An Alternative History of Mountain Guiding in America

*Royal Robbins atop El Cap in Yosemite after his historic solo of the Muir Wall, 1966.*

In the spring of 1966, the three greatest American climbers of their generation approached the final pitch of the Eiger Direct North Face. John Harlin, Layton Kor and Royal Robbins knew that their bold ascent of Europe’s most famous face would echo across the Continent with a new message: the Americans were among the best alpinists in the world.

Standing on the summit of the Eiger in the gathering storm, Harlin, Kor and Robbins embraced, then descended the West Ridge to catch the train in the Jungfraujoch, satisfied in their performance. The party on the deck of the Kleine Scheidegg that night was epic.

Harlin had started an English-speaking guiding service in Leysin, Switzerland, the summer before called the International School of Mountaineering (ISM) and invited Robbins and Kor to join him as guides there. Over the next three seasons, the Americans became renowned for guiding the hardest routes in the Alps.

Harlin joined his peers from Austria, France, Switzerland, and Italy to establish the International Federation of Mountain Guides Associations (IFMGA), the standard setting body for all the world’s Mountain Guides. Robbins teamed up with American guides Doug Robinson, Michael Covington, and Gary Hemmings to establish the American Mountain Guides Association (AMGA), which adopted the IFMGA standard and began training US Guides in the international System alongside its European peers.

The professionalism of the international guiding standard influenced Federal land managers in the US, and a system of high mountain huts was established in the Sierras, Rockies and the Alaska Range. Today, several thousand AMGA Mountain Guides operate from these huts, a testament to the vision of Harlin, Kor and Robbins. Their ascent of the Eiger Direct was the start of it all…

Unfortunately, that’s not how it happened.

Instead, Harlin snubbed Robbins on the Eiger climb in favor of Stevie’s uncle, legendary British alpinist Dougal Haston. During one of the multiple attempts at the face, a rope broke as Harlin was ascending to the high point, and he plunged 1000 meters to his death. Haston carried on to the summit of the Eiger with a competing group of German climbers. Kor quit the route in sadness and disgust and never seriously climbed in the mountains again.

Harlin did start ISM the summer before his death and was a highly respected and influential American climber and guide in Switzerland at the time of the IFMGA’s inception. Had his rope held strong, it’s not a stretch to imagine that American guides might have joined the IFMGA in the late 60s.

As it turned out, the AMGA didn’t get its start until 1979 and the organization didn’t join the ranks of IFMGA member countries until 1997, more than thirty years after Harlin’s death on the Eiger Direct. It’s possible that Harlin’s death caused two entire generations of Americans to lose the chance to become career Mountain Guides at the international standard, including mine.

It could have been different.