Desert, Mountain, Sea

This book contains three adventure stories, all the stories feature real adventurous woman.

The first woman is Robyn Davidson. She walked nearly 3,000km across the Australian desert with her dog and four camels. The second woman is Arlene Blum. She led a team of ten women to the top of Annapurna which is one of the highest mountain in the world. The third woman is Naomi James. She sailed around the world alone.

I particularly liked second story which inspired me to gather information about climbing method(Style).
In the story, only two women of the team had reached the summit of Annapurna. I wonder if the rest of the team member climbed the mountain only to support two summiteers. Later, I was led to know that they use the "polar method".
What the method does, is sets base camp at safe place, and slowly climb toward summit setting one front-line camp after another. A small number of team members are given chance to attack the summit, and many members of team only do setting camps and moving equipments from lower camp to upper camp. The "polar method" is safe method, however it's needed a lot of time, human resources and money.

Alpine-Style（rush tactics） is the other method of climbing. In this method, all members climb toward summit together and do everything by them selves(setting camp, carrying equipments etc.) I read somewhere that this method is supported by the majority of alpinist.

I'm surprised to know there are many method of climbing.
This book got me interested in the climbing and motivated to climb mountain. I want to try to climb mountain in Nagano Pref. this summer.

Desert, Mountain, Sea

In this book, there are three stories about adventure, Desert, Mountain and Sea. In each story, there are dangerous and someone or something died, especially the adventure of Mountain, Annapurna is most serious disaster. I like the story of sea. In Naomi’s story, she traveled to sail single-handed across the world’s most dangerous seas. During her dangerous sailing, she kept asking herself the question: ‘Why am I doing this?’ I understood her feeling a little bit. Sometimes I want to travel somewhere else without no reason. When I was a student, I travelled Huhhot, Nei Mongol in China. I just wanted to ride on horse and race around. But when I arrived at Huhhot in March, there is no grass so I couldn’t ride on horse. Then I thought why I was doing there?

7. Do you agree or disagree with these ideas? Why, or why not?
7.4. Expeditions like these are very expensive, and it would be better to spend the money on something else.

I disagree with the idea. I think that these kinds of adventures would be sometimes important even if it costs a lot. I think it depends on what these travelers can give to people. If they give us bravery and impression, it would be considered of value. I think it would be important for adventurers to try something difficult. On the other hand, if they do it only for themselves and there is no difficulty, I think it would be not important like my travel in Huhhot.
Here is an example. Have you ever heard of the name, Nobukazu Kuriki, who is a young alpinist. He is now trying to climb Mt. Everest alone without oxygen. There is no alpinist who could succeed to climb Mt. Everest alone without oxygen in Japan. He used to be Hikikomori, but now he is one of the most famous alpinists in Japan. His purpose climbing mountain is that his adventures give people bravery and impression. He needed a lot of money to climb Mt. Everest. I hope he will succeed to climb Mt. Everest and give impression all of people in the world.

Image via Wikipedia

Desert, Mountain, Sea

Masao Kuroda