Feature

Fifty-five year old Maciej Berbeka is one of the world’s most experienced and accomplished mountain climbers, part of the Polish “winter warrior” contingency who've set numerous firsts in the world as far as climbing the tallest mountains in the most unfavourable conditions are concerned. He’s reached the peak of Mt. Everest and made a failed attempt at K2 that nearly cost him his life.

He's also climbed with Simon Yates, one of the two climbers whose story is told in the astonishing and gut-wrenching documentary Into the Void: a story about what happens when you climb a 21,000 mountain, break your leg falling into a crevasse, and your partner has to cut your rope in order to save his own life. I would admit to digressing, but this is the stuff of mountain climbing. It makes your heart weep and your body shake. Miracles are common.

Berbeka’s father was himself a mountain climber, but was killed on an ascent in the French Alps when Maciej was ten years old; a fact I mention wary of it being exploitative, but one which goes some small distance in helping explain how a man makes death-teasing his profession. When you examine the joy with which mountain climbers approach their summits, the phrase 'death-teasing' begins to make more and less sense simultaneously, like the paradox of those who suffer from severe vertigo and yet can’t help but jump to their deaths.  

But one mystical morning, in Zakopane, Poland, I did not know any of this. Olek, my deceptively turtle-poised uncle, having picked me up from Krakow airport the day before, had fully settled into his duty as the appointed tour guide in what was my official return to the Motherland after twenty four years.

“Krzysztof, let’s go on a beautiful hike, you’ll see Morskie Oko, the largest lake in the Tatras. You will remember this scenery for the rest of your life. It will be super.”

I told my uncle that as long as there was life and adventure in our quest, I was deeply interested.

“You have good shoes?”
“Running shoes.”
“Nothing better?”
“No.”
“Running shoes will be OK, then. I think.”

At six in the morning Maciej Berbeka picked us up in his four-door rugged terrain vehicle and we drove to the base of Poland’s southernmost and tallest mountain range, the Tatra. He packed our back-packs with tea, some food and what should have alarmed me more than it did, professional looking rope coils, helmets, and climbing gear. But “a hike is a hike”, I thought, mentally practising my Polish colloquialisms. The morning air was waking up.

As we started walking a gentle slope, the mountains regally revealed themselves. There was snow near the clouds and in the shadowy facets of the mountains.  

“That one is ours,” Berbeka announced, pointing to a precipitously pointy, craggy mass of enormous stone. It wasn’t the tallest of the peaks, but it had a haughty aura of defiance, sticking out like an angry fist tensed in revolutionary fervour. “That’s Mnich. We’ll hike up as far as we can and approach it from the back.” “Approach” seemed gentle enough, I thought.

The hike toward our peak took three or four hours, I forget which. It was early, I had nowhere to be, I had no watch, and the scenery below us was too beautiful to worry about something non-existent like time. Big, loose stones, translucent and limpid brooks of melted snow-water running down hill in minor cascades, sprightly trees, turquoise lakes shining like stolen jewels.

Every hour or so we’d find some relatively flat ledge and wipe the sweat from our brows, and would either put on or take off layers, depending on whether we were on a shady, snow-covered or sunny side of the mountain.

A perky hike like this was making my quads strain and ache and felt exhilarating. We talked of adventure stories, Into the Wild, animals and athletes and the delusions of desire. Often we were silent and the sound of our poles hitting a stone or digging into the snow was all there was to hear. Hiking has a way of rejuvenating the spirit like an elixir or an oasis; the sharp purity of the air feels clean and you can drink as much of it as it takes to dissolve your inner pollution.  

We arrived at our final ledge, drank some water and Maciej put on his mountain gear while helping Olek and myself put on ours: harness, rope clips, helmet - check. Maciej changed his hiking shoes for mountaineering shoes; I merely double-checked to see if my running shoes were still attached to my feet. They were. We were now a couple of hundred metres from the peak.

One difference between hiking and climbing a mountain, is that the scale of time versus distance covered changes drastically. Hiking from our starting point at the base of the lake to the last non-vertiginous ledge took a few hours of hearty up-hill ascent. Climbing the last few hundred metres also took a few hours.

But the more palpable difference between the two is that the hours spent hiking were tiring and cleansing, but the two hours spent climbing were terrifying and life-transforming. If it weren’t a web-page aesthetics faux-pas, I would capitalise Terrifying and Life-Transforming, and make them flash and blink in rainbow colours.  

I don’t think I’m much more of a coward than the next guy, though I do consciously avoid looking down from high places. As we began our climb – rope gear and mountain climbing apparatus in full effect – I felt like I might have watched Vertigo one time too many, meaning once. Plus, I’ve never found myself clinging with the tips of my blood-flushed nails to the sheer face of a mountain before, with nothing behind me but nothing, my shoes dangling in quasi-thin air, and just a line of rope between me and a fairly gory death.

At least that’s the way my non-rational reptilian brain perceived the uncomfortable situation. As far as I could tell, my uncle had promised me a friendly stroll or splashing around in some lake or other; contemplating death while hanging on to life was an unexpected departure from the morning's breezy itinerary.

But our literally fearless guide Maciej Berbeka (he would disagree: “It’s because I’m just as scared as anyone else that I’m still alive today”) was brilliant and technically flawless and thoroughly encouraging throughout. In the most challenging spots he told Olek and me exactly where to put our hands and feet and exactly what to look for in the next nudge upwards. “Remember the lessons we practised on the way up.”

Why do something like this at all? It’s hard to describe in a way that makes sense when sitting on your sofa in a living room with a bowl of crisps in hand and a solid floor beneath you. But in a moment when going up feels impossible and going down even less likely, one’s life changes. When you’re sitting on top of a peak, with the theory of relativity and nuclear physics making more sense than how on earth you’re going to get back down again, trust in the new faith you’ve been infused with going up, because you’ll need all of it on your way back down.

Death, with a capital D finally makes sense, and its absence (so far), transforms life from a mere something that is into something that is unlikely and therefore beautiful.  And maybe think about giving a generous tip to the guide who holds all the ropes and clips and truly guides you to yourself because when you do get back down and drink a cold, frosty mug of beer, it will be the best one of your life, which has only just begun with this first sip.

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About the writer:

Freelance writer and photographer Krzys Piekarski is a Polish-born New Yorker who also teaches writing and literature at the University of Texas. He is currently collaborating on a full-length travel book with Texan sailor Ben Edelstein who has recently returned to the US after 8 years circumnavigating the globe.

For more information on Poland visit our Destination Guide