Alpine Starts
You need all the hours you can get— you better start early (or go very late).
Waking up well before dawn is something I rarely regret.
An alarm going off at a time when there’s a chance some of my more Dionysian friends are still awake from the previous “night” means I’m embarking on some kind of adventure as my reveling friends are nearing the conclusion of their own. There exists a symmetry here—we all have bleary eyes, are awake when all good people are sleeping, and are seeking the extremes of the human condition. This parallelism highlights the absurdity of our choices. Oh, the things we do just to feel something.
If I’m leaving from my house, I find myself preparing a speedy breakfast, trusting Past Me to have properly packed my gear the night before, and throwing my car into drive after failing to find a song appropriate for the strange hour. With groggy eyes, I begin the day’s initial transit a lone car on the road, driving past the empty main arteries of town with stoplights flashing red and yellow, thinking about the most efficient path to a source of caffeine to do battle against my confused circadian rhythm.
When I do come across the rare companion car, there’s an implicit understanding that passes between the drivers: “You’re up for a reason.” There’s a kind of respect and mutual goodwill present that makes me feel confident that I’ll never encounter predawn road rage.
Maybe I’m picking up some friends to join in on what is admittedly a silly quest to go climb up some scary rocks for no reason, or get to the top of a very certain tall mountain, or secure a parking spot before a bunch of other crazy people arrive even earlier than we do. My friends and I share this ridiculous motivation enough to be meeting up in a Trader Joes parking lot at 4:55am, and that kind of camaraderie goes a long way in fighting against the inertia of sleep.
Caffeine-induced mania is common. Nonsense jokes abound, anticipation builds, and logistics are reviewed and clarified as we near our destination, which is usually just the starting point of the real rest of the day.
In climbing some mountains, I’ve started hiking really early—sometimes early enough, like, 11pm, to make the use of the word “early” feel inadequate. These alpine starts, not unlike the instant coffee brand of the same name, simultaneously suck while also being absolutely amazing. You get to experience the closest thing possible to time travel: hiking in the dark, with only the glow of the moon or a headlamp to guide your eyes, melt hours into minutes. With such little stimulation, a trance-like state takes over. On the way back down, in the light of day, I can never believe just how far I made it in the darkness.
Really, these early mornings are always about transportation: driving to a ski mountain, starting the ascent of a mountain, and catching a flight are all about getting to a new place. In those quiet, shadowy hours before dawn you leave one physical place and begin moving to a new one, but, in reality, it’s not usually about the physical place. You’re usually going somewhere new physically in order to facilitate a kind of mental transportation.
Getting to the top of the mountain is the point, yes. That is what prompts me to sleep in my car at the trailhead for three hours with my friend who moves around in their sleep a lot. But I also know that it’s not about where, but who I’m with, and what I am experiencing, that truly motivates these alpine starts. The satisfaction I earn from pushing myself; the jubilation at sharing an achievement with a friend; the mature earnestness of deciding to turn back and being proud of my decisionmaking.
It takes serious work and plenty of time to arrive at these self-actualizing emotional states. That goes for the alpine start just as it applies to my friends that are still awake and loaded while my alarm blares. You need all the hours you can get— you better start early (or go very late).
If you liked this post, check out Alpine Starts II.
Michael, thanks for the time you put into this. When reflecting on your closing paragraphs, I would add from personal experience that unless the outing is done solo, then the motivation for the alpine start comes primarily from the "who I'm with" side of things.
I've found the drive to spend time in the mountains alone to be rooted in the "what I'm experiencing" side of things, specifically in the desire to manage risk and make decisions during an outing with a complex (yet appropriate) hazard profile and significantly smaller margins for error than would exist in a group. It's challenging, empowering, and there's a certain high that comes from intentionally maintaining your desired distance from the metaphorical "edge". However, when I'm pondering an alpine start with a group, regardless of the objective (and sometimes the quality of sleep that I got the night before), my feelings and motivation early in the morning are primarily driven by the interpersonal interactions that I expect for the day. A day with close friends and partners is much easier to stomach than one with a group or partner that has presented as challenging in the past/on preceding days of a trip. In the latter case, I've found that extrinsic factors (financial, or professional development) oftentimes drive my subdued enthusiasm at zero dark thirty.
There are numerous confounding factors that go into this early morning temperament: temperature, snow/ice/rock quality, objective type/difficulty, discipline of activity, aesthetic considerations, hazard, fatigue, burnout, etc... but I always find it to be a fascinating exercise to pick apart the motivations that drive myself and others into the hills. Are our motivations, while inherently slightly self-centered, pushing us to grow, build resilience, and return home rejuvenated and able to carry these lessons learned from the mountains into our every day lives? Or are they governed by a desire to go further, faster, higher, and "better" in a way that causes us to accept excessive risk and could end catastrophically? I personally believe that for every person, it depends on the day. I'd be keen to hear your thoughts on this, ideally over a beer :).
Class, brilliance, and mmm