Wednesday, 30 April 2014 10:26

Fiva - Gordon Stainforth's epic climb book reviewed

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 Once or twice in a lifetime a mountaineering story crosses the divide between pure mountaineering and human interest, bridging the gap and becoming a "mainstream" hit. Touching the Void had that special appeal that could bring in a non-climbing audience, catapulting it's author and participants to fame and successful careers as writers and motivational speakers. The tale of human survival against all the odds gripped readers and viewers around the world, and justifiably so, but after reading Fiva I seriously doubt that TTV would have had half the success it has achieved if the epic story of the Stainforth twins had been written first. There's no getting away from the fact that Fiva is essentially a mountaineering book, describing a single attempt on a single climb, but like TTV it reaches far beyond the limitations of the sport and into the realm of epic survival stories.

Fiva is the stoty of a pair of twins setting out to climb a route of the same name in Norway. Armed only with a rough description and the confidence of youth the climb turned into a true epic with not only the summit uncertain but survival itself hanging in the balance. Loose rock, lack of experience and a lamentable lack of equipment that included just a single ice axe between the pair conspired to test the physical and mental strength of the the Stainforth twins. Despite over 40 years passing between the events of Fiva and the telling of it, it's a book that's as relevant today as it was then and benfits from the passing of the years. Though the author attempts to write Fiva in the style and with the mentality of the teenager he was at the time there's a maturity in the writing that I doubt would have been present if the book had been written at the time.

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Fiva starts unusually with the author's return to the mountain 40 years on, setting the scene before turning the clock back to 1969 and plunging headlong into unremitting adventure. Success, failure, life and death hangs in the balance throughout as the twins discover they've bitten off something far bigger and far harder than they could have imagined with the daunting face of the mountain taking on its own persona as they pit themselves against it.

Writing from the perspective of a teenager, forty years on, the author does an amazing job in revisiting what must have been a life changing experience. The confidence and invulnerability of youth is all there as if the tale was only yesterday, but against it stands the immovable object of Store Trolltind, unforgiving and unremmiting. To take on the challenge with just 2 bars of chocolate a few sandwiches and a scrap of paper as a route description typifies the exuberance of youth and leads to the twins' inevitably finding themselves high on the mountain fighting for survival.

 

 

 

In the re-telling of the epic that follows the author puts the reader on the wall with the two brothers, relating the climb step by step. There's nothing new in the approach but in Fiva it's taken to extreme and each single sentence is idividually honed and crafted in such a way that the book, like the climb, becomes all consuming. The reader discovers the route, the mountain and the reality of the situation gradually to the point that although you know the brothers must have survived to write the book 40 years on you really do find yourself fearing for them. Minute by minute the climbers' situation is revealed and with it their thoughts, feelings and responses - all from that unique teenage persepctive. Fiva breaks the modern trend of psyco-analysing everything from "why I climb" to family relationships in being a pure adventure story in the best traditions of "Boys Own" but in it's own unique way it answers those questions like no other book.

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Fiva may be a book about a mountaineering epic, but in reality it's far more. It's a doorway into the mind of not just the author and his brother, but into the glow of youth. The quality of the writing superb, the pace slowly builds as the story unfolds making it almost impossible to put down. Gordon Stainforth will be at next week's Keswick Mountain Festival - I, for one, will search him out just to say thank you. Fiva is a work of art, a superbly crafted story that once read will never be forgotten.



Note: This article was restored from the archives. It's published creation date is inaccurate.

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