Above the Clouds

by Kilian, Jornet

  Although I thought the people in Chamonix who’d always criticized me for traveling so light would crucify me, I understood that their comments would be constructive and would show my followers that the mountains are full of risks, and that strength is no substitute for knowledge and preparation. In the end, the only thing harmed by the criticism was my ego. I had to face up to my mistakes. The first was miscalculating what to take with me; you can get through tough situations with ingenuity and cold blood, but you still know you’re going to have a shitty time. The second was assuming Emelie shared my view that the expedition was more important than our safety, and not predicting that she would feel uncomfortable in the situation we ended up in; in that sense, we were different.

  I have never doubted that Emelie is smarter than me, because she prioritizes safety over her goals. She is capable of giving up much sooner than I am, whereas I don’t hesitate to cross the red line of risk, knowing the conditions will be difficult to confront. On that climb, I should have been able to say “Enough” and leave it there. I shouldn’t have made decisions as if I were climbing alone. We should have turned back before attacking the ice. The outing wasn’t fun anymore, and it wasn’t necessary to suffer so much.

  I MET TANCRÈDE 2,000 METERS UP A WALL OF LE BRÉVENT, WHERE HE and a group of artist friends had set up a rope between two rock faces with a gap between them over 30 meters wide. There were acrobats, mountaineers, climbers, musicians—quite a group. They had proposed the game of walking along the rope, from one end to the other. It was an exercise in balance and concentration; you had to balance your body and arms to compensate for the swaying. This activity is called slacklining. It’s most fun when done between two rock faces at a great height rather than between two trees in a park. It gives you a feeling of being above a total void. Even though we wore harnesses at Le Brévent in case we lost our balance, the feeling of emptiness around us was absolute. We were so gripped by the desire not to fall that we ended up ignoring everything we’d learned about balance, and in the end we fell easily.

  When you’re climbing or extreme skiing, two activities that allow for no errors, you never experience this sense of the void, since you never lose sight of the sky or the ground. But with high slacklining, everything is sky. I tried to walk that rope half a dozen times and only managed to take a couple of steps. Then Tancrède would patiently explain how I needed to empty my mind, how I should position myself. One day, without saying a word, he took off his harness, left it on the ground, and began walking along the rope. He reached the other side after crossing the hundred feet, turned around, and walked back the other way. The silence was absolute. There wasn’t a sound. The musicians had put down their instruments; the climbers were quiet. We watched him in silence, glancing at him almost sideways, with the feeling that we were intruding in a private, intimate space.

  He approached sport like an art, like a way to achieve symbiosis between the aesthetics of an activity and the nature surrounding it. It wasn’t unusual to see him dressed up as a clown, wearing a parachute, or playing the violin as he crossed a rope stretched between two spires, up among glaciers of 3,000 meters, or dancing around with gymnastics ribbons on a 1,000-meter mountain face in the Norwegian fjords. He managed to take his art as far as it could go. He trained his body, watched his diet down to every last detail, and knew what every muscle was for. He prepared himself mentally, studying the activities he designed, his body weight, the force of the air, the acceleration of gravity, the distance of the fall, or the rate of gliding according to the body’s surface, all from a scientific point of view. He had studied it all and was highly aware of his abilities. But there is a world of difference between knowing and doing. He was one of the best I have ever known. Yes, he was afraid of falling, but he knew how to break the barriers we build, to distinguish only what was real and definitive.

  He made his body do unimaginable things—jusqu’au bout, as they say in French: “until the end.” Tancrède was without a doubt a jusqu’au-boutiste.

  SOME CLIMBERS LOOK DOWN ON OTHER MOUNTAIN SPORTS, THINKING their practitioners care only about the stopwatch. For them, mountaineering has a significant romantic component, with hardly any connotation of sport. The idea of the sport as a race against time makes them break out in a rash.

  On the other hand, mountaineering can also be seen as extremely results-driven since it’s based on a binary: summit or no summit, gear or no gear, yes or no, success or failure. Like other sports, it requires some parameters to establish whether or not the bar is being raised. The competition guidelines apply equally. Would any mountaineer deny having felt immense satisfaction and inner joy when learning he or she had reached a summit faster than anyone else? I don’t think so.

  The stopwatch is a companion that tells you you’re doing well, that you’re getting the best you can out of yourself. Though time may not be the ultimate goal, this little device whispers into your ear whether you’re getting better or worse, whether you’re going strong or flagging, or whether you’re being efficient when it comes to solving a problem. The stopwatch doesn’t lie.

  IN THREE SPORTS AS DIFFERENT AS RUNNING, MOUNTAINEERING, AND climbing, there is a common border, a shared measurement: the two-hour threshold. Yes, the figure is anecdotal and arbitrary, but runners, mountaineers, and climbers all have it seared into their brains.

  In running, the marathon is the queen of all competitions. For the last few years, the best athletes have tried to outdo each other by running the 26.22 miles in under two hours. For a while now, efforts to achieve this magic number have heightened, and the combination of factors that can help achieve it is studied closely: young athletes with extraordinary physiological capacity are sought out and subjected to personalized training programs optimized for distance running; the ideal diet and hydration before and during the race is studied; special sneakers that help the runner lose the minimum amount of energy are designed; biomechanics and efficiency of pace are assessed, even the ideal temperature and humidity are taken into consideration. After years of effort filing all the details, Eliud Kipchoge managed to break this two-hour barrier in 2019.

  IN MOUNTAINEERING, THE TOUCHSTONE IS THE NORTH FACE OF THE Eiger, in the Alps. In 1938, German mountaineers Anderl Heckmair, Heinrich Harrer, Fritz Kasparek, and Ludwig Vörg climbed that 1,500-meter slope on a 3-kilometer expedition, with difficulty, in three days. Since then, it’s been the ultimate challenge for mountaineers. Those among the elite can open up new and difficult paths to put their abilities to the test, either in a rope team or alone. Though these climbs present considerable risks, since any mistake can mean a potentially deadly fall, mountain climbers have used the wall at Eiger to explore new training methods, equipment, and strategies. In addition, Eiger has provided the opportunity to explore new limits, not only technical and physical limits but also in the acceptance of compromise. As the years went by, the ascent time was gradually reduced: Michel Darbellay was the first to take eighteen hours alone; Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler arrived in ten; and Ueli Bürer, Franček Knez, and Thomas Bubendorfer brought the time down to less than five. In recent years, Christoph Hainz, Dani Arnold, and Ueli Steck have completed the climb in less than two and a half hours. The two-hour horizon is getting closer and closer. As it approaches, greater and greater risks are assumed.

  The trilogy of two-hour climbs is completed by the ultimate climb up El Capitán in Yosemite Valley, California, by the most mythic route of The Nose, at 880 vertical meters. The first to climb it were the Americans Wayne Merry and George Whitmore, in an incredible forty-seven days. From that moment on, climbing El Capitán in just one day became a dream that remains impossible for the majority. But in 1975, the dream was achieved by Jim Bridwell, John Long, and Billy Westbay—three of the most innovative climbers in history. Those who came after have perfected the technique and optimized the materials, reducing the time further and further. While the risks presented by speed aren’t as great as with the Eiger, and physical ability
is less of a determining factor than for a marathon, speed and resistance are the key to achieving the goal, along with logistical optimization and the ability to visualize every movement of the almost 1,000-meter climb. Rope teams had come close to the mythical two hours in previous years, until finally Alex Honnold and Tommy Caldwell managed it after months of targeted training, taking the route dozens of times.

  These three examples can’t be compared in any way. More than a million people run marathons every year, and of these, approximately a thousand compete. Around two hundred climb The Nose, and those who climb the north face of the Eiger number less than a hundred. Nor are they comparable in terms of risk.

  However, they share one very important factor: in each of these disciplines, the athletes are motivated to conquer the arbitrary fact of time, and have had to find the inner and outer abilities they lacked in order to triumph. With this goal on the horizon, they prepared to the extreme to show what a talented human being can do, with hard work and discipline. And by pursuing it, they gave us all a gift, by offering us the tools to find motivation in each of our daily tasks.

  IN THE MOUNTAINS, THE IDEA OF A RECORD IS RELATIVE, SINCE IT’S impossible to compare two times even on the same peak. In track and field, for example, a record has to be set on a track or circuit that guarantees certain conditions (wind, terrain, etc.) and parameters that leave no room to doubt equal opportunity (anti-doping tests, identical aid and provisioning for all participants, etc.). But this is impossible in the mountains, since conditions vary day by day and everyone climbs in a different way. That’s why it’s impossible to speak of records in this field; instead, performance is measured by fastest known time. In any case, I believe the comparison should be individual, since this allows you to know yourself and to know how fast you can cover terrain, taking into account the difficulty, distance, and conditions. It’s impossible to equate the time of a runner who knows the route like the palm of his or her hand with that of one attempting it for the first time, or compare the time of one who attempts it with no assistance (a team of climbers, oxygen tanks, climbing ropes, etc.) with that of another who has the support of a team and resources.

  A journalist may emphasize and value the time achieved, but in the end, speed should be less important than an athlete’s inner assessment of his performance. And this has to do with his own evaluation of the results of his training and preparation, and the conditions under which he or she has achieved this concrete time.

  Four basic factors give rise to improvements in time. The first is personal performance, where physical ability, technique, the economy of the race, experience, strategy, and psychological state all play a part. The second is the optimization of the route, in other words, whether you know the difficulties, whether you know the movements, and where you can cut them down. The third is the conditions, given that it’s not the same to practice in bad winter weather as on a sunny summer day. The fourth is the kind of ethic you want to apply, which includes the question of going with or without assistance, alone or in company, the kind of equipment you use, or even whether or not to resort to doping, whether this be mechanical or physiological.

  The case of Ueli Steck on the Eiger is a good example. He knew the route perfectly, and with painstaking preparation he was able to make the climb in two hours twenty-two minutes, with the line marked and hanging on to two fixed ropes at a couple of crossings. He also made the climb more slowly, in two hours forty-seven minutes, but with no trail to guide him on the mountain, and free-climbing all the passes. In other words, without touching the available ropes. Which of these records is better? Of course, the climb completed in the least time is the most attention-grabbing, but the other is probably harder to achieve, since it implies more physical work and commitment. In any case, both times are equally interesting because they show you what you can do under different conditions, without losing sight of the fact that time is not the only important thing but rather just one of the fruits of an equation in which each factor plays a determining role.

  I WAS HEADING DOWN THE VALLEY ROAD TO RAUMA AND HAD DRIVEN nonstop for over thirty hours since setting out from Chamonix. The truck was loaded with all of my and Emelie’s possessions. I wanted to get to the place where we’d decided to live together as soon as possible, and by now my eyelids had been heavy for hours. Dawn was breaking when I went through the wide ravine, along a road flanked by rock faces over 1,000 meters high. The daylight still wasn’t bright enough to show the textures, but I could just see the endless dark rock spurs and the frigid waterfalls gushing down into the valley. It was like entering a land that didn’t belong to human beings. The vertical walls of dark, slick rock were so close together that I couldn’t see them in the distance. Finally, as I continued to drive while trying my best to fight off sleep, I saw it, lit by the faint light: a fine line of snow that, like a drop of water, seemed to trickle vertically down the middle of the wall. She called to me, and though at the time her voice gave me a chill, I knew one day I wouldn’t be able to resist her call.

  Three years later, I was still falling in love with her melody as I stole glances at her, and even sometimes awoke dreaming of her voice. I had been studying her all that time from the distance of the surrounding peaks, or touching her feet. Until the time came to sing the song with her up close.

  For months I watched the line that had dazzled me when I passed through the gorge the Rauma River cuts through, the Norwegian valley of Romsdal. I studied it from different angles—from the foot of the wall, from its summit, and from the surrounding peaks—wondering which part I could ski and which outcroppings of rock or ice I would have to skirt. Then for two years I studied the conditions of the snow, and from time to time I observed how it adhered to the wall: when it stayed stuck, when it was too cold, when it looked good on the high and low parts of the mountain. Sometimes when I finished training, I took a detour on my way home to a point where I had a good view of the wall, and I observed it through binoculars or I took photos with a zoom lens to study later. I wondered what kind of skiing I could do, which equipment I would need, and what difficulties I would face. This phase of the study is almost as exciting as the expedition itself, since while I’m planning, I close my eyes and imagine all the details in my head. I can almost feel the cold on my face or the pain in my hands, or the shiver that runs down my spine when I see myself do a turn with my skis in the air. I also anticipate everything that could go wrong: an avalanche, slipping on ice beneath the snow, or messing up a turn. I often postpone expeditions because my anxiety about them is physical, I don’t know if I can accept the risk or the pressure, or on the day I plan to leave, my whole body is filled with a strange malaise. When I finally take it on, I know I’ve examined all the risks.

  The third winter I spent in Norway, the wind seemed to blow in my favor. It was a magnificent winter, with plenty of snow, but without excessive quantities of precipitation, followed by long periods of sun, which allowed the snow to stick well to the wall, and without enough volume to trigger avalanches on the slope. The main problem was presented by the line to the right of the Troll Wall, which basically traverses the first climbing route on the north wall of the Trolltind, called Fiva: within the vertical mile that ends almost at sea level, there is a wide range of conditions. In the lower 2,000 feet, the snow is affected by temperature changes and humidity, while in the upper 3,000 feet, the environment is more alpine.

  During the past weeks I had gone to the foot of the wall a couple of times and climbed the first 200 meters to get a real idea of what it was like from inside. Though the snow was harder than desirable, the conditions were almost perfect since the ski line was completely covered with snow, and it seemed like the high part of the route wouldn’t accumulate a dangerous amount.

  Then came the worst moment before a project bears fruit: the wait and choosing the day. Today? Tomorrow? Next week? If I always awaited ideal conditions I’d never get up from my couch. In incline skiing, it’s best to ski on hard sno
w, which doesn’t allow for error but is more stable than powder; in powder you can be less precise, but an avalanche can strike when you least expect it. In this kind of skiing, finding a balance between your movements as you descend and adherence to the wall is key.

  And the day arrived. The first turn is always the most difficult—not because it’s the most exposed but because it’s difficult to take a step into the unknown. Your heart pounds in your chest, there’s a pit in your stomach, your feet are sweating, your hands are, too. I drove a pole under my skis and felt the snow’s texture through it. I observed the whiteness and moved the point forward to where I would break my turn, trying to guess with my eyes what the snow was hiding beneath it. I slid the skis back and forth quickly, letting my body move forward a few inches. I leaned my weight on the tips of my skis and gained momentum. A lot. I inhaled as much as I could and began to exhale but cut it short. My heart stopped, my breathing stopped, and I was suspended above, motionless and eternal. Suddenly I felt the skis touch the snow again; now they slid softly, gaining speed, pressed against the sixty-degree slope. My legs strained, and I felt like the skis were warping as they embraced the snow, first gently, then with more momentum, until they scratched and tore through it and, little by little, turned to land at a right angle, and I came to a stop with a sharp movement, a couple of meters below where I had begun the turn. A mixture of excitement and fear, pleasure and hesitation ran through my veins, and would stay with me turn after turn as I descended, following the footprints I had left on my way up. I dodged the patches of ice and rock dotting the snow, which in the next two hours would force me to get the best out of myself. I put all the training and techniques I had at my disposal into practice, and with every meter I gained, my hesitation gave way to pleasure, and my fear to satisfaction. Finally, when I got to the bottom, I turned back. I looked up at the tracks the skis had left on the wall of snow. And all the feelings surged through me, from my feet to my stomach. And my chest. And my head. A genuine orgasm of adrenaline.