本文為翻譯文章，文件段落格式依原始文章編排，中文放在原文段落之上方便大家對照。因為我的英文很破，中文的文筆也不怎麼樣，所以如果有翻得不通順或翻錯的地方，就再麻煩各位多多指教，直接留言或私訊都可。
原文連結：https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/28/magazine/the-lives-they-lived-royal-robbins.htm 作者：Daniel Duane 翻譯：陳震宇
他們的人生 THE LIVES THEY LIVED
銘記這幾年離開我們的那些藝術家、發明家和思想家 也歡迎參閱由廣大讀者投書，緬懷摯愛的：他們的摯愛 專欄 Remembering some of the artists, innovators and thinkers we lost in the past year. For readers’ tributes to loved ones who died this year, see The Lives They Loved.
獨享岩壁一隅：羅賓斯 – Robbins 於 1964 年酋長岩 – El Capitan 頂端。影像來源：Tom Frost/Aurora Photos His piece of the rock: Robbins on El Capitan in 1964. Credit Tom Frost / Aurora Photos
B. 1935
羅耀．羅賓斯
ROYAL ROBBINS
他在一場攀岩的靈魂之戰中，將他的宿敵徹底擊退
He erased his rival in a battle for the soul of climbing.
BY DANIEL DUANE
1971 年的一個寒冷夜晚，羅耀．襄農．羅賓斯 (Royal Shannon Robbins) 正懸掛在優勝美地一座高數百英尺，名為酋長岩 (El Capitan) 的岩壁上，手中緊握著鐵鎚和鑿子，擔心自己犯下了可恥的錯誤。羅賓斯是 20 世紀最有影響力的美國攀岩者，也是個嚴肅、蔑視虛榮的人，他花了一整天的時間鑿除酋長岩上的錨栓，試圖毀掉這條由他的酒鬼宿敵 – 瓦倫哈汀 (Warren Harding) 首攀，名為：晨曦壁 – Wall of the Early Morning Light 的攀岩路線。
羅賓斯認為，攀岩在精神層面是至高無上的 –「是一種能讓我們具備足夠勇氣追尋美好生活的遊戲」他曾這麼說道。攀岩在他的眼中，始終都應該是一種對自我理解的探索，而不是自我誇耀的工具。開創路線的攀岩者應該將自己視為藝術家，致力開創優美的完攀之道，供他人追尋。岩壁巨大的畫布仍極其有限 – 畢竟岩壁就只有那麼多 – 所以那些宣稱首攀的人，有責任只仰賴岩壁的天然特徵攀爬，並盡力減少使用永久性設備，例如錨栓。無視這份責任，對整體攀岩社群而言就是一種原罪。
哈汀則認為這一切是如此自負而荒謬。身為一個喜歡跑車的加州道路測量員，攀岩在他眼中，只是一種令人愉悅但愚蠢的惡習，不需要對任何人負責。為了在這座高達 3,000 英尺的金色花崗岩上開闢「晨曦壁」，哈汀和他的繩伴在吊床上生活了 27 天，喝著廉價的葡萄酒，還迎合新聞電視臺團隊的拍攝工作。而在羅賓斯眼中，最糟糕的是哈汀在岩壁上鑽了超過 300 個錨栓，扣入繩梯，藉此攀登了一大段空白區域，徹底抹去了原有的難度和風險。
One cold mountain night in 1971, Royal Shannon Robbins dangled from ropes hundreds of feet up the gigantic Yosemite cliff called El Capitan, clutching a hammer and chisel and worrying that he had made a shameful mistake. The most influential American rock climber of the 20th century, and a serious-minded fellow who disdained vanity, Robbins had spent that whole day chopping steel bolts off El Capitan, obliterating the climbing route called Wall of the Early Morning Light, created by his alcoholic rival, Warren Harding.
Robbins saw climbing as spiritually exalted — “a game in which we play at acquiring the courage necessary to a beautiful life,” as he once put it. The sport, in his view, should always be a quest for self-understanding, not self-aggrandizement. Climbers who made first ascents should consider themselves artists creating aesthetic pathways for others to follow. The canvas of the great rock walls was finite — there was only so much cliff — so those who claimed a piece of it had a responsibility to climb along natural rock features and minimize the use of permanent safety hardware, like bolts. To ignore that responsibility was to sin against the larger climbing community.
Harding found all this pompous and ridiculous. A California road surveyor who loved fast cars, he saw climbing as an enjoyable but silly vice and felt no responsibility to anybody. To establish Wall of the Early Morning Light, a 3,000-foot sweep of golden granite, Harding and his partner lived out of hammocks for 27 days and drank cheap wine while pandering to the TV news crews filming them. Worst of all, in Robbins’s view, Harding ascended huge blank sections of rock by drilling more than 300 bolts and then clipping on stirrups to eliminate difficulty and risk.
羅賓斯渴望有序、傑出，也渴望擁有明辨是非的自信。他出生於 1935 年的西維吉尼亞州，很早就被他的父親 (也叫羅耀) 所遺棄 (「啊，爸爸，為什麼拋下我？」他在一本名為《勇敢》的自傳中寫道)。隨之而來的，是他酗酒的繼父詹姆斯·錢德勒 (James Chandler) 對他的長年虐待，隨後舉家搬遷到加州，並將羅賓斯的名字改成了自己的名字。羅賓斯十歲時，有次聽到母親懇求繼父放下手中的刀子，於是他跑去求救，接著錢德勒就消失了。隨後羅賓斯很快就恢復了他的本名，並決心成為一個比他那兩個父親更好的人。
對他而言，攀岩比課業簡單。 1952 年，他第一次到優勝美地攀岩，當時這項運動正要進入真正的黃金年代，裝備和技術已然成熟，足以攀登碩大無比的岩壁，而優勝美地的參天岩壁卻仍無人攀登。顯而易見的第一個目標便是高 2,500 英尺的半穹頂 – Half Dome 西北壁，當羅賓斯聽說哈汀計劃嘗試時，便迅速組成隊伍，於 1957 年率先完成首攀，而哈汀則以首攀酋長岩回敬；在為期 45 個工作日，耗時長達 18 個月的攀登行動中，哈汀創造了知名的「鼻子路線 – Nose Route」，他從制高點架設固定繩一路直達地面，藉此上下運送食物和酒，鑽了無數的錨栓，並享譽全美。
羅賓斯對此極為不滿，於是他在 1960 年僅用 7 天就再度完攀了鼻子路線。一年後，羅賓斯只花 12 天又完成了酋長岩的另一條首攀路線，並且只使用了少量錨栓，藉此證明哈汀的攀登手段是多麼地低劣。該路線被稱為「薩拉斯牆 – Salathé Wall」，迄今也許仍是地球上最偉大的長路線。
Robbins craved order, greatness and the confidence that he was doing the right thing. Born in West Virginia in 1935, he suffered early abandonment by his father, also named Royal (“Ah, Dad, why did you leave me?” he wrote in an autobiography titled “To Be Brave”). Then came years of abuse by an alcoholic stepfather named James Chandler, who moved the family to California and changed Robbins’s name to his own. Robbins was 10 when he heard his mother beg his stepfather to put down a knife. Robbins ran for help, Chandler disappeared and Robbins soon reclaimed his birth name and resolved to become a better man than either of his fathers.
He found schoolwork difficult but climbing easy. He first climbed in Yosemite in 1952 at the dawn of the sport’s true golden age, when equipment and techniques were finally mature enough for the biggest walls, but Yosemite’s marquee cliffs remained unclimbed. The obvious first plum was the 2,500-foot northwest face of Half Dome, and when Robbins heard that Harding was planning an attempt, Robbins scrambled a team and, in 1957, got to the top first. Harding retaliated by claiming the first ascent of El Capitan. In 45 days’ work spread over 18 months, Harding created the so-called Nose Route by keeping ropes always fixed from his high point to the ground, commuting up and down with food and wine, drilling countless bolts and basking in national publicity.
Robbins was so disturbed that in 1960 he made the second ascent of the Nose Route in just seven days. A year later, Robbins demonstrated just how retrograde Harding’s methods were by doing his own first ascent of a different route on El Capitan in just 12 days and with very few bolts. The resulting route, called the Salathé Wall, is still perhaps the greatest long rock climb on Earth.
沒攀岩時，羅賓斯會打網球、閱讀拉爾夫．沃爾多．愛默生的著作 並撰文闡述他那「比莫札特還美妙」的攀岩經歷 WHEN NOT CLIMBING, ROBBINS PLAYED TENNIS, READ RALPH WALDO EMERSON AND WROTE ESSAYS CALLING AT LEAST ONE OF HIS OWN CLIMBS ‘BETTER EVEN THAN MOZART.’
羅賓斯和哈汀在整個 60 年代都一直保持著良性的競爭關係 – 為了首攀的聲望和這項運動的靈魂。每當哈汀或其他人開創一條新的大岩壁路線時，羅賓斯都會以更優異的風格重複完攀：更快、甚或獨攀，偶爾也會移除他認為不必要的錨栓。沒攀岩時，羅賓斯會打網球、閱讀拉爾夫．沃爾多．愛默生的著作，並撰文闡述他那「比莫札特還美妙」的攀岩經歷。哈汀並不是唯一一個認為羅賓斯應該放鬆一點的人，但許多頂尖攀岩者都同意羅賓斯的觀點 – 首攀應該要盡可能保持冒險精神，並盡力減少對岩壁造成的破壞。
因此當哈汀在 1970 年花了近一個月的時間在「晨曦壁」路線上沿途鑽設錨栓時，伴隨著持續不斷的新聞報導，羅賓斯挾帶堅實的輿論基礎，聲稱這條路線是「人為刻意的人造路線」。一年後，羅賓斯與一位名叫唐．勞里亞 – Don Lauria 的繩伴帶著鐵錘和鑿子回到哈汀的路線上，展開了一場攀岩界史無前例的行動 – 故意且暴力地，抹除一條由國際知名攀岩者所創造的重要路線。
然而早在這場行動的第一天，羅賓斯就在一段並未設置錨栓的區域碰上了令他吃驚的技術困難。其後的錨栓被羅賓斯移除了，但他也不斷發現更多危險且更具挑戰性的路段，在在都證明哈汀承擔了更大的風險，並以超乎他想像的冒險風格完攀了這條路線。那天晚上，羅賓斯掛在露宿吊床上，因自我懷疑而震撼不已。他確信自己擁有摧毀「晨曦壁」的道德聲望，但心底的聲音卻告訴他，他的判斷力已被嫉妒所蒙蔽。隔天早上，羅賓斯收起鐵鎚和鑿子，停止移除錨栓的行動，沿著哈汀的路線登頂完攀。
Robbins and Harding kept up their amiable competition — for prestigious first ascents and the soul of the sport — throughout the 1960s. Each time Harding or anyone else established a big new route, Robbins repeated it in better style: faster, sometimes alone, occasionally chopping bolts he deemed unnecessary. When not climbing, Robbins played tennis, read Ralph Waldo Emerson and wrote essays calling at least one of his own climbs “better even than Mozart.” Harding wasn’t the only one who thought Robbins ought to lighten up, but many leading climbers shared Robbins’s belief that first ascents should be done in the most adventurous way possible, with minimal damage to the wall.
So when Harding spent nearly a month drilling his way up Wall of the Early Morning Light in 1970, with constant network-news coverage, Robbins was on firm social footing in declaring the route “contrived and artificial.” A year later, with a partner named Don Lauria, Robbins started up Harding’s opus with hammer and chisel, beginning an operation without precedent in the history of the sport — the deliberate, violent erasure of a major new climb created by an internationally famous climber.
Early on the first day, however, Robbins encountered an unbolted section of surprising technical delicacy. More bolts followed, and Robbins chopped them, but then he found still more dangerous and challenging stretches, until it became apparent that Harding had taken greater risks and done the route in a more adventurous style than Robbins had imagined. That night, Robbins hung in a bivouac hammock convulsed with self-doubt. He had convinced himself he had the moral authority to obliterate Wall of the Early Morning Light, but a voice inside told Robbins that envy was blinding his better judgment. The next morning, Robbins put away hammer and chisel and, without doing further harm, followed Harding’s route to the summit.
Daniel Duane 是攀岩回憶錄《熄燈：優勝美地與美西的黃金年代》的作者。他最近為該雜誌撰寫了一篇關於登山者亞歷克斯．哈諾的專題文章。
Daniel Duane is the author of the climbing memoir “Lighting Out: A Golden Year in Yosemite and the West.” He last wrote a feature for the magazine about the climber Alex Honnold.
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