Olympic Ski Mountaineering, And Mountain Goat Climbing Feats

[MUSIC PLAYING] FLORA LICHTMAN: Hey. I’m Flora Lichtman, and you’re listening to Science Friday. This weekend, the Winter Olympics begin in Milan. And there’s a brand new event, skimo.

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ANNOUNCER 1: Athletes, stack and wrap.

ANNOUNCER 2: Once more, are you ready?

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Appreciate that.

AUDIENCE: Thank you.

MAN: Take your marks, set–

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ANNOUNCER 1: It is go time. Here we go. All 12–

FLORA LICHTMAN: Skimo, or ski mountaineering– it’s a new event. But obviously, mountaineering is not. Here to guide us through the history of skimo and the science connection is Dr. Peter Hansen. He’s a mountaineering expert and professor of history at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. He’s also the author of the book The Summits of Modern Man– Mountaineering After the Enlightenment. Hey, Peter.

PETER HANSEN: Hi. Nice to be here.

FLORA LICHTMAN: What’s up with skimo? What is the deal with this sport?

PETER HANSEN: Well, it’s a new angle on an old activity– two of them, actually, brought into combination. It’s become a new sport over the last 30 years or so. And you start on skis, climbing up a mountain. And there’s a– skins on the bottom of the skis so that you can go uphill on the ski, reach a point where you take them off, put them on your back, sprint or walk or climb up the slope for an extended period, then put the skis back on and ski down in a slalom that’s a set part of the course.

FLORA LICHTMAN: This sounds very difficult. Can I just pop in to say, this sounds hard?

PETER HANSEN: I’ve never tried it. So I can’t say from personal experience. But it looks that way. What really looks hard is to combine all these things together. Just climbing up with skins on the bottom of your skis– that people have done for a long time. Then to sprint up in the– your boots in the snow– that’s not easy.

And then having the endurance to then come back down– the sprint makes that very fast. It’s one loop around. The relays go back and forth and around and around and around. And it’s multiple laps. So there’s a lot of coordination, agility, endurance, strength– reminds a lot of things that makes it an interesting sport.

FLORA LICHTMAN: So obviously, skimo is new at the Olympics. But as you said, mountaineering has been around. Tell us a little bit about the history of mountaineering. And I know that’s a big question. And you’ve written a whole many hundreds of pages book about it. But where does this story begin?

PETER HANSEN: Well, the story of mountaineering as a sport begins in the 18th century. People had been climbing in the mountains, living in the mountains, skiing across the mountains, or using snowshoes and crampons and other things to cross the Alps and other mountain ranges for a long time before then.

But in the 18th century, people wanted to climb the mountains to do scientific research on them about how high they were, what– could people survive a night on the snow overnight, something they didn’t really know. And they wanted to know, which peak was the highest? And they were pretty sure by then that Mont Blanc was. But they needed to confirm this through a series of research.

And so a guy named Jacques Balmat is abandoned by his companions in the snow fields. And he spends the night overnight. He doesn’t suffocate. People thought the snow would absorb all the oxygen or it would– they didn’t actually refer to it in those terms. They just thought it would absorb all the air and you wouldn’t survive. He did. He came back down. And that convinced another doctor to go with him. And they completed the first ascent of Mont Blanc.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Are these early Alpine expeditions like a version of Shackleton or Darwin in the Galapagos? Are they about understanding nature and our environment?

PETER HANSEN: They are. Some of those ascents and attempts to climb the peak were inspired by Horace Bénédict de Saussure, a scientist or naturalist that would have called him at the time, who lived in Geneva. And so Saussure goes to the top of Mont Blanc a year after the first ascent. And he takes up all his instruments to study the temperature, humidity, air pressure, everything.

He uses himself as an instrument for– his taste, smell, how they responded to things differently than at lower elevations, and so forth. And he said he could barely taste anything at the top. He felt like a gourmet invited to a great banquet who couldn’t actually enjoy the feast when he was on the summit.

They really were interested in all kinds of questions about science and nature. It was not divided into the subdisciplines that we know today as fields of science. This is why there were natural historians or natural philosophers, because they studied everything. And so really, that combination of climbing and science was part of the inspiration for mountaineering and its origins.

FLORA LICHTMAN: And we know that other scientific expeditions from this time period were about planting a flag. They were about domination of a– “a new-to-me land,” right?

PETER HANSEN: In the 19th century, yes– less so in the 18th century. By the 1850s, the planting the flag dynamic was extreme. That was the age of empires. So let’s say, for example, in the 1850s, the peak now known as Mount Everest was determined to be the highest in the world.

So the plans to ascend that peak were, in large part, about the British showing that they had domination over their empire and over British India specifically. And that motivation was still very prominent in the 1920s, when they go to make the first expeditions to reach the peak.

So that becomes a high water mark for the flying the flag that extends into this 1980s and then still continues when some set of climbers make the first ascent by someone from that country, they’ll bring the flag on top. But it’s less common now.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Is it different today?

PETER HANSEN: I would say yes. There’s still component of that because one of the scripts that people keep referring to is the man versus the mountain. But in a changing climate, it is almost impossible to continue to think about it in those terms without them seeming very problematic.

And so some of the climbers see themselves as witnesses to climate change. It’s not about the domination. They want to be able to document and explain how their own experience of being in nature is a model for how people should think in new ways about our relationship to the natural world.

FLORA LICHTMAN: I’ve spent a little time hiking in the Alps. And it’s absolutely marvelous. I can’t think of another word. And it’s hard to imagine thinking of those climbs as domination because if you’ve been on a tall mountain, you know that you are but a speck.

PETER HANSEN: Right. There’s an effect of just having that experience and adopt an attitude of humility. Nature and the size of a peak can cut you down to size. You see how you’re but a small piece of a larger whole.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Yes.

PETER HANSEN: And that is a very common experience among climbers and others who go into these peaks. One of the things that people find– some people– problematic about the winter sports, the skiing and so forth, is that it’s not very much about that.

You take the lift up, and you ski down. And it seems more like that expression of the individual in nature, but really cutting their way through the slopes and reaching speed and enjoyment, and so forth. And that’s all about their own individual personal experience.

Ski mountaineering is interesting because on a hill, they have to walk or run up. They’re not taking a lift. The ski mountaineers earn it.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Let’s come down off the mountain for a second. Will you be watching? Do you have a ski dog in this race?

PETER HANSEN: No, but I’ll certainly be watching. The sprints are those short things, maybe 3 minutes or so. That’ll be fun. And that’s got that bump-and-run “elbows up” potential for the competitors.

But then the mixed double relay– to me, that’s the really interesting one to watch. It’s much longer. It might take a half an hour for– to do the race because you do lap after lap after lap. But there’s a tension and an interest to it. I think it’ll open up an interest in the sport in new ways to see it in the Olympics.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Peter Hansen is a mountaineering expert and professor of history at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Peter, happy Olympics watching.

PETER HANSEN: Thank you.

FLORA LICHTMAN: After the break, we meet the GOAT of mountaineering, the mountain goat. Stick around.

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Sure, humans can get up a mountain with the help of ropes, crampons, maybe a ski lift for me and some of the rest of us. But as you struggle towards the summit, you might find someone else already up there, a mountain goat, truly the GOAT of Alpine ascent.

Dr. Kevin White has made a career out of studying mountain goats in the mountains of Western North America. And he has a particular interest in the risks they face, from wolves to starvation to avalanches. He’s a wildlife ecologist at the University of Alaska Southeast. Kevin, welcome to Science Friday.

KEVIN WHITE: Thank you for having me.

FLORA LICHTMAN: For people who don’t have a perfect fixed mental picture of the mountain goats you study, give us a description.

KEVIN WHITE: So mountain goats are a remarkable species. They’re an animal that weighs upwards of 350 pounds for males, females being smaller, more in the neighborhood of about 200 pounds. But what’s particularly notable is their white woolly coat, a coat that really enables them to withstand extreme temperatures down to 40 degrees below 0 at times. It’s 8 to 10 long and white-colored. So they’re well camouflaged in snowy mountain environments.

FLORA LICHTMAN: They’re very fluffy-looking.

KEVIN WHITE: Yeah, that’s correct. In fact, early explorers mistaken them for polar bears, which is the species that they were familiar with from traveling in the Arctic.

FLORA LICHTMAN: I think of iconic pictures of them on a tiny, little ledge. Do you have a story from seeing them in the wild where you were wowed by their climbing abilities?

KEVIN WHITE: Yeah, many times. And sometimes, you’ll watch them tiptoeing across a steep mountain ledge and expecting that at any moment, they might just slip because the environment has snow and ice and is really slippery. But they’re just so amazingly surefooted.

And then it’s particularly fun to watch the young mountain goats that are born in mid-May. They’re very precocious. And oftentimes, they form little bands and– playing with each other, playing king of the mountain, and in these very precarious situations. But they’re just so amazing in their ability to balance and navigate in this type of what seems to us to be dangerous terrain.

FLORA LICHTMAN: As a parent, I’m thinking of my young little kids trying to navigate a balance beam. And I’m like, ah! Are they born, really, with the ability to get up these steep cliffs?

KEVIN WHITE: Well, initially when they’re born, of course, there’s a period of a few days, week or so, when they’re just really getting their feet under them. And their moms are hunkered down in a safe, protected area up in the cliffs. And it takes them a little bit of time just before they build up strength and start gaining some “locomotory” coordination. But it’s an important part of their adaptations for living in those environments.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Do the mom goats look nervous?

KEVIN WHITE: [CHUCKLING]

I think that they’re just fearless in those types of environments. Their sense of risk and fear is quite different than ours, I would say.

FLORA LICHTMAN: What special adaptations do they have? How do they do it?

KEVIN WHITE: One of the key things relates to their hooves. They have what we call a hard keratinous sheath. And so keratin is the material that our fingernails are made of and, typically, the material that we think of as hooves being composed of. And so then that surrounds a soft pad, similar to what dogs have.

What that enables them to do is they can use that hard sheath that’s surrounding the soft pad to dig in and gain purchase, like in a crack on a cliff, for example. But then if it’s a wet slabby surface, they can just use that pad to grip.

FLORA LICHTMAN: The perfect climbing boot, it sounds like.

KEVIN WHITE: Exactly.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Is there anything besides those toe pads? Is it also how their body’s built?

KEVIN WHITE: So they have very strong, muscular shoulders. And they’re narrow-bodied. And so their narrow body morphology enables them, as you might expect, to walk on a narrow ledge. And they have a very gymnastic capacity. You wouldn’t necessarily think that until you watch them long enough and see their ability to leap or sometimes maneuver. In some instances, if it’s a really narrow cliff that just dead-ends, they might really slowly rise up on their hind feet and then spin around and then go back the way that they came to get out of this kind of situation. Of course, they have just extraordinary balance, as you might expect.

FLORA LICHTMAN: It sounds like they have the goat version of an Alex Honnold body, the guy who just scaled the building on Netflix.

KEVIN WHITE: That’s right. Actually, one of my early favorite memories about mountain goats involved a famous climber that preceded Alex Honnold named Galen Rowell. And he was climbing in an area called the Cirque of the Unclimbables in the Northwest Territories.

And he was talking about this observation he had of a mountain goat that they watched climb. What he said was like a 5.9 pitch, which is something that climbers might generally be roped up on and just being amazed at their ability to scale some of these cliff faces that are pretty challenging, even for humans.

FLORA LICHTMAN: I know that part of your work centers on avalanches. How much of a risk are avalanches to mountain goats? And is that one of the top threats?

KEVIN WHITE: That’s a great question. Some of the key risks to mountain goats involve predation. And that’s why animals are using these steep, rugged terrains, to avoid the risk of predation by wolves or bears, for example.

And then malnutrition can be a significant source of mortality if you have severe winter conditions. Disease seems to play a relatively minor role. And we always knew that avalanches were a factor that influenced mountain goats. But it wasn’t until our recent studies that we really realized how impactful that was.

And it’s an interesting situation because mountain goats are able to avoid the risk of one source of mortality predation by inhabiting steep, rugged terrain. But then that puts them at the risk of avalanches. What we learned is that avalanches comprise about 35% of all mortalities, about one-third, and that in severe years, over 20% of a population can be killed by avalanches.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Does changing climate make for more avalanches? Do you see more avalanches as the climate warms?

KEVIN WHITE: That’s a great question and something that there’s been some work done in different mountain ranges globally. There’s different circumstances that can create bad avalanche conditions. And so if you can have a huge amount of snow that’s deposited in a giant storm– and that can create instabilities and cause an avalanche. But you can also have a warm event where it might rain on the surface of the snow, then freeze and create a really slick surface.

And then you can have a relatively modest amount of snow that’s deposited on that and also create an avalanche. And so sometimes, avalanches occur when there’s a lot of snow. But sometimes, it can occur in years when there’s not necessarily a lot of snow. And so it’s hard to say at this stage until more studies are done exactly how we might expect avalanches’ frequency and occurrence to change going into the future in our particular area.

FLORA LICHTMAN: I can’t let you leave without hearing a story. Will you tell me about your most memorable experience with a mountain goat?

KEVIN WHITE: One of the most remarkable things that happened involves an instance where we radio-collared a female mountain goat during the wintertime. The mountain goat ended up dying due to malnutrition.

And in the spring, a black bear came along and found the mountain goat that died and was scavenging on it and, in the course of scavenging on it, took the radio collar off of the mountain goat and put it on, and then wandered off with this mountain goat radio collar, including crossing glaciers. And we ended up tracking it for a year and a half. And eventually, the collar released, as scheduled. And we found it in a salmonberry patch.

FLORA LICHTMAN: That’s really shocking, that the bear was like, you know what? I’m going to put this on. What do I look like with this on? Let’s try it.

KEVIN WHITE: That’s right. Bears are just so curious. They just try anything. It was hard to believe at first until we finally put all the puzzle pieces together and figured out exactly what happened.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Dr. Kevin White is a wildlife ecologist at the University of Alaska Southeast. He’s based in Haines, Alaska. Thank you for listening. You listeners really are the GOAT, and we want to hear from you. The listener line is always open for your bleats– 877-4-SCIFRI. This episode was produced by Charles Bergquist. I’m Flora Lichtman. We’ll see you next time.

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