This week’s readings focused heavily on the concept of males masculinity and its place within the mountaineering world in the post-modern era of America and Britain and how it ties into imperialist thinking in regards to native populations that inhabit the areas in which these expeditions took place. America at the turn of the 19th century officially closed the frontier which was a for lack of a better term “proving grounds” for young American males to prove their masculinity through venturing out into the unknown and face the perils of the frontier. This for decades was the very definition of what was masculine to society during those years and in those times, Americans created folk hero’s such a Davey Crockett and Daniel Boone who in the eyes of young boys was what they tried to imitate when growing up. Alaska for this new generation of males coming of age became to them the new frontier in which they could prove themselves and live out their fantasies of frontier life. However American men had this image of the quint essential frontier life and tried to control the Alaskan frontier almost to the point in which it no longer seemed like a real place. For people like Cook and Browne this new frontier had encountered the sting of modernization and could be seen even in the native Alaskans who lived around Denali and the wilderness surrounding the mountain. Some of the complaints of the Native people by Cook and Browne were that they didn’t embody the true Indian in the sense that they could navigate the land and fearlessly hunted the local wildlife and were not suppose to be able to undermine any sort of white cultural superiority.

The British narrative is similar to the American situation in that they to lose their sense of masculinity after WW1 de-romanticized war and brought to light the reality of 20th-century technology and machines of war. With a population and society in social disarray, these mountain expeditions to Nepal and Tibet was suppose to give the British people a new Folk hero to admire and as a means to restore the validity of the British empire and their Imperialist attitudes towards supposed primitive cultures. In the accounts of both the American ascents of Denali and the British accents of Everest, there is a certain narrative about how the men climbing these mountains are in sense doing battle with the mountain itself very much fits into the notion of how American and British societies tried to bring back the romanticism of war in the form of mountaineering.

Lastly the topics of women in mountaineering and foreign cultures that took part in numerous mountaineering expeditions but never seemed to receive the credit that they rightfully deserve. Why is it that outside of the white male population that history has struggled to recognize the accomplishments of early women mountaineers and sherpas? It seems after reading Imperial Ascent that they had just as big of an impact in the mountaineering world and for the most, part are not fairly portrayed by history. Is this a result of masculine males from powerful countries dominating the historical accounts of these expeditions? Or are they merely just products of their time period not even considering that they are indeed in many accounts throwing the sherpas and women that helped them under the historical bus in order to bolster their images and their countries images.