Above the Clouds Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Introduction

  The Farewell

  Training

  My Home Is the Mountain

  Everest in Summer

  More Than Five Hundred Race Numbers

  Everest in Fall

  Partners in Dreams

  Everest in Winter

  Experiences That Changed Me Forever

  Everest in Spring

  Epilogue: The Welcome

  About the Author

  Also by Kilian Jornet

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Introduction

  It’s not like I woke up one morning with some transcendental resolution to start running.

  I’ve been running mountains since the very beginning of my life, and since then I have spent my days counting the blueness of the lakes, the sharpness of the ridges, the length of the sunsets, and, well, some boring stuff like meters climbed and the miles behind and in front of me.

  I wasn’t like most kids growing up. The posters in my childhood bedroom were of Matterhorn, the Toblerone mountain in Switzerland, and a panorama called the Roof of the World, showing the range of Everest and the surrounding mountains. Eventually I climbed Matterhorn, and sometime after that I climbed Everest. When I ran up and down Matterhorn, it was to break a record, but Everest was different. I approached Everest with the idea to try a new way of mountain climbing. Four years separated my climb of Matterhorn and Everest, but mostly what separated them was my realization that I was living a life of contradictions. I ran fast to live a slow lifestyle. I needed solitude to be myself and social interactions to make a living. I loved the adrenaline of a race and the calm of the world above 8,000 meters. I enjoyed discovering remote mountains, but to protect them, I now realize it might have been better if I hadn’t visited them at all. I am those contradictions, and how I deal with them is also who I am. There will always be consequences to my actions, positive or negative, and those consequences might affect only myself or affect a large amount of people.

  As a teenager, I learned how to race in the mountains. It is all about training, getting in shape, executing the perfect movements, but beyond the physical, it is about how a runner or climber sees the mountains. Are they merely a playground to race on? Are they a stadium on which to perform your sport? Or are they something else entirely?

  When I climbed Matterhorn, I viewed mountains as my playground, the source of my greatest joy and fun and pleasure, and as my stadium, where I competed. Then, after some encounters with a few special humans you’ll read about in these pages, the fury of the mountains emerged in my life, and my stadium started to fall apart. Competition in sports is about performance. The time on the clock. When you cross the finish line. When your competitors do the same. In federated sports, this performance is judged by rules and regulations. But in the mountains, these rules and regulations are meaningless. Mountains are (still) a space of freedom, where lawlessness reigns for the good of everyone.

  DIDIER DELSALLE HAS BEEN ON TOP OF EVEREST. ON MAY 14, 2005, HE landed with his helicopter on the 8,848-meter summit. If he told you that he reached the summit of Everest, he wouldn’t be lying, although most of us in the mountain-climbing world would disagree. But where is the line we can draw between achieving the greatest feat—reaching the summit—and climbing the distance to get there? How many steps are considered effort enough to claim an ascent? What I’ve learned is that every shortcut is a personal decision you must live with, and every achievement is the same.

  When it comes to climbing mountains, the reaching should never compromise the journey to get there. That’s why when I climbed Everest, I did it alone with no assistance—not to simply step on the summit but to see what I was able to endure in my journey getting there. Four years before, when I ran up and down Matterhorn faster than anyone before, I was obsessed only with the achievement, researching the past, emulating how the fastest person before me had done it, and using his rules, as it was a competition. I was racing him. On Everest, I raced myself.

  When I started traveling far to do a run or a race or a climb, I considered it just a part of the job. But today I’m questioning how much of that travel is making a negative impact on the natural world I love so much. Does the answer “Because that’s just how it is” make it okay? In the long run, climbing Everest has likely been a very selfish and absurd activity, but what I understand from writing this book is that the path I have taken to climb it and the encounters I have had on that road have changed the way I see not only the mountain but also myself, and the connection between humans and nature has made me, I hope, a more committed human with those contradictions. Throughout these pages I try to explain this journey.

  In the end, Above the Clouds is not about what I have achieved but about what I have experienced, about feeling at peace with my values when I do something and embracing the possibility of change and failure as a reward for my soul.

  The Farewell

  My lips said “I love you” when what they really wanted to admit was “I’m sorry.”

  I kept forcing the words out, trying to make excuses: “Don’t worry,” “I’ll be careful” . . . but I knew no excuse would seem reasonable to her for setting out on an adventure that could lead to my death on the world’s highest mountain. Yet I need to climb mountains to feel alive, even if I risk death.

  I managed to mumble, “Goodbye,” with an uneasy feeling that I was being selfish and narcissistic. I definitely am those things. I took my backpack out of the trunk, accidentally slamming the lid shut. Dazed by the sudden loud noise, and this strange silence between us, I finally tapped on the back windshield to let her know she could leave.

  IT WAS EARLY AUGUST, BUT THE AIR WAS BRISK. THE SCENT OF THE sea filled my lungs. Tromsø is a fishing port on a little island surrounded by fjords and mountains, above the Arctic Circle in northern Norway. For a few weeks in summer, the sun doesn’t set; it’s always daytime. It’s as if time means nothing: grandparents go out for a midnight stroll, and you can see your neighbors fixing their balconies or tiling their roofs in the wee hours of the morning. A collective drunkenness seems to take hold of the region for a single, never-ending day. But the sun is gentle and never rises high in the sky, doing circles above the horizon, painting it with a thick layer of pastel colors, yellow and orange tones, sometimes flooded with intense red.

  The airport, where I said goodbye to the woman I love, lies at one end of the island. As Emelie drove away, I blew her a silent kiss. I didn’t want to look back, so I walked into the airport, trying to let my eyes dry before I went up to the check-in desk. I was setting out on a journey that would take me to the summit of Everest, aware of the difficulties and dangers that lay ahead. Despite everything, at no point did I reconsider this decision.

  A FEW HOURS EARLIER, EMELIE AND I HAD GONE FOR A RUN TOGETHER. Taking advantage of the continual light, we went out at night, after dinner, to stretch our legs and clear our minds after a tense and stressful few days of organizing a race for a few hundred runners. In the last few days, the phone calls, car rides back and forth, and hand squeezes had been near constant. Running together, just the two of us, would be a much-needed cleansing exercise.

  We set off along a narrow path, leaving the noise of the city behind. We wanted the mountains to shelter us. The wind’s soft murmur replaced the radio programs floating out of the houses and shops in town, and a pure, fresh breeze replaced the stifling air among the crowds and the smoke. Gradually, our legs began to feel lighter and lose the stiffness of the last few days. We climbed to the top of the first peak and ran on without stopping. We left the dirt path for the fields, climbing a new route. The frosty grass soaking our feet
contrasted with the hard, dry surface of the black asphalt. Little by little, our hearts began to beat at a shared rhythm, echoing the thump of our steps.

  We ran side by side, steeped in a feeling of peace and serenity that contrasted with the whirlwind of the previous days. But happiness can’t continue forever; this calm was the prelude to our farewell. Though from time to time we opened our mouths to try to say what needed to be said between us, sound didn’t emerge.

  Later, when we drove to the airport, neither of us could express what we’d both been feeling for a long time: fear and regret. And leaving it unsaid, we made a pact of silence that would last until I returned from the expedition.

  THROUGH THE AIRPLANE WINDOW, THE CITY SHRANK UNTIL IT DISAPPEARED. I stared through the glass at the plane’s shadow as we flew over fjords and still-snowy peaks, mountains and valleys. I knew many of those paths and crests, but I saw new paths from the air and imagined myself running along them on my return. At that moment, though, I was leaving them behind, too, and I hoped they would forgive me for going in search of another.

  I thought of the things I should have told Emelie while we were running together, to relieve the suffering she was sure to experience while we were far apart. A subtle joke or a clever comment, but I’m no good at thinking of quick things to say on the spot. I feel at peace in the mountains because, as Italian mountaineer Reinhold Messner said, they are not fair or unfair; they are just dangerous. And, in danger, you can apply a certain logic when it comes to making what you think will be the right decision. In the mountains, I never waver, but in the more jagged terrain of relationships, I am paralyzed.

  THE EARTH DISAPPEARED AS WE ENTERED A CLOUD, AND THE TURBULENCE made me snap back into the present. Leaving always brings a wave of contradictory feelings: the fleeting freedom of escape mixed with nostalgia for the warmth and familiarity I’ve left behind.

  In the plane’s hold was a suitcase weighing exactly fifty pounds. I had scrupulously calculated how to pack for this trip, with all the equipment I would need to conquer a high peak. There was no room for anything else, not even a pen.

  The preparations had gone almost perfectly, or at least that’s how it seemed to me. I had spent the last month in the Alps, most of the time above 4,000 meters, preparing my lungs and body for Everest’s impossibly high summit. I felt comfortable at a high altitude and was ready for the technical difficulties of the mountain.

  Before an assault on a summit, there is a moment that is impossible to quantify. It goes beyond the miles you’ve covered and the inevitable circumstances you’ve overcome. This is when you realize you have the necessary calm for the ascent. The sense of safety that takes hold when you feel comfortable in a terrain where, if you had more sense, you ought not to feel so safe. I had noticed I was in that exact state of mind as I finished my training in the Alps, and I still felt this way on the plane ride to Everest, where my risk threshold would be higher than usual. On the one hand, this was comforting, but on the other, it filled me with a fear of myself, since I didn’t know for sure what I would do if faced with a choice between my desire to climb the mountain and my sense of self-preservation, which keeps me calm and protects me from crossing boundaries with no return.

  The flight attendant pushed the dinner cart to the row where I was seated. She smiled and asked me to choose between the chicken and rice and the vegetable pasta. I decided on the pasta. Like clones of one another, all the passengers on the flight began the same dance at once: we opened the tiny cardboard package, removed the foil protecting the food, burned our fingers to confirm that it was too hot, then tore open the transparent cutlery wrapper and took out a fork to spear the four lettuce leaves. We inspected the pudding on the left of the tray with a sidelong glance. Is it chocolate?

  Without knowing very well how, I had ended up with a tub of processed macaroni and was now stirring it around with a disposable fork. I decided I was full. I placed everything in a pile as best I could, left it on the corner of the table, and waited for the flight attendant to come back and take it away.

  Intercontinental flights are like a long trip to a mall in a large city. There are always children crying and teenagers whispering, letting out the occasional scream or guffaw. Bad food, shiny offers for products you’ll never use, and movies, music, or games—it doesn’t matter which—to pass the time.

  I tried to escape the productivity traps these kinds of environments set by opening the notebook in which I was planning to journal my expedition and write down important things like daily activities, measurements of the slopes and the altitude, a record of how I felt while acclimating, meteorological data. And I gave it a try, but amid all the people crammed together in such a claustrophobic setting, I couldn’t make a single mark on the blank page.

  Angry with myself, I gave in to temptation and searched for a movie on the little screen on the seat back in front of me. Luckily, I fell asleep soon after the opening credits.

  In the dream, I entered a forest. The trees were large but weren’t the enormous sequoias you see in the United States. They belonged to a traditional forest, like in the Pyrenees, but were disproportionately large. It was like seeing everything from the height of a child or a small animal.

  Despite my calm, I was scared. Deep in the forest, everything moved at a dizzying speed. I began to walk. I wanted to get out, but everything was spinning around me, preventing me from finding or choosing the right path. I began to run, but the forest kept spinning and moving just as fast. My legs wouldn’t obey me and felt like they were made of lead; they were frozen to the mossy ground carpeted with pine needles. When I finally seemed able to free myself, the forest lurched like a boat in the midst of a storm and I fell.

  I could make out the shadows of animals passing between the trees. There seemed to be dozens. They were giant and began to surround me, the circle in which I was trapped closing in around me. When the animals were finally so close that they seemed about to crush me, I realized that in fact it was only one animal, a kind of long-legged mammoth running with enormous strides. But when I looked closer, I realized the beast that had cornered me wasn’t a mammoth but an enormous rabbit or hare.

  Suddenly, I heard a knock on a tree as if someone was chopping it down with an axe. Chop, chop. The sound was right next to me. And I felt the hare, or whatever it was, grab me by the shoulder. Chop, chop.

  “Excuse me, would you like something to drink?” the flight attendant asked, waking me up with a start.

  I let her know with a sleepy gesture that I didn’t want anything, and she pushed the cart loaded with drinks to the row behind me. That’s when it dawned on me: It was Petita! A hare I had found as a child, on a stormy day, in the forest behind the mountain refuge where we lived. In my dream she was huge, but when I rescued her she was an injured baby. That afternoon, all those years ago, I took her home, gave her some food and water, and laid her in my bedroom to sleep with me. But after a few days, she had recovered and filled the room with droppings, and wouldn’t stop moving under the sheets while I slept, and my parents asked me to let her go. I didn’t want to. She was mine! I had found her and rescued her, had built her a big pen outside the refuge for her to run around in, and fed her each afternoon when I got home from school.

  But one day after a few months of keeping her, when I went to see her after class, I found that Petita had died. I cried and cried, asking myself over and over what I’d done wrong. I didn’t realize that I had killed her by trying to take care of her. She had chosen to die rather than remain alive and imprisoned. Some animals are meant to live free.

  THREE DAYS AFTER GETTING OFF THE PLANE, I FELT FAR AWAY FROM all that I’d left behind: the frosty fields that had soaked my feet as I ran with Emelie in the silence we both had wanted to break without knowing how. Why didn’t we say anything to each other? Her hugs were far away now. So were the city, the traffic, the noise, and my worry that the car in front of us would make me late to the airport. So were my notebook full of preparatio
n notes and Petita, the hare in my dream.

  Now I was here on Everest in the springtime, attempting to ascend and descend the mountain in the fastest time, and I was in a fine mess.

  If I looked ahead, behind, or above, I saw only white enveloping everything. And below, my legs pierced the snow. And the silence was so intense and absolute that I could hear a distant, piercing whistle in my ears.

  In fact, there was no silence: I breathed deeply; the wind blew in violent gusts; snowflakes fell from the sky, rebelling against the air, flurrying at me from every direction, driving against my coat, which made a rhythmic flapping sound. There was so much noise that it ended up canceling itself out. It was not silent, but I felt silence. In my eyes, my ears . . . a single shade of white that traced a diagonal path up ahead allowed me to see the steep slope I was tackling. But a few feet ahead, the slope disappeared in the midst of the storm. Behind me, the deep path I’d cut had vanished almost immediately beneath the snow. Let’s go, Kilian. One more step. The snow came up to my knees and would soon be compacted by the wind.

  I could intuit with all my senses that in a few seconds this 2,000-meter wall, which had seemed inoffensive just two hours ago, was going to turn into an enormous unsteady sheet, a trap hiding an avalanche. I drove my ice axes in as deeply as I could. I’d lost track of my fellow climbers, who were somewhere behind me. I couldn’t see them. The thick fog had swallowed them.

  I took another step on this fifty-degree slope on the northeast face of Everest, hoping the snowfall that had accumulated in the last few hours wouldn’t detach from the wall and sweep down the mountainside. And hoping it wouldn’t pull me down with it.

  Before I attempted each step, I thought: Is this the last mountain I’ll climb? How the hell did I get this far?

  IT’S A LONG STORY. IT DIDN’T BEGIN WHEN I FIRST STARTED TRAINING to climb Everest in the summer. Or when I went back in the fall and the winter of that year to train again. It didn’t begin when I said goodbye to Emelie in the spring of the following year, headed to Everest to finally attempt my goal. Or when I took the plane to Nepal, or even when I dreamed of exploring Everest when I was young. Though I might not have been aware of it, this story began long before, 6,000 feet above sea level in Spain. My home.