Some 'heroes' may be more crazy than heroic

By: DOUG ESSER - Associated Press | Saturday, September 23, 2006 4:37 PM PDT ∞

Those adventurers who climbed the tallest mountains or crossed polar ice or attempted extreme flights or voyages ---- were they crazy?

Yes, sometimes and in some ways, writes Geoff Powter in "Strange and Dangerous Dreams: The Fine Line Between Adventure and Madness" (The Mountaineers Books, $22.95).

People like the "mad Yorkshireman" Maurice Wilson, who planned to get a jump on climbing Mount Everest in 1933 by crashing a plane at the 14,000-foot level. His plane was impounded in India but he disguised himself as a monk to travel to Everest. where he died in an act of either irrepressible will or suicide-by-adventure.

Powter is a magazine writer, climber and psychologist who counsels clients in Canmore, Alberta, in the Canadian Rockies. He writes that there's often a fine line between emotionally healthy people who push themselves to the limit and troubled souls acting out aberrant lives.

He says "contradictions lie near the heart of many great adventurers."

In "Strange and Dangerous Dreams," Powter sympathetically delves into the motives behind the glory for about a dozen characters. Among them:

- Canadian Earl Denman, who was drawn to Everest in 1947, unprepared but convinced he could be the first to climb the world's tallest mountain. His attempt at the summit with Sherpa Tenzing Norgay ended in humiliation. In 1953 Norgay reached the summit of Everest with New Zealander Edmund Hillary.

- Meriwether Lewis, who killed himself three years after returning with William Clark from the Corps of Discovery's historic exploration of the Northwest. Apparently burdened by fame and depressed, he survived long enough to say he shot himself to "deprive his enemies the pleasure of doing it."

- Polar explorer Robert Falcon Scott, who insisted that manpower rather than sled dogs was the noble way to travel in the Antarctic. He lost the race to the South Pole to Norwegian Roald Amundsen in 1911, and then lost his life. The British culture that ennobled sacrifice apparently led him to accept martyrdom.

- The manic Donald Crowhurst, who, doomed by obligations, tried to fake sailing around the world in 1968 but never left the Atlantic. His trimaran was left drifting at sea, his body never found.

- Britain's Arctic hero Sir John Franklin, who went looking for the Northwest Passage for the empire in 1845 and in fatal hubris led all 127 of his men to a wintry death by disease and starvation.

- The 1930's "Garbo of the skies," Jean Batten, who made headlines by flying solo from England to Australia. The elegant aviator and early feminist seduced supporters in her pursuit of fame and ruined the lives of those around her.

- Aleister Crowley, better known for sex, drugs and Satanism, who was one of the first climbers on K2 in 1901. He claimed his "magick" helped him climb mountains.

"Strange and Dangerous Dreams" gives the adventure crowd some exciting stories, turbulent heroes and mixed motivations to ponder.

Apparently, there are reasons to climb a mountain other than because it's there.

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