Here is a translation from Babelfish - I dont speak French so cant do it myself. As usual with Babelfish, there are problems but you can get a gist of the article from it.
As some collect the stamps, others accumulate the tops. Be like winter, good weather, bad weather, nothing stops them: 46, 67, 115 and more if affinities. A peakbagger is confessed.
The air of June is hot, wet and heavy. In front of me draws up a true wall of virginals to the tangled up branches. As much to say an immense massage glove! No path carries out to my objective: the completely wooded top of Scar Ridge, an obscure peak of New Hampshire.
I will find there no point of view worthy of this name, but rather a cylinder of plastic nailed with a tree, in which a small book is. I will affix my signature there, beside those few other the strange human ones which, like me, seek to press each 100 higher top of New England. Scar Ridge will be my 99e. To attest of my presence, a self-portrait will act as summit photograph. The dial of my GPS indicates the top to 3,4 km, right in front of, beyond the wall of virginals. Suddenly, a question, that I say, a revelation as simplistic as striking down, paralyses me and monopolizes all my thoughts: "But what I insane here? "
The fever of the tops
This desire to draw up a list of coveted tops and notching, one by one, those which one climbs, bears a name: the peakbagging (term which does not have its equivalent in the language of Bernard Voyer). Literally, that amounts "putting tops in its bag". Starting points of this collection, of the clubs lay down the rules of the game, draw up a list and sanction the success of the participants by means of escutcheons, certificates and honnor rolls (see framed).
If the practice is increasingly popular, the principle is not new: in Scotland, a list of 284 tops of more than 3 000 feet exists since 1891. One century later, the lists multiplied everywhere on planet, to give rise to certain celebrities, the such prestigious 14 tops of 8 000 meters of the Himalayas or Seven Summits, the most top of each seven continent. Non-existent still in Quebec *, the official lists closest to on our premises are in the south of the border (see framed) and attract inhabitant of Quebec more and more. Sign increasing popularity, women and children enter from now on the play.
Thus relieved here me is, I am not alone in my "madness"! But what justifies the peakbaggers to continue these lists? "It is a challenge which I launch out, an objective that I will seek to reach", answers Danny Sanfaçon, a hiker of Charlesbourg which, with his/her Karl brother, supplemented several series in the North-East of the United States "When I meet difficult climatic conditions or that my physical form is not with go, I push to the maximum, I seek to exceed me in order to reach the top." This tendency to rub with its limits seems largely divided by the followers. But why the top? Doesn't the approach get the same feeling? "Certain people measure all in results", answers on this subject Charles Leduc, of Montreal "I am a guy of results and the top makes measurable the extent of my efforts" According to him, the approach does not miss attractions, on the contrary. However, the top is an easily identifiable goal "To reach this top, it is the result, the success. To make a comparison, I see the approach like the pleasure, whereas the top, it is the orgasme ", says it, half smile.
This metaphor libertine falls by the way, because if to reach the top corresponds, for the peakbagger, with a kind of orgasme, very cosmic is, why this last can it be carried out only while systematically changing "partner"? Why climb 115 different tops and not remake 10 prettier? "the list is useful to me as a guide which will give me the directions to be followed", known as Mark Styczynski, of Albany (NY). An opinion shared by the Sanfaçon brothers: "the lists make us discover areas and tops which we never would undoubtedly have visited"
One of the regulators of Internet site Views from the signal, alias peakbagr, brings to him also an interesting nuance: "the lists give us an additional motivation when one is confronted with heat, the rain, the cold, the flies, the morning departures, the long hours of road or mud. One thus has imperishable memories of single experiments, which one would not have lived if one climbed only the tops stripped by one day sunny of summer "
Nathalie Ménard, who should become this autumn first Québécoise to officially supplement the 115 tops of 4 000 feet of the North-East, caught Front puncture only all recently the ", I followed especially my in love peakbagger. The rando was more one succession of impressions that figures for me. When I knew that I would be perhaps the first québécoise, I started to count the tops on my list! "
A worship of the ego?
The peakbagging attracts also its batch of dénigreurs, whose comments are often marked by a dissension in the field of the values, even by incomprehension. A frequent comment, raised by Peter Miller, reprocessed American psychologist and assiduous hiker ("but not peakbagger", it specifies), relates to the report/ratio maintained with nature "One should not regard the mountain as a thing, a conquest. The mountain is impressed of spirituality and it should be respected. I do not like the sufficiency of some peakbaggers avid of exploits and of recognition ", it entrusts. However, several impassioned mountain are recognized like large lovers of nature. Alain Chevrette, one montréalais which climbed 46 times the 46 tops of Adirondacks, in more of to have supplemented a plethora of various lists, takes part regularly in maintenance work of the paths, work often organized by another famous peakbagger Canadian of Ottawa "So some see the top like a target to be reached and the forest like a simple obstacle to be crossed, large good makes them", answers Charles Leduc. "If for others nature is a temple, a spiritual place, so much better also [. ] I find that curious when it is asked me why I climb 40 mountains in one year. Does one find curious somebody who plays 40 parts of hockey in one winter or somebody who goes in Nautilus three times per week during one year? "And to add: "It is false to think that all the peakbaggers are avid of recognition and exploits. All is played with oneself "
Oneself. Isn't this precisely there only one reproaches the impassioned peakbaggers? Are we in the presence of a worship of the ego which encourages to take useless risks or to neglect the family and the friends? Last March, two days of unforeseen bivouac in full blizzard, close of the top of the Lafayette mount in New Hampshire, cost the life Brenda Cox, peakbaggeuse of experiment. In spite of an execrable weather, it and her husband tried to reach the top.
"Obviously, I am always disappointed when I do not reach the top. If I feel that my equipment is adequate and that I have competences necessary, I will do everything to arrive there. But I do not hesitate to turn back when it is necessary ", known as on this subject Danny. And to add: "For me, the rando is not a trip egocentric person. On the contrary, all is centered on the meetings which I make, at the beautiful time that I live with my friends, but especially with my brother "
Charles has just had a child. As for Karl, it shares its life with Eve, who prefers the baladi with the mountain by far. Do they have the impression which them passion leads them to neglect their close relations? "I decreased the frequency of my exits much since the birth of my boy. In any event, I do not want any more very to type me eight hours of car to climb a top. I hope on the contrary to support the family exits ", answers Charles.
For Karl, the hours of road do not pose any problem "It is what I like more of the peakbagging. the voyage. When I cross the border, I smell myself elsewhere, in another country, and I take down daily newspaper "That Eve thinks about it? "That took a little time to me before I accept his many absences the weekend. But I include/understand what it can feel and I see well, with its return, with which point that made him good. And I also know that its passion does not transfer with obsession "
The diagnosis
Would obsession compulsion be there the gasoline of the peakbagging? "It is necessary to be careful in the establishment of a diagnosis of obsessional-compulsif disorder", advances the psychologist Richard Locas. "It is necessary to know to trace the line between passion and obsession, the eccentric and the compulsif one. If the person loses the contact with the reality or the control of itself, there is a danger. If, on its return of excursion, it suffers and saw a severe lack which prevents it from functioning, if its activity becomes a necessary loophole which harms its personal relations and becomes more harmful than beneficial, then one can approach obsession compulsion. But I do not believe that there is more case in the sportsmen than in the company as a General "
Thus reassured here me is! As Bertrand Côté said it to me, a peakbagger sherbrookois: "If they were not lists, I will never have drunk a coffee bio in the small village funky of Jamaica to Vermont, nor lived the most beautiful voyage father-wire with the Baxter park, where I realized that my 16 year old son was not Here any more one little boy" who summarizes all! When I reconsider at all the good times that I lived in mountain during 10 last years, with all the friendly bonds which I wove, at the community of the peakbaggers where everyone ends up knowing itself and appreciating themselves, by despizing linguistic and cultural barriers, I want only one: to sink in the massage glove which sets up in front of me and to find this famous plastic cylinder at the top of Scar Ridge. I am in a hurry to read there the messages left by Karl, Danny, Nathalie, Bertrand, Liza, John, Tim and the others.