Above the Clouds Read online

  Preparing the Attack on Everest

  It’s hard for me to think of climbing a mountain as heroic. I know it’s easy to make it look that way. When you’re at the foot of a great mountain with glaciers towering above you, rocks that come loose in the heat, and distances that seem unconquerable, it’s easy to convince others that climbing it is a titanic feat requiring superhuman physical abilities and the courage of the gods. But—sorry to disappoint you—this isn’t the reality. Climbing a mountain is just putting your life in danger to try to reach the summit, and then coming down again. Clearly, this puts you in a category closer to stupidity than to heroism.

  No matter how many athletes pretend this isn’t the case, coordinating their expeditions with fundraising campaigns for charity or raising awareness about a rare disease, there’s nothing heroic about climbing a high peak in the Himalayas. In fact, it’s a selfish enterprise. A dangerous and expensive leisure activity.

  I’ve always been drawn to high mountains, but the classic expedition dynamic doesn’t appeal to me. Having to spend two to three months in a tent at base camp, waiting for a window of good weather that will allow you to undertake the ascent, seems to me like a pointless waste of time. Boredom and idleness are the two words that best summarize life at base camp. To make things worse, your physical condition deteriorates and your motivation gets buried beneath the snow. Life at base camp is like being trapped in a mountainous paradise, a prisoner of rest between the walls of your tent. In an ocean of gray stone and a desert of white powder, surrounded by dry air and beneath a blue sky. Flanked by rocky mountains, with a river of cold water crossing this desert of powder and cutting its snaking path toward lower terrain, to feed the grass and a few bushes.

  If I go upstream, I will find the slope marked by mounds of stone that rumple the terrain like a tattered blanket, and farther up, I will glimpse the ice of an immense glacier. The wind is constant as it rushes down from the mountains, escaping from the white peaks along the same route as the river. During one visit to Everest, there were four small tents and another larger one at the edge of the slope, all a sun-bleached shade of yellow. Inside the largest one, it was like being at a regular campsite, with four chairs and a thermos of tea. I listened to the wind whip the walls, and a movie image of a helicopter came to mind, its propellers turning as it approached and retreated in turn, but it wouldn’t leave, like in a nightmare.

  There was a book in front of me that I’d already read a couple of times, and I regretted having left all the others at home. The clock only told two times: six in the morning, when we would meet for breakfast, and six in the evening, when we would get together again for dinner. In between, there were no hours, there were no minutes, no seconds, only time that dragged on indefinitely. So fucking boring. I stared into the distance, hoping to find any distraction. I no longer had the keen, restless gaze of the first few days; now my eyes had been dried by the wind and reacted only to a previously unseen mountain I dreamed of climbing, a black dog roaming around with the same look in its eyes as me, a cloud formation that reminded me of the outline of another, identical cloud I had seen one fall afternoon at home.

  Soon after arriving, I had seen Vivian Bruchez take a Coca-Cola can and scratch some figures onto it with a Swiss Army knife, and I’d laughed at him; a few days later, I had spent hours looking over the enormous pile of silvery sculptures growing higher and higher. There were simple ones (a face, a mountain with ski tracks) and more complex ones (a climber abseiling down a rock face with a rope, a harness, and even some ice axes cut out of the tin). As he sculpted in silence, our absent gazes forgot the passage of time.

  I watched Vivian in the throes of artistic creation, and suddenly I noticed my clothes were making me itch. My merino wool underwear was starting to get worn out. They were almost new when I arrived, but in a few days, they had become frayed. When I packed only a couple of pairs for the expedition, thinking of keeping the weight under the baggage limit, I hadn’t realized that washing them in highly mineralized glacial water and hanging them in the dry air would weaken the fibers. Yes, the hole in the crotch was inevitable, and now one of my balls hung out when I walked.

  In my tent, I grabbed a pen and held it above the blank paper like a weapon. I had no ideas. In fact, I had only one: everything has been written, everything is plagiarism, we drive ourselves insane by repeating things over and over and over; it’s impossible to say anything new. I flipped through the pages of the notebook that had been with me for years on my travels and expeditions. I looked at the sketches I had done of prototypes for climbing boots, tents that would give better protection against the wind, and lightweight ice axes. I read my annotations on the calendars, times and dates with details of activities, a few thoughts, and phone numbers and contact info for people I’d met at some camp, whom I never ended up contacting. I paused at a page I had written in Alaska, when I went to run the Mount Marathon race, only 5K long, which leaves from Seward, at sea level, and goes up and down the peak behind the town, with an almost 1,000-meter slope. I remembered that on my way there I had wondered if it was worth it to take such a long trip for such a short race, about forty minutes. But it had ended up being one of the most interesting races I’d ever run.

  I’m sweating and the sweat streams down my face, gets into my eyes and makes them sting. I can only see my hands resting on my knees, pressing my legs to climb faster, and if I look up, Rickey Gates’s ass. I know there’s a steep slope of black dirt up ahead, and beyond that, the summit, which we’ll go halfway around. My heavy breathing forces me to keep looking down at my hands on my legs. Hey, Rickey, what’s the rush? Couldn’t we let up a bit? I think. But we don’t slow down, and when it’s my turn to set the pace, I try to challenge him by going even faster. I breathe hard and I run. My calf muscles will never love me; I’ve been abusing them for years and now they’re more tense than a set of guitar strings. Between each breath, I wipe the sweat from my brow and eyes with my hand. I’ll need to be able to keep my eyes wide open when I run down at full tilt among all these rocks. I reach the summit and only have time to open my lungs and take a gulp of air. And then the rock and roll begins. And it won’t stop until the finish line. And I don’t want to go down head over heels. And it will go on all night. They say here that laws exist but they were written in a far-off place. I’m from Europe, where trail running is just called trail for short, and is drunk on its own success, and now the fresh air of Alaska penetrates the whole event. You have to run up and down until you bleed, and celebrate it intensely. That is all.

  When someone pontificates, they clearly do so to protect their work, and they do so perpetuating the standards by which it was shaped. This someone tries to convince future generations that in order to achieve excellence, they should follow the same rules. But it’s 4:30 in the morning—it’s always 4:30 in the morning, just like Charles Bukowski said. We’re so absorbed in our own path, in our effort to concentrate on doing everything well, with a religious passion for our discipline, and a fear of the unknown, that we keep our eyes on the road, on our hands pushing our knees. And we don’t realize we’re following the rules of a man who ran a horse race on foot, or of one who climbed higher than 8,000 meters alone without oxygen, or one who decided to leave his pitons, ropes, and safety harness at home, to become one with the face of the mountain. We’re following the rules of those who broke them. Maybe it’s time to break the rules and erase the pages we’ve written, though sometimes the ink is so dry that it’s hard to see the blank paper. The backpack of our experiences should be a tool kit full of resources, but all too often it’s nothing but a dead weight that doesn’t allow us to fly freely.

  I got up and went out, ready to climb one of the nearby peaks. I didn’t have permission to do so, and it was possible that I’d be so tired when I finished that my chances of reaching the summit I’d come there to conquer would be reduced. But I had no patience, and I hated wasting time.

  My Home Is the Mountain


  There is no single landscape I can call mine. I cannot point and say, “That’s my house, between the mountain path to the north and the valley to the south.” There are many places where I feel more or less at home, but none that I consider completely mine.

  I grew up in La Cerdanya in a refuge shared by mountaineers, skiers, and tourists passing through. I suppose that’s why I ended up being a wanderer, since when I was young I already lived in a place that didn’t truly belong to anyone.

  Usually, home is associated with a physical space, whether that is a building, neighborhood, town, city, or country; sometimes all that comes to mind are the four walls of a room. Home is where, when you walk in the door, you recognize the smell of clean clothes, stir-fry, or the scent of a field of wheat. It’s the light that shines through the window each night, casting familiar shadows. It’s waking up in the morning and walking around without needing to turn on the light. For me, however, all of these feelings are scattered since my home is a collection of specific spaces that make me feel good when I’m in them. I walk around La Cerdanya and suddenly feel at home, but the illusion disappears in the blink of an eye. I go back to Chamonix and the smell of fall welcomes me—I feel at home, but the spell is soon broken. In Nepal, too, the relaxed feeling of home sometimes takes hold of me for a moment. I can often feel more like I’m in my own place in some unknown country than when I’m in the house I’ve paid for and made my own, where some days I feel like a total stranger.

  Maybe home is spending time with the people you love. Home is laughter. Home is making love, feeling the comfort of solitude, and crying without worrying that anyone else can see you. When I think of the little pieces of the world that make up my own, I realize there’s one common denominator: they’re all in the mountains.

  The origin of all my headaches was having left home. The races are like cities, with all the people and noise. They end up becoming my habitual landscape. And I feel like a stranger.

  I HAVE ALWAYS FOUND SERENITY IN SOLITUDE. FOR ME, THREE IS A crowd. As much with family as among friends, I have always felt like the person who has one foot in and one foot out. Like someone who feels at ease for a moment, every once in a while. In a world that is so connected and so social, I have never wanted to belong to any tribe.

  When I was little, I thought that when I grew up I would live in a remote, isolated house in the mountains, where it would take at least an hour to get to any inhabited place. I sketched out the plans and everything: one room to sleep in, another to store my sports equipment, and a kitchen with a table. Since I would be surrounded by nature, I wouldn’t need a bathroom in which to hide from people; I could enjoy doing my business while gazing at magnificent views—far more inspiring than a white-tiled wall.

  My childhood dreams are at odds with the reality of Chamonix, where I lived a big part of my life during the 2010s. For reasons of size and diversity, the men and women there gather according to their sense of belonging to a tribe, and being part of a group makes them think that some are better than others. Without my having asked, I was included in the gang of Ultra-Trailers. Though I never picked up my membership card, I also never bothered to try to remove the label that was given to me. I was too thirsty for activity, and except for the occasional time when I gave in to the insistence of a sponsor or journalist, I had never set foot in any bar, restaurant, or other place where people tend to meet to talk and confirm they belong to the tribe of chosen ones, something they show by the way they speak and dress and the places they choose to frequent.

  I went to live in Chamonix in 2010 because, for me, it was a mythical place. When I was little, I’d already read many stories about it. It isn’t a remote spot. On the contrary: it’s in the middle of the Alps and very well connected. For me then, it was a symbolic space that allowed me to have adventures and progress in the world of mountaineering—perfect for recovering my connection to the mountains.

  I CLIMBED MONT BLANC FOR THE FIRST TIME AS A TEENAGER, AND THE small satisfaction of reaching the summit didn’t make up for what I had to do to achieve it. It was horrible. The first day, we climbed as far as the refuge, with extremely stiff boots and overstuffed backpacks, and tried to sleep through the tractor-like snores of dozens of mountaineers. It was freezing cold when we left soon after midnight, and every few minutes we had to stop because someone in the group was tired or wanted to drink, eat, or take a photo. We arrived at dawn. The descent was even worse: it was hot, my feet were squashed in my boots, and on top of that, my back was aching. We looked like soldiers coming back from war, when at the end of the day all we had done was climb a mountain.

  During those years, I went with my mother and sister to the Écrins region in the southern French Alps. We set up base camp at a site where we were staying, and from there we went out to do our activities: biking, running, or climbing. I learned that one of the most powerful runners of the time had left from that same campsite to ascend the Dôme de Neige, 4,000 meters, in the record time of three hours. I was only sixteen and had little experience, and this information gave me the incentive to climb it faster.

  It was during one of those trips to the Écrins that I began to realize what kind of mountain I like to climb. I wasn’t drawn to difficulty since it seemed too slow; classic mountaineering seemed too laborious. Racing and ski mountaineering are both activities I love but in which I miss the spirit of discovery and adventure. Continuous movement on technical terrain, though, gives me enormous enjoyment, in an unusual way. The French mountaineer Georges Livanos said that the essential thing wasn’t to climb at a high speed but to climb for a long time. While I agree with the second part of this statement, if you climb at a high speed and for a long time, you can see much more. What made me fall in love with traversing mountains at high speed is the synergy that emerges between the body’s movement and the shapes of nature, the feeling it gives me of being naked and inconsequential, unrestrained. It brings me freedom and connection, something I can’t find if I go to the mountains any other way. At the same time, when it comes to making certain decisions, it creates a very fine line between the conscious acceptance of certain risks and stupidity. And I can say that I have sometimes crossed that line.

  Let me tell you about it.

  NIGHT WAS FALLING AND IT WAS SNOWING HEAVILY—AN intense, icy storm with lightning. Emelie and I were 50 meters from the summit of Aiguille du Midi, so close we could almost touch it with the tips of our fingers, yet so far because we were blocked by a wall of stone that made it impossible for us to go on. Emelie hadn’t been able to feel her feet for a while, and her arms were stiff. The cold had contracted her muscles, and she couldn’t open her hands. She sobbed as she breathed. She told me as best she could that she couldn’t take any more, that she was suffocating. That she was going to die there. Though I knew that wasn’t going to happen, that we would survive, I understood how hard it is to keep your cool when you’re having an anxiety attack and trapped by a wall in the midst of a snowstorm with thunder and lightning, and daylight fading. Yes, I had screwed up. Really screwed up.

  I held her face in my hands, covering her nose and mouth to limit her airflow. I felt the air push through my fingers, and she had to force her lungs to find it. Her breaths became longer and increasingly regular, and finally recovered their rhythm. But her feet and hands were too painful and seized up for her to go on. We had only a few feet of rope to descend the almost 1,000 meters we had climbed.

  It was such a bad idea to involve Emelie in that climb. I knew bad weather was on its way; that was exactly why I had instigated the expedition, to get it done before it was too late and avoid having to wait a few weeks for the storm to clear. That’s why I had thought it was better to go as soon as possible.

  We had left at a leisurely pace that morning—there was no need to get up too early. At the beginning of the ascent I checked the weather for the last time: it looked like the front coming in from the south would arrive late in the evening, and that gave us time to climb up to the s
ummit and back down into the valley.

  The conditions for the climb were excellent. The warmth and good weather of the previous week had left the rock dry with excellent adherence, and we completed two-thirds of the route at a good pace, with no sign of any ice or snow. But when we reached the last stretch, everything changed. The sun had dried out the rock and melted the snow that covered the permanent ice—black, ancient, as hard as the granite it encased—and this required more skill and the use of crampons so as not to slip down. Almost from the start, Emelie’s feet were hurting, after a summer of many punishing races. Tightening the rope to its limit, we began to climb confidently, little by little, until we had to stop because everything hurt, and then we went on a few meters up the rock.

  We hadn’t wasted much time, but the bad weather was clearly going to catch up with us soon. I looked for a way out over the rocks so we wouldn’t have to step on the ice, and we kept going gradually, until finally the storm arrived. Along with the hail and lightning, our panic and distress. We took cover for a moment to see if it would ease off, but all signs pointed to the opposite. As we waited, the cold seeped into our bones, since we weren’t wearing warm enough clothes. I kept climbing cautiously, but the pain in her feet meant Emelie couldn’t go on. I weighed our options. We were anxious and shaking. Fuck! How could I be so stupid? Maybe I could climb those remaining 50 meters and tighten the rope to pull Emelie up, but I hadn’t packed the three pieces I needed to make a hoist. We could shelter under a rock and wait until the next day, but I didn’t have a cover for a bivouac, and Emelie didn’t think we’d survive a night without cover with what little equipment I’d told her to bring. That was when I made the decision. I took out the phone and dialed the number of the PGHM, the Peloton de Gendarmerie de Haute Montagne—the French Alps emergency rescue team. As I did so, I was already starting to think about what that call would mean.