Julian Sands, the British actor who was confirmed dead last week after going missing during a mountain hike, once spoke about “dangerous” mountain climbing in an interview.
In his last U.K. interview with the Radio Time, conducted six months before he was discovered, Sands described climbing as “solace and a sort of existentialist self-negation, but equally a self-affirmation,” adding “if you can deal with dangerous mountains, you can certainly deal with life as an actor — the two are quite complementary.”
The interview is published in the latest issue of the Radio Times. Sands was reported missing near Mt. Baldy in Southern California on Jan. 13. He was 65. The actor, who pivoted from the romantic lead in “A Room With a View” to playing sinister characters in films like “Warlock,” had gone hiking in the snow-covered Baldy Bowl area, about 45 miles east of Los Angeles. He was an experienced mountaineer, but conditions in the mountains had been treacherous, with the potential of avalanches.
“Pals I used to climb with have stopped going to the mountains, partly because they find, with climate change, the rock faces have become much more unstable, partly, it’s age,” Sands said during the interview. “If you don’t really have the desire, the focus for climbing a route, if you’re not absolutely committed, it becomes much more dangerous and it’s a much more deflating experience.”
Sands also said in the interview: “I’ve found spooky things on mountains, when you know you’re in a place where many people have lost their lives, whether it be on the Eiger or in the Andes. You may be confronted with human remains and that can be chilling. It’s not necessarily supernatural, it’s possibly all too natural — what I would call hypernatural. You’re in the presence of big nature and big nature is revealing itself in all its power. It can take us over a threshold of hypersensitivity into a realm of natural forces.”
