Just as music and drugs—a spliff or a bottle of red wine—seem made for each other, so too are music and mountains. Some of my best memories of solitude are tied to listening to music. More than that, music, audio, and video can play an invaluable part in personal and team resilience and recovery.
People use music crudely to psych themselves up before a hard day, much like an Olympic athlete before their event. They’ll play something like ‘Lose Yourself’ by Eminem, his words—‘If you had one shot or one opportunity, to seize everything you ever wanted in one moment, would you capture it or just let it slip?’—seeming to unlock some hidden hero power.
I used to laugh at this, and at Eminem too, because it felt a bit hokey. Success or failure wasn’t down to a song; it came from years of effort and dedication. At best, the music was just background to the film in your head.
Then one day, high on a winter ascent of the Troll Wall in Norway—day twelve, I think—I came to an impasse. A single scary move blocked the way, one that carried a very real chance of a long, bad fall. I froze, weeks of effort about to end. Then, from out of a sky full of falling snow, came that familiar beat and Eminem’s voice: ‘If you had one shot…’ And I made the move.
The ability to watch films and TV programmes might seem sacrilegious, but it can help to depressurise people, especially on high-stress objectives. Watching Layer Cake on the Hardanger Plateau or series one of The Mighty Boosh in Queen Maud Land are oddly cherished memories, especially when the team were laughing at some TV silliness.
What you choose matters. Naked Gun or South Park make for far better mountain viewing than Manchester by the Sea or Requiem for a Dream. Series are especially useful, giving people something to look forward to at the end of the day and something to talk about during it—a way to steer minds away from darker, trip-ending thoughts.
The Americans didn’t build cinemas in war zones or fly in Bob Hope simply to entertain troops; they did it so the war could go on.
I had a friend, Aleks, the first person to ski to and from the South Pole without kites, dogs, or support, a journey of 2260 kilometres. One reason he managed it was how he used his Apple iPod (before the iPhone, people listened to music on iPods) to fill his head with positive thoughts and distractions.
In the mornings he went to school, listening to Russian lessons and the great speeches of history. His routine broke neatly into blocks—ski fifty minutes, rest ten, then move on, twelve times a day. Afternoons were his own, filled with audiobooks and music, even working through every Beatles album in order.
In the evening, after he’d done all his chores, he’d watch South Park on his iPod, no doubt the laughter the most lonely laughter on earth.
In the end he was out there for eighty-seven days, alone on the ice. The fact he made it there and back intact was due, in part, to filling his head with something—anything—rather than letting in the emptiness and despair.
It’s impossible to make an expedition playlist, but there are some standout tracks in my own, tied to certain climbs and trips, even if some of them are a little embarrassing and uncool.
“An Ending (Ascent)” by Brian Eno
“Reach for the dead” by Boards of Canada
“Teardrop” by Massive Attack
“Electric Performers” by Air
“Reckoner” by Radiohead
“Time” by Hans Zimmer
“Moving Over the Face of the Waters” by Moby
“Felt Mountain” by Goldfrapp
“Clara (The Night Is Dark)” by Fred Again
“Fever To The Form” by Nick Mulvey
“Three Chords” by Ann Annie and David Allred
“The Haunted Victorian Pencil” by Adam Wiltzie
“Underwater” by Elizabeth Fraser
“Landslide” by Fleetwood Mac
“Ultraviolet” by James Heather
“Rosary” by Anne Nikitin
“Love More” by Daniel Hart
“Goodbye” by Apparat
“Lou’s Tune” by DARGZ
“Heaven” by Talking Heads
Long audiobooks are also great when people need to chill out before going to sleep at night (much better than screens), and listening to one, one chapter a night, is great fun. Classics include The Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter trilogy, Le Carré’s Karla trilogy (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, etc.), and Robert Harris’ Cicero trilogy.
The value I place on expedition media means I usually carry two or more ways to play it, each backing up the other. Since the demise of the iPod, most people keep music, podcasts, and video on their phone. That’s fine as a backup, but a phone runs countless redundant systems, draining precious power for no benefit. Better to save phones for watching video and use tiny, cheap MP3 players for audio—they can last for days without a recharge.
You might think a tablet would be better than a phone for watching videos, but it isn’t. I once spent two months watching films on a 6 cm screen, and the memory was as if I’d seen them on IMAX. A tablet only adds weight, cost, and power use—and is a bigger target for getting broken.
If battery power is limited, avoid using the inbuilt speaker or Bluetooth to separate speakers or earbuds. Go old school: use wired headphones. Carry two pairs, or more—they’re easily damaged in zips, rucksack straps, or by dangling into a stove flame.
You can reduce the risk of damage with a £5 rubber Sony headphone clip. Wrap the cable around it when not in use, and it won’t get yanked.
One way to save battery, protect headphone cables, and avoid dropping your player is to sew a pocket into the chest of your base layer. It keeps the device warm, dry, and safe, and shortens the cable run to your ears. Another option is a pocket in your hat, keeping the player on your head.
Of course the best, and most indestructible form of mountain entertainment is the humble paperback book. If each person on a trip has a half decent taste in books, or simply buys something off the bestsellers shelf at the airport – and you read at an average speed – then swapping books back and forth will keep you entertained for weeks (as long as you’re not tent-bound for days on end). I find that the harder the trip, the greater the need for escapist fiction. If you’re really suffering, you’ll not find much solace in Primo Levi’s If This Is a Man, whereas a chapter of Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy may well spirit you away, at least for a little while.
If reading material is limited, they can be re-read, or one book read to each other. They can also be split, and if it’s a non-linear book, like Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, you can have four people all reading a quarter of the book at the same time.
What if you have no entertainment, no book or music or movies to watch? This has only happened to me once, when I went on a month-long trip, and was told to bring nothing but the bare essentials, only to find, once it was too late, that the other five people didn’t view a book as non-essential. It was some odd torture to be stuck in a tent with two people for weeks on end, sometimes all day during storms, as they read their books beside me. One refused to rip out the first part of his book, while the other was Polish. All I had to read was the MSR stove manual (this did come in handy when the stove broke). In such circumstances, the only place you can retreat to is to the second worst place you want to go on a trip (the first being out into the night and the storm), which is into yourself. If so, you must learn to harness what entertainment your mind can easily supply, and flick through, fast forward, or skip the stuff that isn’t entertaining at all.