Letters

The artist Philip Bircheff, a charter member of California's "Buhlites" climbing club, based this black-marble bust of Hermann Buhl on a Hans Ertl photo of Buhl descending from the 1953 first ascent of Nanga Parbat (8125m), Pakistan. [Photo] Philip Bircheff

I'm writing in response to Kriemhild Buhl's "A Dream of a Father" in Alpinist 49. In the autumn of 1963, six wild-eyed young climbers swore to the oath, "Trituration before capitulation," and the Buhlites climbing club was born. The reading of Hermann Buhl's Nanga Parbat Pilgrimage: The Lonely Challenge was mandatory. By Christmas of that year, that "manifesto" had become a battered, dogeared volume.