| VanSims20. 03. 2013 21:19:48 |
Matterhorn is just a mountaineering version of mass valley tourism a la Versailles, Venice, Florence,...
This reminds me of the times when I preferred spending vacations and free time traveling around Slovenia and Europe rather than in the hills. Just like in the hills there are solitary paths, pathless terrain, peaks for connoisseurs on one side and mass destinations a la Triglav on the other, so it was with my travels: On one side tourist spots a la Paris, London, Rome, Provence,... and on the other, say the silence of remote rural French villages in Massif Central, Alsace or Brittany, away from tourist hustle (which I could afford when I started traveling around by car instead of Interrail). Both are interesting anyway.
The above article about racing up Matterhorn and the mass tourism there involuntarily reminded me of a visit to the fully touristified Scottish Loch Ness. Tour via official Tourist Office: rush, the guide was also the driver, minimal stop at each point and off we went, if you were late they didn't wait at all, they just left you there,... So it happened that I stayed a couple of minutes longer in the museum and missed the boat ride on the lake. "Sorry Sir, we are punctual!"  
Well then when I had a car I planned such tours outside urban cities (where Interrail doesn't go  ) independently and I can draw a parallel with an independent hike in the hills or with a mountain guide.
In 'valley' travel there are advocates of agency travel and guides (i.e. the agency plans everything for you) and on the other side independent travel with your own vehicle and your own guidance with a guidebook, your own plan, accommodations,...
Personally for me the second option was always better: that is really YOUR trip that you prepared, planned, executed, experienced, saw what you wanted and took away nice memories. In short, compared to a trip planned by an agency, this is really YOUR trip. That's real traveling, the other is agency instant tourism.
Similarly in the hills: a tour where the mountain guide takes care of everything is NOT your tour. It's not full enjoyment. Someone just drags you up! There's no planning, studying the route, attention to details, equipment, overcoming difficulties, effort, excitement, enjoyment at the summit and after the tour that everything turned out well again,... That's not there in a guided tour. That's not your tour. It's not a tour you identify with.
It's like buying a row house instead of building your own with your own hands. You have no relation to such a 'factory' house, you can't identify with it. Or if instead of cooking lunch ourselves, we heat something from the store or even go to McDonalds. Unfortunately today there's a rush prevailing, everything instant, everything so that we have to make the least effort, let someone else do everything for us... That's fine too and partly right. Not everyone can cook e.g. (not even the writer of these lines ) But then we can't say we did something ourselves. We didn't travel somewhere but they just brought us there and we were there. We didn't conquer the peak or they dragged us there. We didn't do the tour but were just at so and so many m above sea level.
If our everyday life already rushes forward quickly, it's really a shame that we spend our free time like that too where we should really relax our imagination and enjoy the activity that attracted our attention.
Maybe I'll go with a guide to some peak sometime myself. But if so, it will be just an exception or if more of us decide for some occasion like a get-together, birthday gift or similar. Otherwise I stick to tours I can do independently. I'd rather enroll in some course or acquire knowledge or gradually increase difficulty to what I want to achieve. Then every tour is really yours and you enjoy it and every detail from preparation to getting home. Otherwise you can ask yourself if mountaineering really makes you happy or you're just an instant tourist mountaineer.
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