing about climbing?

I started climbing in New York where I grew up, at the Shawangunks. I was about 16 at the time and my high school girlfriend got me a rock climbing lesson for my birthday… and that was it, though I didn't really get into it until I was 19 or so when I was in college. Writing has always been a means for me to process things because I am quite introverted. It was the easiest way for me to express the many emotions that went through my head while rock climbing, especially when you're first starting out and experiencing all the excitement and the fear. So writing was a part of that but I didn't set out to be a climbing writer. I started college as an engineer and did that for about a year but I realised that I didn't like it so I switched to political sciences with a minor in English.

I was doing a study abroad program in New Zealand when I first got into journalism about climbing. I'd heard about a guy down there who climbed Mount Cook, which is the tallest mountain in the South Island, and he climbed it 20 years after losing his legs to frostbite on the same mountain. His name is Mark Inglis… I thought he had an interesting story and there was something opportunistic going on in my head about being in this far-away country but being in close proximity to this story. I got in touch with the guy and he agreed to do an interview for some reason. I was a junior in college at the time and made just about every mistake I could make as a writer. It was a very cool and empowering experience to set off on my own to do this thing that wasn't an assignment from school. I sat on his couch, took out my little tape recorder and asked him ten softball questions that didn't elicit much of an interesting response… and then I spent the next six months literally working on this story where I'd wake up every day and go to a coffee shop and write the first paragraph over and over and over. I banged my head on this story until I got to the end of it, and then I sent it off to all the climbing magazines just to get a flat rejection from everywhere. The article never saw the light of day, but it was such an important learning experience because I did make all the mistakes you make as a writer, but these were the inglorious beginnings of my career as a climbing writer.

Can you be explicit about some of those beginner mistakes that stood out?

Well… the big one was just taking so much time, and not getting the words down, trying to perfect the introduction instead of getting a first draft done. I think that's the biggest mistake writers make: it is easy to get stuck in that mode of wanting everything to be perfect before you write the next paragraph. It's really just a way of procrastinating instead of getting it out there. So that's the big one… another one was not really understanding that you need to have some dramatic tension to the stories in order for them to be interesting. You can't create tension just by flattering your subject. Nobody just wants to read about how great they are, so you need to figure out other ways to come at stories and make them interesting and different.

Has writing about climbing changed that much throughout your career?

So, shortly after graduating from college I got a job as an editor at Rock & Ice magazine which I did for about 10 years and during that time I saw that the Internet had a really huge effect on magazines, which led to the demise of Rock and Ice magazine. When I started I was right at the beginning of the end, I guess, and the Internet was just becoming more important in terms of how information was conveyed. It made news gathering of magazines just obsolete. And that is what it is, but there's an interesting aspect to that because it shifted away from these editors as gatekeepers who could give context to new stories and put them into perspective about how important and significant they were, to this 'free for all' on social media, where everyone has their own platform and everyone can report the news about their climbing ascents as they see it. There's no gatekeeping here so it has this flattening effect and it makes it difficult for people to understand climbing history, what's important about it… stuff like that.

What advice would you give climbing writers to cope with the changes you've described and the changes that will come?

I think the biggest advice I can give to a young climbing writer is just to do it, because so many people don't do it! They're not interested anymore in taking the time to write something down, especially personal stories about why they climb. Writing can be a very important vehicle for understanding the reasons why you're doing something such as climbing. At least for me that's been the case… it's been this process of introspection and understanding. People aren't interested in that because it is a long, painful, slow process often unrewarded by the rates you get by publishing it somewhere. Just doing it is valuable advice. It is really easy to get caught in writing a 2000 character Instagram caption with your little green check mark to show you've sent your route. You get that instant gratification of everyone telling you how great you are but I think something valuable gets lost in this. I think people who care about climbing should owe it to themself to sit down and take some time to articulate about what it is that made their experience so special.

I guess you partly answered my next question, but I would like to explicitly ask why do you think storytelling is so important in climbing and mountaineering?

Hmm... well there's a deep tradition in storytelling in climbing and mountaineering. All the literature that has been produced over the years is proof of that. Writing is not the only way to do that - people do it with videos and photos too - but I think it is important, as I think there is a certain power that other media does not capture. It just inspires people and there are a lot of parallels between themes in life and themes in climbing and these are probably explored best through the written word.

So what is it that makes a particular climbing story special and worth telling in your opinion?

One of the interesting things I have been thinking about is that climbing fiction just doesn't work and there's a reason: real life is so much more incredible and there's so many stories of survival and overcoming challenges in climbing that are just incredible! My former boss at Rock & Ice Duane Raleigh fell off the top of a tower in Zion National Park. He hadn't clipped his rappel device into the rope properly. It was at night and he didn't have a headlamp so he couldn't see… and he just fell 200 feet before his tagline flipped itself into a knot and got wedged into a crack arresting his fall in mid air. He lived to see another day, but you can't make that up: the fact that this actually happened makes any attempt at climbing fiction futile because there are real stories such as this! So I think there are special moments that make climbing writing just special. Touching the Void, for example, is just an incredible story and it is also well written but that's almost incidental to the fact that it is an incredible story that deserves to be told, and climbing is just filled with these.

A story that is special to you and most people associate your name with became the well known film Resistance Climbing (UKC Article). Tell us about the journey you went through from getting the idea for the story, to the development into the final edit of the film.

That wasn't supposed to be a film. I bought tickets to go to Palestine with Tim Bruns as I really wanted to see my grandfather's house in Jerusalem. The fact that there was climbing there was a bit incidental - personally it was just a second goal for me. But when the producers at Sender Films heard that this trip was happening and that there was a story to tell, they thought that having me as a character to bring these people into this world could work as a narrative device and they got excited about the idea. I was actually quite hesitant to agree to be part of this because it is really quite important to me to see this fraught place. I have lots of very close Jewish friends and I have always heard many fond things about Israel my entire life and I wanted to understand what it was that was so important to them as well. So I was just hesitant to agree to be part of the film because I didn't want this experience to be corrupted. I heard about my grandfather's house my whole life, and there have been big questions that have followed me for a while and I wanted to try to be as open minded as possible to find the answers. I knew that agreeing to be part of the film would just change the experience in one way or the other.

I had to do a bit of soul searching and it took a few weeks but I got over myself: there was this opportunity to tell a story about people in Palestine that seemed incredible and it would have been almost a selfish way to put an end to this project because of my quest to understand my family history. So I got over it but it was very tense… we had lots of conversations with Palestinian climbers, producers at Reel Rock, explaining the challenges, fears, concerns and I asked my relatives how they felt about making a film about this, as there were so many ways it could go wrong. It was really scary to say yes to the project but I was quite proud of the result and I was quite happy to play a small part by telling the story of the people in the film.

Were there any parts of the story that didn't make it into the final cut and you wished you'd included?

Honestly, I think we got just about everything we wanted in the film! The process was very unscripted and what we saw just added material for the production… it was like 'Oh, Faris just gave this amazing interview' so we had to go and shoot him tango dancing. All stuff like that where everything was uncovered as we got to know everyone and I think it all got in there to some degree or another.

You recently wrote a piece on Evening Sends called 'Writing about climbing can improve your experience'. Can you tell us about a time when you felt the impact of writing on your climbing experience?

One of my earliest memories of this was probably one of the first alpine climbs I did. The whole thing was just so out of my element: there were some scary moments of giant rock fall, like half the mountain falling apart and putting the fear of God in me. I also lost my crampon on the way down - basic beginner stuff. While we were hiking down the glacier and I was so exhausted, I just felt this incredible urge to get home and write about what I had just gone through and try to figure out what this was all about.

I think all the biggest climbs and their memorable moments all have that element to them, and I think that one of the challenges of being a writer is to find the balance between being present to your own experience and not being constantly in the future, thinking about how you can turn this into words, into a story. I'm always thinking about how something can be a story and this process can remove you from enjoying the present moment, experiencing what is unfolding in front of you. It's a bit of a struggle but I am sure other people who are drawn to writing will find that familiar.

So would you say that writing can have a cathartic function for climbers?

Yes, absolutely! Sometimes writing helps to bring closure to the experience by processing it and understanding it to a level. It feels like the end point of the whole experience: life happens and then I feel compelled to write about it. And once I have written about it I am like 'OK, now something new can happen'.

To conclude, I would like to ask you to comment on this quote by Royal Robbins: 'The beautiful thing about climbing is that you cannot justify it.' Do you agree with this romantic and idealistic view on climbing? Or does your personal experience with writing tells you otherwise?

Do I agree…? Yes, I think so! It is hard to justify almost anything, first of all. Even if you're curing cancer in a lab somewhere you're still not in a soup kitchen feeding someone directly, which is the most direct way to benefit someone. There is always some way your time and attention can be better justified, so any justification would look for the answer in the wrong place. So I think climbing is beautiful because it is something we choose, we are not forced to do it. Anything you choose in life is yours and you get to add as much personal value to it. That's the justification right there: it is something you choose to do, and why you do it is up to you to come up with the answer. And to me, writing is the best way to approach this.