Resisting the New Mountaineer

Abstract

In this chapter, McNee analyses how the New Mountaineer was discussed, debated, and criticized by contemporaries. He provides evidence for a backlash against the new values of modernity and codification, and shows how this criticism was often framed in terms of Romantic or traditional values. At the same time, he complicates the idea of two hostile camps of mountaineers with opposing values, arguing that many climbers of an earlier generation had displayed attitudes similar to those of the New Mountaineers, and that conversely the New Mountaineer was still influenced to some extent by the assumptions of Romantic literature. This chapter also examines the increasingly common claim that direct physical engagement with mountains gave climbers a privileged experience of wild nature that was unavailable to more casual observers.