Manu,

Thank you for your invitation to attend the Piolet d'Or awards ceremony; I wanted to let you know that Alessandro Beltrami, Ermanno Salvaterra or I, will not attend, and would very much appreciate it if our Cerro Torre climb is withdrawn from the list of nominees.

We were fortunate enough to have succeeded in our attempt to climb Cerro Torre. We are pleased with our accomplishment, and appreciate the positive comments we have received from our peers, but our interest and motivation for the climb was the quality of the experience itself. It was the essence of the experience that interested us most.

An award such as the Piolet d'Or tries to quantify this essence and attempts to judge the quality of the experience. Since, as opposed to track and field or other sports, mountaineering is practiced without well-defined governing principles, any attempt to judge the quality of one ascent over another is necessarily very subjective. It is like trying to compare different fruits. How could there be any real value to such a subjective judgment? How judge elusive concepts like elegance and imagination?

The “alpinism hierarchy” - federation officials and sponsored climbers - seem to benefit most from such an event. A “Grand Prize” enhances the public profile of the activity, and validates their “raison d'etre,” justifying money received and money spent. But for the majority, those that practice mountaineering as “amateurs,” the benefits are elusive, perhaps non-existent. What further validation could one possibly need to an organic experience that one has already “won”?

While it is true that the ethical and stylistic debate that the Piolet d'Or generates every year might in some cases be positive, in others it is decidedly negative. If last year's Piolet d'Or serves as an example, the overpoweringly negative feedback from media savvy western climbers toward the winning Russian team bordered on xenophobic, resulting in a confrontation that divided climbers rather bringing them closer into a constructive dialogue.

The award itself has failed to embrace clear standards regarding environmentalism and clean climbing, vacillating between ascents that have severely degraded the mountain environment, and others that haven't.

The Piolet d'Or ceremony provides an excellent opportunity for mountaineers to gather, share ideas and inspire one another. However, if that was the real intention, the event would, and should, be modeled after climbing meets such as those in Scotland or Argentière la Bessée, where ropes are shared and no subjective prizes are awarded.

When writing about the 2003 Piolet d'Or, British mountaineer and Mountain Info editor Lindsay Griffin proposed “to celebrate all nominations as worthy contributions to mountaineering's advancement.” This I believe is the best alternative, a festival of diversity where, because we all played the game, we all won. A forum where climbers from the four corners of the globe can exchange lessons learned, share points of view and experiences. Until that time, we would rather stay away from this event.

Rolando Garibotti