What is light and fast alpine mountaineering?
Light and Fast alpine climbing is an approach to traditional mountaineering that seeks to leave behind everything but the minimum gear required to reach the objective under the assumed conditions. One who is experienced might strip away everything that was not used on previous climbs, leaving no room for error. Yvon Chouinard’s book Climbing Ice, published in 1978 contained one of the first descriptions of light and fast techniques and ethics. I recall his description of an alpine climb in Chamonix where Yvon and a girl friend passed a heavily equipped group, summited, rappelled, finally anchoring off his shoelaces and returned to the restaurant hours before the other party returned. Mark Twight and James Martin in their book Extreme Alpinism, published in 1999, describe advanced Light and Fast techniques. Remember, great climbers are smart, gifted, trained, experienced and dedicated athletes. There is as huge a difference between a gifted professional climber and a weekend climber as
