Is nature doomed to be caught between consumption and prohibition?
What can mountaineering in the Alps teach us about our changing relationship to the outdoors and can we build a future that does not further alienate us from the natural world?
This post was first published as part of my dissertation Mountains of Modernity, and although I’m not out on the ocean sailing, it explores some of the questions and dynamics that I’m trying to grapple with as I sail from Spain to Australia. Also: I’ve migrated my newsletter to Substack, where I’ll keep sharing fieldnotes and insights from my rogue ethnography. Check it out!
June 2024. White snow and pale blue ice reflect the bright summer sun rays as we move across the glaciers flowing down from the Mont Blanc Massif. At 3800m, we can feel the thin air, and I am panting as I try to keep up with the pace of Ariel and Eric. We are heading towards the Areté du Cosmic on Aguille du Midi: The peak where we disembarked from the gondola ride that transported us almost 3000 altitude meters from the center of Chamonix. Ariel and Eric are both mountain guides and ski instructors from Argentina and work here for a few months every year. We know each other from way back when we were students at the guiding academy in Buenos Aires, and later lived together in the Patagonian mountain village of El Chaltén, where I spent most of my 20s guiding, trekking, and climbing.
Ariel is my climbing buddy and has insisted that I should visit him in Chamonix for years. Every spring, he travels here to ski, climb, and guide, and this year I have finally made time in my busy career-focused big-city schedule—friends first, right? But let’s drop the pretense: I have also been drawn to the French Alps with a desire to get a better sense of the cultural history of the area since I’m writing my PhD on alpine cultures and our changing relation to mountains.
Chamonix is often described as the cradle of alpinism. Modern mountaineering is generally believed to have begun in the 18th century with the first ascent of Mont Blanc in 1786. The guiding company of Chamonix was founded in 1821, but traces its history back to 1741 when two British explorers developed their fascination with the glaciers in the region, recruiting villagers as local guides. The early explorations of the European Alps were fuelled both by a desire to understand the geological processes that had shaped the landscape as well as by a nascent romantic sensibility towards the natural landscape that viewed climbing as a way of reaching for the divine.
Climbing in the Alps today seems like less of a spiritual pursuit of “communing with Nature” and Ariel describes the mountain town as an “alpine circus”. He enthusiastically educated me on the contrasts between climbing in the Alps and in Patagonia. Here, everything is close and accessible: “Look at the gondola to Aiguille du Midi, built in 1955”—Ariel argues it must be one of the most impressive features of mountain infrastructure to date.
Every day, it transports hordes of tourists to the top of a summit that would otherwise only be reachable to seasoned climbers. From the summit, another gondola ride transports people across vast glaciers to the northern slopes of Mont Blanc to Italy and Courmayeur in the Val d’Aosta. Surrounding valleys are criss-crossed by ski-lifts and dotted with hotels, restaurants, huts, and infrastructure catering to tourists from around the world. It mostly serves the affluent, and being a tourist here is costly by almost any standard. While the landscape reminds me of Patagonia—jagged peaks, vast glaciers, steep slopes—the infrastructure on Mont Blanc reduces the sense of thrill and adventure I usually associate with these ‘sublime’ landscapes.
After our descent down the soft, snow-covered Northern ridge of Aiguille du Midí to the glacier below, Ariel, Eric, and I climb the Southern ridge back to the gondola complex. The large installations are impressive and house a scenic glass box protruding onto a 1000-meter precipice, a 4D cinema, an interactive mountaineering museum marketed as “the highest one ever built”, a gift shop, café, and restaurants. The ridge is crowded with climbers speaking Norwegian, Swedish, English, French, and German—at least.
After spending some time waiting patiently in line, a narrow balcony of snow and rock leads us to the final ascent up to the scenic balconies of the gondola complex. At the entrance of the tunnel that leads to the cable-car, a big sign warns us that camping on the glacier is forbidden. Further ahead, tourists are lined up next to the souvenir store, queuing to return to Chamonix. We have a reserved time slot for our descent. The attraction is so popular that rides must be booked in advance.
Back in the town, we get a burger each, devouring our food on a bench in the main square while we appreciate the spectacular view of the alpine peaks where we’ve just been climbing. Used to walking for days, sleeping in base camps, and carrying heavy equipment when climbing in Patagonia, today’s experience hardly qualifies as mountaineering to any of us.
Here, in the birthplace of alpinism, the taming of the outdoors is brought into relief like few other places. Together, the expansion of state and market to the high peaks and vast glaciers of the Alps is transforming romantic practices and engagements with the mountains according to the dynamics of commodification and bureaucratization; of consumption and prohibition.
These patterns are observable from the high Alpine peaks to the beaches of Cancun. They are re-shaping the way humans relate to the landscape globally, and it does not take much imagination to understand that if they prevail, humanity’s relationship to the natural world will soon be transformed to a hyper-regulated object for consumption under the pretense of conservation and care for a vulnerable ecosystem.
In this process, we lose something: the chance to engage and interact with the world in a spontaneous, playful, and resonant way. As landscapes are transformed from expressions of the divine to objects for consumption, we lose a part of our humanity. Are there other ways to nurture practices of care for the environment than through the machines of the market and the state? The answer to this question might change the shape of the future that we’re building.