Beyond the Vertical. Layton Kor. Bob Godfrey, editor. Alpine House, Boulder, 1983. 215 pages, color photographs. $35.00.

Anyone growing up in Colorado and coming of age in Eldorado Springs can tell you that the name Kor stands second only to Moses in local hagiologies. Precious few rocks exist in Colorado that don’t bear a Kor first ascent. He was prolific, the hometowner who showed Yosemite’s stars that there was a relevant life beyond the Valley; the wild, epic hardman who returned from the Eiger (and John Harlin’s death) and thereafter vanished into the mystical, or at least mystifying, fastnesses of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. From a storyteller’s point of view, nothing till now was lacking, except a fine, bold telling.

When I first heard of the book, I had a dreadful premonition, because the praise of living heroes is always a risky venture when the living hero himself is helping orchestrate it. Biography risks turning into transparent deification. The life and times of Kor were solid gold, but even gold can be adulterated. My premonitions grew worse when rumor had it that Beyond the Vertical was essentially a boys’ club affair, liberally peanut-butter-and-jellied with ex-climbing partners’ vignettes and anecdotes; I braced myself.

I needn’t have worried. Beyond the Vertical really flies. Here and there it labors, is two dimensional, slow and impersonal. Furthermore, there are more typos than any $35.00 book should contain. But the overall product is magical and inspiring, the way great climbing literature is supposed to be. For one thing, this is a picture book of superb quality (by now a trademark of Godfrey’s cottage industry, Alpine House). The selection and layout of photos is striking. Landscapes, generously spread across the large 9- by 12-inch color pages, can match the very best of the Sierra Club. They alone justify the price of the book. Many of the photos of the adventures-at-hand are so aesthetically seductive that they become landscapes first, documents second. This is especially true of the desert spire pictures in the chapter “Sandstone Thrills.” A number of the candid portraits are historical gems. They remind us that climbing fashions have not always consisted of buns-tight, nylon running trunks. Here stand cocky, teenage Pat Ament and Larry Dalke, crewcut and pigeon-toed, looking for all the world like Dennis the Menace and an escaped computer nerd. These were the days of gold line, baggy knickers and flannel shirts—before style became vanity. And for pure legend, try the photo on page 156 of Kor, Dougal Haston and John Harlin standing ankle deep in snow at the foot of the Eiger—a masterpiece of nostalgia.

It is the text, however, that makes this more than just another coffee-table book. True, there’s not much of it; more pages are devoted to photos than prose. For additional text to flesh out Kor’s eloquent, if spare, remembrances, Godfrey solicited stories from both the famous and the not so famous who once climbed with the six-foot five-inch dynamo. These minisketches are interlarded throughout the book, sewn onto Kor’s narrative. Twenty-two times in all, Kor introduces a climb, then gives the stage to a former partner, then re-enters. This “meanwhile back at the ranch” device could easily fail; ordinarily it would fail. Several of the “duets” are outright repetitious, with no redeeming contrasts or ironies. With some, the segues from narrator to guest speaker and back again are abrupt and jarring. This use of seconds to bolster an autobiography can all too easily come off as self-serving. Here it doesn’t, though. This Greek chorus— Royal Robbins, Steve Roper, Galen Rowell, and others—sings not just of the hero and his deeds, but also of his times, the mountains, and the act of climbing. At their best, the contributions invest the narrative with more than their sum total of words. Chris Bonington’s reflections of the 1965 winter ascent of the Eiger Direct, for instance, blend with Kor’s so neatly that we gain insights, even new drama, from one of the most repeated tales in climbing history. Chuck Pratt’s affectionate reverie in “Yosemite Valley” is among the book’s finest. In recalling how it was on the granite walls, he composes an illuminating ode. “You were always in a hurry, Layton, at everything. Fast at climbing, at driving, at eating. Even walking, you moved with that characteristic posture I could recognize at a hundred yards—body tilted forward at the waist into a wind only you could feel…” Frank Magray’s recap of Cleopatra’s Needle, Steve Komito’s of Standing Rock, Tex Bossier’s of Chasm View Wall—these and others add to a fond, personal portrait of a slightly immortal, definitely offbeat man.

Ultimately the book succeeds because of its subject. Kor’s sincerity shines on every page. He never boasts, never pretends, nor do his mini-biographers for him. Over and over again, his partners describe him as outlandish, adrenalin- soaked, driven, and largely devoid of poetic soul searching.

There was no hidden depth to Kor’s love for climbing, no secret reason. The book’s greatest strength is that no false poetry or philosophy is retroactively attached to a great climbing career. Kor is plain and simple about his plain and simple passion—ascent. In “Aftermath,” Kor briefly describes the spiritual hungering that he claims underlay his demonic output of first ascents during the 1960s. It carries no proselytism, nor rebuke for the wild lifestyle and friends he kept before his conversion. “As I studied more it became clearer and clearer that spiritual activity provided a far more meaningful outlet for my energies than had the ten years of extreme climbing.” A man less respectful of other people would not have added the “for my energies.”

From the story-teller’s perspective, Kor’s religious conversion is a splendidly united swan song, private and hinting at further journeys beyond the intensity, color and egotism of ascent. Homer alluded to just such a future for his Ulysses, a journey which would take the seafaring adventurer so far inland one day that people would not recognize the purpose of his oars. As I finished Beyond the Vertical, I got the sense that, like a Zen hero, Kor had left his vertical extremes far, far behind. Whereas the sudden death of a great climber causes us sorrow, Kor’s quiet exit—both in real life and in this book—leaves a celebratory tone. Beyond the Vertical is one of those cultural treasures that confirms and articulates the basic values of ascent.

Jeff Long