“What I do is divide the season into stages,” I told him, “but since every year my goals are scheduled around the same time—skiing from January to April, running from May to September—it’s easy to set up a routine. That way I know in advance that fall is when I need to focus on volume, and the beginning of winter I need to work on intensity, and I keep going like that, following the blocks I’ve set up.”
“I train in blocks, too,” he explained, “but they’re not fixed by the time of year. Instead, I set them depending on what I’m working toward at the time. For example, if my goal is to go to California and free-climb El Capitán, I do a few specific months of strength training and sport climbing beforehand, with a week of distance training in between, so I don’t lose any muscle mass. If the goal is a huge wall in the Himalayas, I spend a block focusing on resistance training, with a lot of slopes with easy terrain, and a few weeks of technical training mixed in.”
In any case, Ueli was a guy who trained for twelve hundred hours a year, a figure like those of cross-country skiing or cycling world champions. Just like my terrain for doing the hamster in autumn is the ski slopes of Tignes, Ueli paid homage to that cute little metaphorical animal on the north face of the Eiger.
We were talking so much that we almost didn’t notice we’d arrived at the foot of the wall. It had taken us just over two hours to get there. I looked up for the first time since we’d left and allowed myself to be intimidated by the 800 meters of black rock. Despite being the smaller of the three mountains in the massif, the Eiger is the most feared. It stands beside two other peaks, the Jungfrau (virgin) and the Mönch (monk), each of which inspires respect. The name of the mountain in front of me doesn’t lie: the Eiger, the ogre.
We took off our sneakers and put on our boots and crampons. Without wasting any more time at the foot of the wall, we began to climb up some relatively easy sheets of rock, and after passing some steep patches of snow, we reached the halfway point. This was where the real difficulties would begin. With a little imagination, if we wanted to go down now, we could ski. With a little imagination, I repeat. But on our way up, everything would be vertical.
We roped ourselves a few meters apart and kept climbing together, placing the occasional anchor when the terrain was more vertical. Meter by meter, the anxiety of not being able to climb with skill started to disappear, and I got caught up in enjoying myself and feeling playful. Our path was very long, almost 3 kilometers, and we traversed the wall from right to left for numerous stretches, on terrain where the difficulties never lasted long. Small cliffs of 20 or 30 vertical meters of ice or rock gave way to simpler snowy slopes, which, hanging over the void, imparted an intimidating sense of exposure.
The two of us were alone on the wall, and though we had to start opening a trail, Ueli knew it so well that he didn’t hesitate for a moment when determining which way to go, and as we pressed forward, he showed me the routes he’d already climbed.
“Here’s Jeff Lowe’s Metanoia route. I tried it a few years ago. And there are Patience and the Young Spider, which I established myself years ago.”
“Ueli, is there anything you haven’t done on this wall?”
“Oof, a whole lot of things . . . Even if I did a wall a day, I’m in my forties now and I’m getting old, so I see them all with different eyes. Look, even today, I’d never set out running from Grindelwald to climb up here.”
“Maybe one day you should try skiing down from here,” I said to rib him, knowing he wasn’t a fan of skiing.
“Well, I’ve never done it with skis, but I did a couple of descents to train for Annapurna.”
“What . . . ?” I let slip in amazement. “But . . . but . . . that wall is already pretty hard to climb up, and getting down is even more complicated on technical terrain!”
“Well, I wanted to make sure I could climb back down a technical stretch and on a large wall, so I’d have the resources and confidence when I went to the Himalayas. That’s why I thought a good way to train would be to go up the west face, the easiest one, and climb down the north face, which I know from memory and can do with my eyes closed.”
I was so amazed to hear him talk such nonsense that I couldn’t even think of an answer. He kept talking about this and that, saying that actually the south face of Annapurna wasn’t any more difficult than this wall, and was therefore easy to climb down. Incredible. I tried to absorb what he’d just told me as we kept climbing.
In fact, a couple of years earlier, when Ueli completed a solitary climb that included 2,000 meters of wall on the south face of Annapurna, ending at 8,901 meters, the whole world was stunned. That wall presents enormous difficulties, and the altitude imposes additional obstacles. He had climbed it alone and in a single twenty-eight-hour burst. A few weeks later, the French mountain climbers Stéphane Benoist and Yannick Graziani did the same route. It took them ten days from start to finish, and there were many complications due to the altitude and cold, which eventually led to the amputation of four fingers.
Ueli’s account of his climb was jaw-dropping.
“While I climbed, I was completely detached from the world. Nothing existed except the climb. The idea of past or future had disappeared, and I was just in the here and now. A stab with the ice axe, then another, one step, then another. All I could see was the ice axes penetrating the snow and ice. My vision narrowed. There I was, in the middle of a gigantic wall, with very little equipment. I felt light but very exposed. I knew if I made a mistake, no matter how small, I’d be dead. And despite all that, I wasn’t afraid I would make a mistake. I gave myself orders. I was in control of the person climbing the south face of Annapurna. I didn’t feel myself. If that person fell, it wouldn’t bother me. Because the future didn’t exist.”
He had practically experienced the beyond. Before setting out, he’d accepted that his path went in only one direction. He’d accepted that he might end up dead. Once he made it down alive and kicking, a void took hold of his spirit, the kind of void that fills everything when you’re convinced you’ve reached a limit you’ll never be able to surpass. When you’ve experienced that limit.
Ueli had to deal with criticism from people who cast doubt on his feat since he couldn’t document it with photos. “Oh, I’m sorry, all-night climbing, dodging the wind and the rockfalls without my camera because I lost it in a little avalanche on the wall.” Within the professional community, no one had any doubt about his climb, and he was awarded the Piolet d’Or (Golden Ice Axe), the prize for the best mountain-climbing activity of the year. Even so, for a while he was bothered by the criticism and lack of understanding.
“But what does anyone know about what it means to solo climb a wall like that?” he said. “How can they imagine the decisions I made if they’ve never climbed in such an exposed situation?”
Every once in a while this happens: when someone imagines and goes through with something the whole world believes impossible, rather than feeling inspired, many people shut off in denial. It’s easier to say no than to recognize your own limits.
But all wounds heal with time. At least, that’s what they say. Ueli had gotten his motivation back by doing all the peaks over 4,000 meters in the Alps in a row, climbing in the Himalayas again, and training to improve in other areas. No matter how many times he told me, I couldn’t believe what he promised his wife: that he would never solo climb an extremely difficult route again.
“Even though I told Nicole I wouldn’t,” he said, “I can climb the Eiger fast and without any risk.”
THAT DAY, THE WEATHER WAS FANTASTIC. THERE WAS NO WIND, AND it was warm—bearing in mind that we were on a north face and almost 4,000 meters up. This meant we could climb in a jacket and gloves, and fully enjoy the ascent. As we climbed, he constantly observed the wall’s conditions and talked enthusiastically about different strategies, telling me his ideas for lighter materials, or for getting food and drink more efficiently in order to pick up the pace. It was priceless to watch Ueli move around
this terrain. He looked like he was ascending along a flat path. I watched him assess the ice quality, noticing how easily he carried out all the movements. I tried to absorb everything I saw and everything he explained. This is my favorite kind of mountain, because the difficulties demand concentration and present a certain amount of risk, but they aren’t so huge that you have to stop and climb one at a time so as not to slip up at any step. In a couple of more complicated stretches, Ueli belayed me by running the rope around my back, and we kept climbing at a good pace until we reached the final crevices, where he practically broke into a run, even though the terrain was still tricky. I followed him as best I could, a few meters behind, with the rope nice and taut. I copied his movements but had no time to see where to put my hands and feet. Ice axe on ice, crampon on rock, ice axe on rock, crampon on ice. After a while, we found ourselves on the highest ridge.
In the green fields 2,000 meters below, the cows we had annoyed that morning were grazing peacefully. It was midday, just seven hours after we had left Grindelwald, when we started heading down the other side of the mountain. For me, today’s climb had been a first-class experience, but for Ueli it was just part of his regular training. I was grateful to him for this master class in mountain climbing. It took us less than two hours to get down the east face, and we passed in front of the cable car. We put our sneakers back on and took off running toward the car. It had been ten hours since we left it. I bought a couple of drinks and some cookies. We scarfed them down and exchanged some equipment. He put on some shorts and headed off to a rock wall in the Interlaken area to do some sport climbing. I was going to Tignes. I would have time for another ascent in the afternoon.
Four days went by, packed with intense training, before I got another text message from Ueli: “Today it was great conditions. 2 hours 22 minutes ;).”
Solo
I go up and down glaciers and count the days in thousands of meters.
After I came back from the Eiger, an idea lodged in my head and kept growing as I racked up training hours, almost of its own accord. The weather had been good for a week, and cold, which meant the mountain conditions were probably still good for climbing. After everything I had learned from Simón in June and from Ueli a few days ago, I wanted to complete my personal trilogy by putting it into practice for myself. For me, solo climbing is the most direct and authentic. It’s just you, with your doubts and fears. You write your destiny with your decisions alone.
I went back to my apartment with tired legs after spending the morning training. I glanced at the weather forecast. I saw on Google Maps that it was a five-hour drive to Zermatt, at the foot of Matterhorn. That sounded about right. I let the friends I train with know that they shouldn’t wait for me the next day. I loaded up the truck with everything I needed. Then I made a little pasta with olive oil and went straight to sleep.
DAWN CAME, AND I DROVE TO ZERMATT, WHERE I SAW A FEW TOURISTS looking like zombies, wandering around on the verge of a drunken coma, trying to find the hotel where they’d booked a thousand-euro room for the night. I drove through the streets and stopped at the exit to the Patrouille des Glaciers. This time there weren’t two thousand runners behind me and I didn’t feel the excitement of having to compete, but I breathed in the same energy, now that I was leaving the town to head toward the valleys.
At midmorning, I reached the Hörnli refuge, where I drank some water and ate the four cookies I’d brought. As I changed from sneakers to boots, I noticed that no one had stayed in the free refuge overnight. This meant there wouldn’t be any rope teams up where I was headed. Without wasting any time, I set out to look for the foot of the wall. The temperature was good. Not so cold that I’d have a rough time, and not so warm that detached rocks or ice would give me any trouble.
I headed up the sixty-degree slope of snow and ice. I was doing well and moving quickly, almost running along this terrain, and I felt comfortable. When I got to the foot of the ramp, a kind of rock and ice gully, I was surprised to see that it was completely dry, and I had some doubts. It was going to be tougher than I thought. But that’s what I came for, right? So I’d have to make decisions like this one . . . I decided to keep going. I was carrying a thin 30-meter rope and some equipment that I could leave behind, or that would be helpful if I had to rappel down or belay myself in case I decided to keep going. I started climbing up the ramp, placing the ice axes and crampons delicately in the cracks in the black schist. After about 100 relatively easy meters, I came upon a more vertical chimney formation. I climbed a couple of meters more, but I couldn’t see how to position myself to keep going safely, and when I looked down, I realized the fall would be . . . No, falling wasn’t an option. I climbed down a few meters until I found a well-placed piton. I reinforced it by hammering it farther in with an ice axe, and when it seemed firm, I took the rope from my backpack and tied one of the ends to my harness, threaded the rope through the hole in the piton, and tied the rope back on to the harness with a slipknot. I gave myself more rope as I climbed, and hoped the piton would be able to resist the jolt if I fell. If not, I figured the 20- or 30-meter drop wouldn’t do me too much harm and I could either climb back up or back down. So, I measured my pace as if I weren’t in a harness. Little by little, the stress diminished. I picked the rope back up and kept climbing the ramp, which at this point had ice beneath a layer of powdery snow. At least now I could drive my crampons and ice axes into something that made me feel safe.
Three hours later, I emerged on the ridge near the summit. It had been an intense climb and had taken maximum concentration, and when I left the wall I felt a rush of adrenaline as the energy left my body.
With the days shorter in fall, it was midafternoon by the time I reached the metal cross that someone had planted at the summit of Matterhorn. I looked down and saw the peak’s shadow beginning to lengthen over the valleys. I wished it were summer so I could see the clean ridges without snow. A couple of years before, it had taken me only fifty-six minutes to get down to the town of Cervinia from this spot. This time it looked like it would be much longer and trickier, since it was covered in ice and snow and there were no markers indicating which path to take for a quick descent.
I climbed down cautiously as the shadow of Matterhorn continued to lengthen toward the east, casting an immense arrow that showed me which way to go. I was trapped by the night. I turned on my headlamp and looked for a better path. The terrain on the ridge isn’t complicated, but it is exposed, and in these conditions I couldn’t go jumping from rock to rock, even though I felt safe and I was going at a good pace.
Suddenly, I felt my right crampon catch on something on my left leg. My body slowly lurched forward. I tried to free my foot to step ahead, but it was caught on my pants. There was nothing I could do. My body plunged into the void and I turned upside down. I felt the first impact when I landed on my shoulders, then tumbled down even farther into the darkness. I couldn’t see myself. The second blow hit me on the back.
I’ve been convinced I was living the last seconds of my life on two occasions. This was the first. I thought everything was ending right there. As I fell, all I could do was murmur “Shit” in a low voice, as if not wanting to disturb anyone, but I was angry at myself. I thought of nothing except resisting the impact however I could, and then tried stretching my arms out to grab on to anything to avoid what seemed inevitable.
With one of those movements, my arm got trapped between some rocks and I managed to break my fall. I got up as best I could. My whole body was shaking, and I was breathing heavily from adrenaline. I couldn’t decide whether to scream at the top of my lungs or to merge with my surroundings and completely disappear. After taking a minute to recover from the fright, I did a quick check of my injuries. My elbow had suffered the first blow and was semi-dislocated, but since that was nothing new for me, I quickly clicked it back into place. My legs had been hit a number of times, and I had a small wound right where the crampon had gotten caught on my pant leg. None of this se
emed too serious, so I could keep going down. With the first few steps, I noticed my legs were shaking, and so I dropped my butt to the ground to scoot forward. Gradually, I returned to a normal pace.
Ten and a half hours after setting out, I was back in Zermatt. I bought a slice of pizza in a supermarket to eat on my way back to Tignes.
Stéphane
But good luck isn’t always on your side.
In the year 2000, when I was twelve years old, I was at the Malniu refuge in La Cerdanya, just like every summer. I spent half my school vacations there, helping my father. I made sandwiches and eggs and beans, brewed coffee, folded blankets, swept the rooms or set the dinner table for the mountaineers who were doing the GR 11 or going to see the lakes. Working in a refuge means getting up early and going to bed late, because breakfast is served at dawn and you have to leave everything tidy at night, but between the first meal of the day and the time people start arriving at midday, there’s a decent stretch. My sister and I made use of it to race in the area around the refuge, not running but climbing up the walls, grabbing on to the handholds between the stone blocks. In the afternoons, while we waited to serve dinner, if it was cold we lit the woodstove and flipped through the many magazines lying around in the dining room. When I saw the cover of an issue of Desnivel with a photo of a skier on a steep slope, all bundled up, but with his legs bare, my jaw dropped. The headline read, “Davo Karničar Skis Everest.”
“Whoa, check this out!” I yelled to my sister, thrusting the magazine in her face. “Do you really think you can ski down Everest?”
We started looking through the pages, where the article explained in more detail how Davo had managed it, and I was astonished by the Slovenian skier’s tenacity and technique. I had not yet done a steep descent myself, but for some reason I was convinced I would die skiing down the K2 at the age of twenty-one.
Above the Clouds Page 13