My heart, I realized at the time, was telling me I wanted to return to climbing unnamed mountains, so that I might feel again, without knowing how to describe my feelings.
TWO YEARS HAD GONE BY SINCE THE NEPALESE EARTHQUAKE, AND I was in Norway, at the farm where I live with Emelie. We were reinforcing a fence that we’d built not long before. The previous week we had noticed the sheep could jump the wire fence, and once they discovered this ability, they wasted no time at all, imitating the star of The Great Escape whenever they could. Until one of them got stuck. It had to learn, through a painful experience, the nature of the traps you can fall into when looking for freedom.
We didn’t know how long their new respect for the fence would last, or when they would recover the will to flee and start jumping higher, so we wanted to preempt them and decided to increase the height in some parts. That morning I had to go to town and decided to buy the posts and the length of wire we needed so I could finish the job that afternoon. When I asked for the materials at the store, the sales assistant immediately noticed that my Norwegian accent wasn’t exactly orthodox. As he helped me load my purchase into the car, he told me in perfect English and with a smile almost too big for his face that he was glad foreigners enjoyed living in these dead-end mountains. He asked me if I was from Morocco. I said yes, more or less around there.
We finished the fence in the end, though I’m not much of a handyman. I’m not a big fan of chaining myself to a single place, but it’s nice to see your work bear fruit. Suddenly, I felt like I owed all the time I spent away from home climbing mountains to Emelie.
AT THAT TIME OF YEAR, IN EARLY SUMMER, THE SUN NEVER GOES down, and it’s a good time to go running for hours on end. Running is pure, simple, and human. The closest to it is walking, which is just what runners do when they’re tired. Both activities fulfill one of human beings’ most basic goals: to move around. For me, this is a basic drive of life. Without it, there’s no way to learn. And what’s more, once you set out in a direction, you can branch out and multiply it infinitely.
Every day of the year, I go out running or skiing to train, but there’s a fundamental difference between training and completing an expedition: the uncertainty of whether you’ll achieve what you set out to do. And after a year out of action due to injuries, I now wanted to do something to challenge myself, to live intensely again, to find my limit in some concrete aspect of what I do. The idea of a long journey didn’t appeal to me. Beauty is often hiding right outside your door, I thought. That’s why I decided on a simple but highly demanding expedition: leave the house, climb a mountain, and follow the ridge of the summits until my legs and heart tell me they’ve had enough, that they cannot go on.
One Friday in late July, I filled my backpack with everything I might need for a few days in the mountains, constantly on the go: a jacket, some gloves, about twenty energy bars, a short rope, an ice axe, and not much else. After breakfast, I went out running as I do every day, except this time I didn’t know when I’d be coming home. Emelie went with me as far as the first peak, in the midst of a fog that tinted the valleys a sad shade of gray. After 1,000 meters, we reached the top and had a great time running as if on top of a sea of cotton wool, our faces warmed by the sun and our eyes making out the sharp islands that rose up along the horizon. I want to stay here, running from peak to peak along the ridges that join them, and never enter the clouds. Emelie and I said goodbye. She turned back, and I kept going along the top of the ridge, doing a balancing act so as not to be swallowed up by the surrounding clouds. They were white and soft, but they wouldn’t have cushioned my fall.
Normally when I set out on an expedition my first move is to set my stopwatch. This time, I didn’t. Speed is embedded in my DNA, but I didn’t want to rush; rather, I wanted to go far and not leave a record.
Step by step, stone by stone, peak by peak, I followed the ridge. The sun’s heat grew stronger and I was alone on top of the clouds. Everyone else was inside the fog, lamenting the gray, and didn’t know they had this paradise so close—if only they’d come up here for a while. That idyllic place unfurled before my eyes like a snake. A dozen peaks, one after another, connected by a narrow strip of rock; a little beyond lay another dozen, and then another, though they were so far away that I couldn’t make them out clearly. But I was getting closer, dancing a fluid dance, flirting with a little danger to make it more exciting. I played around with difficulties not outside my comfort zone, but they did require an effort for me to stay safe. I was exploring the creation of a private, intimate moment.
I didn’t know what time it was, and my body couldn’t be tricked by the illusion that time didn’t matter. I’d been gaining elevation for over 7,000 meters by now, and the tiredness was beginning to show. The ridge I’d been following all day came to an end, and I had to go down to the valley to climb into the adjoining range and start a new ridge. I left the rocks and the snow behind for a forested area that grew thicker and thicker, until I could distinguish the smell of the sea and spot the first houses in a town. At that latitude, the summer sun goes down for a couple of hours, and it was exactly that time, with a dark dot on the horizon, when I crossed the still-sleeping town. So as not to disturb anyone, I tiptoed in front of the houses and went on across to the other side of the valley, leaving behind the smell of the sea and the thick trees and bushes until I reached the area where I feel most comfortable, the mineral world.
The shadows persisted when I attacked the next ridge; a narrow, vertical edge showed me where to begin. About 400 meters of reddish wall challenged me, and as I approached, I tried with little success to identify its weak spot. When I reached the foot of the wall, I saw a system of cracks and dihedrals that looked continuous, and I began to climb. It was a grade V level of difficulty. Though it wasn’t demanding, it required a vertical dance of concentration and precise movements. My sneakers stuck softly to the granite, and my fingers moved delicately across the cracks so as not to disturb them. On this kind of terrain, where the rock barely sees any people, and even more so when you climb without the backup of a rope, you have to caress more than cling. Before grasping or stepping onto my target, I would tap it gently with my hand or foot, to make sure it was firm enough to resist my weight. With each step, as I danced with the rock in a vertical position, I asked its permission to take it by the waist, knowing that the slightest false step would cause me to fall and break my heart.
When I reached the upper section, the wall became less vertical and therefore less solid.
Between the cracks, which grew wider and more frequent, a few clumps of grass were growing, practically the only mortar that kept the rocks stuck to the wall. At some points I even took out my ice axe and drove it into a thicket to achieve a safe enough degree of stability. Slowly but surely, I overcame these obstacles and reached the ridges again. Since I was now back in a less risky stretch, my body spoke and told me it was getting very, very tired. Despite my strategy of eating a bar or gel every couple of hours, it must have been over twenty hours since I began running and climbing, without stopping for even a second. A blanket of exhaustion fell over me like the night, covering me completely.
There was nothing I could do. No matter how much I ate, the energy didn’t return to my feet. Even with the fresh memory of my light steps, they couldn’t run, and I had to drag them across the rocks. The landscape didn’t advance, and between one peak and another, time seemed to go on forever.
It’s moments like this when you ask yourself what the point is of going on. My body ached and was falling asleep, my movements were clumsy, and every step took so much concentration on the more technical stretches that my pace slowed to half of what it had been. My head was fighting fatigue, waiting for a nice spot to fall down on the grass, bask in the sun, take a nap, and breathe for a few minutes. But that was impossible. It was still a few hours until the sunlight would bathe that face of the mountain, and first I wanted to get through the more technical stretch. The ridge I had to trav
erse was made up of a dozen pinnacles of various shapes and sizes, some so narrow that a group of four people could embrace them, others with a perimeter of over half a kilometer, and a few hundred meters high.
In the middle of my battle with sleep and my feet’s protest, pushed along by a force of stubbornness, I reached the final peak on the ridge. I looked up for a moment and contemplated the wall that fell away beneath me: a sheer 1,500-meter drop to the river on which it stood. If I threw a rock down here, it would plunge into the water without even grazing the wall.
I approached the edge of the ridge and unrolled the rope. I was looking for a block of stone solid enough to resist my weight. I found it and slid the cord down behind me. Since it was very thin, I could retrieve it from below after rappelling, without needing to leave any gear on the wall. I set up three rappels, climbed down a little, and reached a glacier, which allowed me to slide down and save some energy. I was soon at the bottom of the valley. A road led me to Åndalsnes, a town of two thousand inhabitants. Seeing so many people so suddenly made me realize I’d been running for a little more than a day without encountering anyone.
I took the chance to buy some energy bars at a gas station. A slice of bread and cheese and a half-hour nap gave me back the vitality I’d had when I set out. I kept going and went up to the next ridge, and, running and climbing, I mounted its peaks. This was a more touristy area, and from time to time I came across people admiring the view or climbers tackling a wall. Their company livened up the route. I used them to spur myself on: See if you can get to the summit before the guy in the red jacket. You’ll catch up with that rope team before they finish their meeting. Just a childish game to keep myself awake.
With this formula, I managed to trick my exhaustion until a few hours later, when it took hold of my entire body. My feet were heavy and refused to obey my brain’s instructions. It was late afternoon, and there were still four hours of sun left. The challenge ahead of me was the highest peak in the region. It had a long descent, and I wanted to reach it before the shadows, so the snow would still be softened by the heat of the day and I could go down faster and more safely. A few hours later, hidden in darkness, it would be as hard as glass.
The ridge I was facing wasn’t difficult, but it was involved and exposed, and required a certain amount of concentration. In the state I was in, it might take me three or four hours to reach the top safely. I was so sleepy! My vision was even blurry when I looked at the path. When you feel like you’re falling asleep when you’re walking along, you feel so anxious. And when I saw a little patch of grass between some rocks, it looked so good. A deep happiness overcame me when I imagined lying there with my eyes closed, sleeping like a baby. Few things can compete with a sense of well-being like that one. I took off my shoes and socks and left them in the sun to dry, rolled my jacket into the shape of a cushion, set the alarm on my phone to go off half an hour later, and stretched out on the soft grass. Then I was knocked out by sleep.
I was sleeping deeply when a buzzing sound awoke me. The time! The sun was still caressing my face, the heat was as pleasant as the gentle breeze blowing away the stifling warmth. Almost robotically, I pulled on my shoes and socks and set out again as if nothing had happened. After a minute back on my way, my body was awake enough and I began to jog, and I didn’t stop running until I had reached the first wall of rock. My hands set about their task easily and my feet corresponded with lightness, and with the precision I had lost a few hours earlier. The ridge went by beneath my feet at a speed I would have been satisfied with on a shorter run, and I experienced it with a feeling closer to happiness than excitement, the feeling you get when your body and spirit align. It was hard to believe I’d been having such a hard time just an hour before, struggling to stay awake, punishing myself by wondering why I didn’t just give up and go home. And look, soon after that, here I was, galloping along as if I’d only just gotten up, with a joy I wouldn’t have traded for anything in the world. I knew that feeling, that illusion of freshness, would soon give way to another, and I wanted to experience it as intensely as possible.
It took me only an hour to reach the summit, and I let myself slide down the soft snow as the sun went down. Halfway along the ridge, I swung over to the darker side, abandoning the warmth and at the same time the more traveled area, sure it would be about twenty hours before I saw anyone again.
Among lakes and waterfalls, with no scarcity of water, the ridges were once again painted a shade of black that covered the fractured rocks of dubious solidity, and my body’s freshness disappeared just like the sun. I was wiped out all over again. With extreme fatigue, we take more risks due to laziness and exhaustion. Once it had been forty hours since I’d left home, I spent my energy trying not to fall into the traps set by my mind, and to prevent the lazy Kilian from beating the rational Kilian. To prevent monotony from teaming up with exhaustion, I tried hard to remember the lyrics of an Italian song that I repeated over and over on a loop: “Ma ho visto anche degli zingari felici, corrersi dietro, far l’amore e rotolarsi per terra. Ho visto anche degli zingari felici . . . Zingari . . .”
The sun rose over the horizon again and I awaited its warmth. A sea of clouds enveloped the highest peaks once more. On my way down, I passed a stream and stopped to wash my face, which was covered in days of sweat. The cool water revived me. I drank so much that it unsettled my stomach. I walked a little farther away from the edge of the river and stretched out in a grassy dip. The sun’s heat accompanied me while I slept.
Somewhat recovered and climbing the next ridge, I counted the remaining peaks on my fingers. My whole hand, five fingers, and I would finish circling the fjord along the ridges! If you’d told me I’d make it this far thirty hours earlier when I was sunk in a pit of exhaustion, I wouldn’t have believed it. And now! Five peaks didn’t seem like many, but after 160 kilometers and more than 20,000 meters of uphill slope in fifty hours, I couldn’t lose my respect for the more than 4,000 still ahead. So, with my batteries recharged after a half-hour nap and the carrot of rest—this time definitive—dangling in front of my nose, I shot off at full speed along those rocky hills.
Maybe it was because of the excitement of glimpsing the end, or maybe the exhaustion, that I forgot the caution mantra I’d been repeating for so many hours. Wanting to take the middle of the path, without paying much attention to where I was putting my feet, I fell to the bottom of a small crevasse just as I was crossing the last stretch of snow. It was very soft. I sunk up to above my knees, tempting fate a little too much by trusting blindly in the solidity of its bridges of snow, until one of them gave way beneath my feet. The hole wasn’t very deep, a couple of meters at the most, but my hip impacted directly against the slick gray rock. A sharp pain shot up my spine. I sat down to breathe deeply for a few seconds and soothe the pain. I confirmed that nothing serious had happened. Everything was still in working order, and the lump about to appear on my hip was a foregone conclusion, so I set off back into the snow. I looked for a path among the stones, like I should have from the beginning. “This is just superficial damage,” I said. And I started running.
I soon forgot the pain, and the promise of reaching the end was a balm that gave me energy. Three peaks, two peaks, and finally I began to climb the narrow ridge that led to the fjord’s last summit. I had laid my exhaustion and desire to rest in some corner, I’m not sure where. Among the clouds, in the distance, in the middle of the ridge, Emelie appeared. She was waiting for me with a kiss and a sandwich in her hand. She accompanied me to the last peak, and we went down to the town together. I sat for a few minutes in the trunk of the car, not eating or drinking, not taking off my clothes, which by this time were a second skin. I stared vacantly at some point on the road. My mind was blank. This absence is probably where all the force of our activities resides. When you finish them, for a brief period, there is no past or future.
IT WAS A STUPID THING TO DO, JUST THREE MONTHS AFTER BREAKING my fibula in the Pierra Menta. I’m s
ure no doctor would have recommended it as part of my rehab, and mine never found out about it. Until now, I guess. But these are exactly the things I live for: exploring in the knowledge that the risk of failure is high. As well as testing how my recovery was going, what most interested me was to combine two activities I excelled at: long-distance running—160 or 200 kilometers are no challenge for me—and climbing, in which I didn’t know how I would respond to doing so many walls, one right after another. In the end, I know that to achieve intense enjoyment, I have to go to the limit of my comfort zone, then stick to the range of things I know how to do, stretching the limit as far as possible.
Everest in
Spring
A few weeks after leaving the Norwegian winter behind, I returned to the same powder-and-rock esplanade of the previous summer, Everest. Now everything was different.
The moraine where we had embraced eight months ago was covered in tents of every shape, size, and color a creative mind could imagine. The ridge we had descended between avalanches was now a placid and gentle slope of hardened snow, with a cord attached to some stakes that ran from where the snow began all the way to the mountain’s summit. Some three hundred people were walking between Rongbuk and the last camp, situated at 8,300 meters, half of them harboring a dream of reaching the summit, the other half working so that those in the first group could achieve their goal. Last year’s solitary camp had become a small multicultural city, where everyone was absorbed in the work of preparing for the ascent.
Séb and I were sharing a permit with another expedition that had already been set up on the mountain for a few weeks. I was coming from a neighboring expedition on Cho Oyu, where I had spent a week with Emelie. Séb had just arrived from France. Even though he’d been at a high altitude for the last few weeks in Tibet and then in the Alps, he’d had a terrible night. He had a dry cough and chest pain, and spit a little blood when he coughed. It was a sign of a pulmonary edema. We’d have to take it easy and wait a few days before going up to the advanced base camp.
Above the Clouds Page 16