|
Kilian Jornet, Path to Everest (2018)
1
Shit, there's a crevasse there. Maybe a bit more to the left. Wait... What do you think, seriously? I don't know... I don't know if it's accumulation on the face... Or if it's like that the whole way. That's not possible. If it is, we're at the mercy of the slab at any time. We could try going up to the bergschrund. - You think so? - And see if this is snow build-up or... All right. I'm not sure. It's dodgy. Because if it was deep, but there's this layer... Yes, this doesn't look good. Eight to ten centimetres. Look at this... Shit. I think I don't want to go any further, Kilian. It's terrifying. It's horrible. We can't see anything. It's cloudy. And it's snowing. Shit. - We're out of luck. - All that for this. - But it isn't a good idea, look. - No, no, that is... Suicide. - When we started I hoped it was... - I thought the same. I hoped it had come from the avalanche. This is all covered. All snow. - Well, Kiki, we tried it. - Fuck, this is crap. Shall we go down? Even here it's scary. It was really slabby. Massive slabs, pal. Ten centimetres crust, and then thirty of fine snow. With his climbing history, and the speed with which he's done it, very few people can say he isn't a great climber. You put out your hand and it went "whoompf", on just a 10 degree slope. For me he's a climbing partner, someone I'm roped up with, and I don't get roped up to many people. The odds of not coming back are high. It's not worth the risk. Where are you going? Well, just to take a little walk around. To what you call 'The 7,000 meter hill'? Yes, that one. What time is it? - What? - Can you tell me the time? It's 9:15 am. What time did we get up? - At midnight. - To go where? Well, it was a chance to go to the summit, to Everest. So we battled for seven hours or so. And now you're going to spend the rest of the day skiing, right? Well, it's clear that the summit is no longer an option. OK. We've been saving our energy until now and we still have five days' expedition. Two weeks of doing nothing... Just acclimatizing! The reason I've come to see you is to make sure that you don't take the crampons, and don't go up that 7,000 metre hill without your pals, who will go with you tomorrow because they don't have four lungs and three hearts. One attempt on Everest per day is enough. OK? No, but... that doesn't count, you know. It was almost yesterday when we went up. - Because we left at midnight, right? - Yes. - It could have been 11:50 pm. - Great. Episode 2: "Expedition to Everest". Just like in the Alps. That one, that one, that one, that one. One per day. And we've got five days left. - Five days, five summits. - That's it. I've heard about Everest since I was little. When I joined the excursion center, Everest was the summum. We had a book on Everest at home and Kilian was always looking at it. Kilian started walking at ten months and as I didn't know any better, I thought it was normal. He followed me everywhere, walking up and down. We'd go on excursions and I thought it was normal. A year and half later Naila was born and I thought: 'She doesn't move much'. At three, he went up the Tossa Plana de Lles, which is 1,000 metres high. But it was normal. For me it was normal, until I saw that it wasn't. My childhood was a time of discovery, exploring and learning a lot. I think my parents gave me the tools to learn and discover. Until it got to a point, when Kilian was 13 and I saw that he was all over the place, and we had to do something. He had a lot of energy and he had to learn to control it. Those were years when I felt a bit strange. I felt the things I wanted to do, what I thought I wanted to do, no one understood them. I was completely alone, and adolescence is a time when people usually want the opposite: to have friends, to do things with others. He couldn't find his place so he went flat out... climbing mountains to avoid other people. He destroyed anything he didn't like. He was totally self-destructive. I remember we took him to the Catalunya Ski Mountaineering Centre. Every September-October we held entrance tests for new people and to check the fitness of all our members. They said: 'Listen, there's a boy of 13...' I said: 'He can't join, the minimum age is 14'. I pleaded, and when they saw him, it was obvious he had to join. I think a few more years out of control would have been disastrous. He made friends. He met people who understood him. He met people who helped him develop and all that saved him. I think he came with a huge amount of motivation. He was in really good shape. He was really motivated. You told him to do something and he was there, trying until he could do it, and we watched him grow up, watched his fitness improve. When I talk about preparing for Everest, I'd say I started training when I was three! When I started going up mountains and training. All the hours of training I've had over so many years have contributed. At that time, the Catalonians still hadn't done anything. The first expedition was in '82. We were there in '83 and '85 and it was a challenge. The minimum expedition time was two to three months. Everest was three months. You go there with the idea of reaching the summit. We were very lucky to come back alive without any serious incident. In 2006 I was in great shape. I was still a junior, I'd beaten Agust Roc, who became world ski mountaineering champion that week, and I was taking everything on. And just before the start of the season, running through Puigcerd, I jumped from one side of the street to the other and I broke my knee. I broke my kneecap and they said I could lead a normal life but going back to high level sport would be difficult. Anyone else at his age would have gone to pieces. No, from the first day, lying on the couch, he was doing exercises. He was never still, always moving his legs, his arms, whatever he could. He studied a lot. He read everything he could find on the human body, techniques, everything. And there was also a 'click' and he went from being a strong, crazy boy to someone who knew what he wanted, what his life was, and, suddenly, he grew up. I wrote a list of all the races I'd like to compete in some day. And then that list became the races I'd like to win. It was like the list of my teenage dreams. I thought I'd cross out that list when I was 40 or 50. I think I did it in my early 20s. It was a moment of sadness rather than joy, because there's an emptiness and you say: 'Shit, there's nothing more ahead. All my life, I'd thought of doing this and... I've done it'. And it's sad because you've achieved all your dreams. In the middle of the race I was fine physically but I was crying. I remember crying. As I passed the food station I heard people cheering me on, and I was crying. I'd come to hate my name. I hated 'Kilian Jornet', and my photo. I thought: 'I don't want to compete again. It doesn't give me anything. It does me more harm than good'. He gave up because of pressure. From the media, from people, from everything. That's what competing is: the crowds, the media, lots of things, and when you realize that it suffocates you, you want to escape. And he did the same as when he was a teenager, self-destruct. Until he finds a balance, his reaction is self-destruction. That's when it's dangerous. And as a mother you suffer a lot. The problem is I love competing. I love running. I love sport. What I didn't like was the exposure. He is a contradiction. He wants to be left alone, without talking. He says he doesn't like crowds but at the same time he invites all that media interest. Now he has imposed conditions on all his sponsors: I want to do this and that, OK, but so many days a year and when I want to. It's a recent thing, but it's working well. I understood when I went climbing again, that was what made me feel alive. 'Summits of My Life' was the project that got me out of those moments of sadness, from having fulfilled all my childhood dreams to saying I have a lot more dreams and they are this project. 'Summits of My Life' is learning, it's travelling. Going up and down a series of summits in a light and fast way, without assistance. Basically it's having fun in the mountains and playing there. I'm not someone who's had great idols. But there were two people who influenced me. One was Bruno Brunod for what he achieved and the other was Stphane Brosse for all he signified. Bruno Brunod for me was 'skyrunning'. The way he approached the mountains, his records, going to the Matterhorn, to Mont Rosa, to Aconcagua... It made me dream. The images of him running over those ridges was... a dream for me. I left the church in Cervinia and reached the summit in 2 hours 10 minutes. And I came down in just over an hour. In all, 3 hours and 14 minutes. In 'Summits', the project that inspired me most was the Matterhorn. As a child, I had a photo of the Matterhorn at home. Bruno's record was incredible. I thought: 'That's impossible. No one can ever beat it'. I thought it a bit strange that Kilian, who is the stronger one now, says I was his idol when he was younger. It's a great pleasure. Even though Kilian came to beat my record on the Matterhorn, I felt he was the right person to do it. And the day I saw him, I got goosebumps. He was amazing. With Stphane, I remember that when I started ski mountaineering at 13, he won everything. For me, he was perfection in skiing. Technically, strategically, he was the best. He was what I dreamed of being. He could win everything with such elegance. When he stopped competing, he did a lot of mountaineering with the idea of going quickly and transferring competition techniques to the mountain. That really inspired me because it was what I wanted to do. What struck me most was the fact that Stphane could do it at over 40. That capacity to maintain a passion for sport after being a champion. He was always skiing and could go along with Kilian. At 40, that's really good. He was a mentor, a friend and an idol at the same time. When I started the 'Summits' project, I mentioned it to him and he really liked it. In fact we planned the first routes together. He'd had the idea of traversing the Aravis, and the Mont Blanc range, for some time. And we planned it together. In fact, in those two traverses, he was more the driving force, because he'd studied it all, looked at where we could go, what we could do. It was him who took me to do that mountain. We stopped for a couple of minutes. I didn't interfere. I was filming them. I saw that the crest was very windswept, it stood out on the snowy ridge. It was very aesthetic and I stopped. I was two metres behind them. And when Kilian saw I'd stopped, he turned to me. Then he realized that we were all on an enormous overhang. The cornice we were walking on was overhanging 10 metres from the edge of the rock. We were walking over nothing. When he saw that, I remember he told Stphane to come back and when he made the gesture, a crack opened between them. There was that much space between them. Stphane was on the wrong side. Luckily I stopped. The crack stopped in front of me. And it all collapsed. You wonder what you're doing. What you've done wrong and what you should do. It was very hard. He always said: 'Why did it have to be him? He had a wife and family.' 'I have no one'. Always that self-destructiveness, blaming himself. It's violent, in the sense that you're beside him, it all happens very quickly, and you don't understand why it happened. What is a free man? A free man... is someone who chooses his path. Like when you're in the mountains, you choose your route and a free man is someone who chooses his route in life, who chooses to move forward, start a family, achieve things in life. And it's the same in the mountains. What I like about the mountains is the freedom, because you choose your route. And being able to choose is the most important. Freedom is being able to choose. In the first year after the accident, I pushed myself a lot. I did things taking too many risks. It was a time when I drank a lot too. I mean, I don't like alcohol. It's something I've never done, but during that time I got drunk every week. I competed, I raced and I won, but... I was sad. Inside I was sad. And the way to get out of that was getting drunk after the races, and during training putting myself in near death situations, that made me say: 'Shit, why didn't I fall? Why did he fall?' He shut himself away. You couldn't get to him. You didn't know how he was, how to help him. He needed to be alone. I think getting together with Emelie brought me out of that. I got my feet on the ground. Living in Norway for me is living in paradise because there are mountains with no names. And after living in Chamonix for so many years, after competing so much, you climb the Jorasses, Mont Blanc or Peuterey, you climb 'names'. And here in Norway you climb mountains, not 'names'. OK, I will just take a few breaths. Wait. This is very hard. Oh, Kilian... Yeah, but you know me, I never jump. Yeah, yeah, yeah... Maybe I jump here. Okay, so I'll do that. I think here it's better. OK. One, two... I will not reach over there... Will you make it tenser? OK. One... I'll jump at three. One, two, three. I did it! My legs are shaking. It was scary, Kilian. Emelie is a very earthly person, she's very sound. She likes cooking, she has a huge vegetable garden. I wanted to meet someone with experience in the Himalayas, who could explain to me about going there. For me, 'Summits' is magic. I had reached a moment in my life when I was thinking, for different reasons, that many projects I had in mind were impossible. Suddenly, I've plugged into an energy generator 20 years younger than me who gives me all I need to open a door and step through. He has come from more classic mountaineering. I came from competition and I think between the two we motivate each other. Ideas of lightness, of rapidity. Bastard! You're in shape, eh? No way. For me, going to the Himalayas for the first time, the two of us, in winter, with very little equipment, was a revelation. It was putting two methods together. Suddenly, you're climbing in alpine style, cleaner and maybe more ethical than what's been done before in the Himalayas, and it's your first time there, that's quite a privilege. He took the techniques used in ski mountaineering, and trail running, and said: 'Well, I have this range of tools and I'm going to take them into a different dimension, the high mountains'. Let's see if you set the record, Kilian. Let's go. Summit! Yes. He's just fallen twice. I've just seen him fall twice in two minutes. It's criticized a lot by purists. Why is time everything? Why the fastest time? Why run and not walk in the mountains? And I understand that, it's part of his story. There is a time that validates a performance. Basically with the Denali you measure yourself against a mountain. Even though it isn't very technical, it's dangerous, demanding, with very low temperatures. This is a very good complement to tackling a mountain like Everest or any other eight-thousander. When I began the 'Summits' project, I saw it as a competition, as records to be beaten. But over time, I think because of the people involved in the project, it evolved, and time became secondary. Speed has been more the result of the style and not an objective in itself. If you feel happy at midnight, lost on the north face of Everest and say: 'Well, I'm in control', that means that at home you have to push harder to get out of your comfort zone. And yes, there were days I went home and I said to myself: 'Wow, I did great things today. I've climbed there, there were avalanches, there was a brutal spindrift'. You were excited by that, you got home, you ate and after an hour you thought: 'I'm an asshole. I was this close to dying'. When you come back from something that, judged rationally, has been too dangerous, you try to put on lots of coats of paint to ease it. We rarely talk about the risk with the people we love. I remember that morning. We were walking and there were two centimetres of snow on the glacier and we were a bit scared, thinking 'Where are we going?' Where would you go? By that half moon? But we felt: 'Today we're going to do something big'. The lower part was perfect. The sound of the ice axes going 'clack, clack'. Right hand, left hand, left foot, right foot, right hand, left hand, etc. It was perfect. We had climbed 400 metres, and quickly. But looking at the shots you can see the weather is changing. You can't see the upper slopes, it's cloudy. And we didn't see it. Kilian! Yes? What are we doing? What? Should we wait for the bad weather to pass? To see if it improves or not? I think we can carry on up to the ridge. I'd carry on this way, we know the ridge is to the right. And we have to traverse the rocky stretch. Jordi isn't well. He's thrown up several times. Shit. We could have given up a while before. But we let the bad weather overtake us, it closed in, and when we wanted to escape, the situation was already tense. Kilian! If it's too dangerous, let's go down here! We can't even see three metres. We can get the rope out if you want! We can get the rope out! Right then we realized we had a problem. The bad weather hit really hard and the three of us got together and said: 'What should we do? How do we get out of here?' And traversing without seeing... We can see a bit, but... Yes, we can see a bit. - All right, so we'll go one by one? - Yes, shall I go? At the same level? Yes. Are you going because you don't have children, or what? - Yes. - Or because it's your project? No... Yes, for that too. OK, go ahead. Whistle when you think it's OK to come, all right? In case we can't see you. Like this, Kiki, A diagonal without gaining height. Yes, yes. Come on, Kiki. Very good, Kiki. I can't see him. Horizontal. What? Horizontal. Yes, I see the path, but not Kilian. I can't see Kilian. The last time he traversed quickly, without running. And now I don't know what he's doing there. He's 20 metres away and he's been gone 15 minutes. Come on! I'm going to look for him. Why aren't you moving? I don't know where we are. Shit. Yes. Shit! I was just here. At every step I put the ice axes like this because I was sinking up to here. Yes, I saw that. So I said to myself. 'We're in the shit'. And at one point I saw that everything was moving. Did it go over you? Did it break down below? It shook me and passed over me. I see. That's why I shouted. We had no control over anything. You're there, with visibility between 2 metres and a maximum of 15, and one of us wasn't well, with the start of a cerebral edema. Not delirious but almost. Kilian was like the buffer. I was trying to find the path to follow. You're at the mercy of the elements, you don't control anything and it's nature that decides if it takes you or not. That was the hardest part. Jordi! Look, the avalanche. Watch out! Dig in! Fucking shit! Shall we go? Come on, we'll do 20 metres, OK? 20 metres between us. During the descent, we were scared. At one point, the avalanches stopped and we could see that Jordi was lagging behind. I didn't know why. I tried to move ahead with Seb at the back, and trying to get Jordi. We said: 'What the hell's wrong with him?' We saw that he couldn't coordinate and when we stopped to decide if we'd go down by the North Col, we realized he was having problems. He had a small cerebral edema and, really, we also had to go down because of it. All right. We got to the North Col and saw the sky opening a bit. And we thought: 'Today we'll survive.' It's good to be down. What was that? Holy crap! Jordi! I had a vague idea of what we'd find there and what it could be. I was going to that mountain for my first experience of it. Obviously I wanted to go up quickly, in that style, but I didn't know what it would be like, or how I'd feel or how much strength it would take. I think that was the discovery, getting to know Everest. The two months before Everest was the most I've trained in my life, and in a more radical way. It feels super close. We wanted to do an alpine style expedition, we didn't want it all organized. The two of us wanted to go on our own. Yes, super hard. But beautiful. There is the Yellow Band. The Yellow Band of Cho Oyu. Of course, doing something alpine style with your partner... You know there are risks, you're not tied to a fixed rope. Oh no, fuck! We were at 7,500. When I saw Emelie fall my heart stopped. It was one of the worst moments in my life. - Are you well? Sure? - Yes. What happened? You wanted to go fast down, eh? 7,500 metres it's very hard, the altitude, and now hopefully, a bit better the last 500 metres in the mountain. The last technical part here. It's at least 5 more hours for me to summit and I wouldn't feel good being in the submit at 4 o'clock in the afternoon so I think I need to go down and just take a very easy downhill. - Take really care in the downhill. - Yeah. The weather up there is so, so bad, I don't know if I climbed the main summit or the secondary summit because I could not see any, any, anything. Ueli was someone who gave me many things. Before I met him, the things he did were a tremendous inspiration. What he did gave me so much energy. We had the same idea of climbing, and the same idea of activity. Once we met to go to the Eiger. Following him and seeing how he moved... Really, each outing with him was a masterclass in alpinism. In fact, when I got to Everest, the first day I wanted to go up the north east face where we tried last year. I went up 200 metres. Conditions weren't perfect, and I wasn't happy. I thought: 'What am I doing here?' I went down and said: 'Let's go by the normal route'. The year before, I would have gone up. I wouldn't have seen the situation. I'd have said: 'It isn't so bad'. And this year I said: 'It's not perfect'. That changed after having gone with Emelie just before to Cho Oyu, also because of Ueli's accident. I tried to go in the most alpine style possible. The decision not to take a harness with me so as not to hook up to fixed ropes. Not taking a radio or satellite phone so as to make decisions by myself, without having someone at base camp to tell me things. Leaving from advanced base camp with all the equipment, and having nothing on the mountain. I think it was all an effort to get as close as possible to alpine style in those conditions. I think he'll go up very high today. I wouldn't be surprised if he passes 8,000. Hello. - Hello. - How are you doing? Good, and you? Hello. This is Horia, from Romania. Climbing without oxygen and alone too. Really tough guy, eh? The Sherpas call Kilian 'The Monkey'. Sherpa Pubra, who has gone to the summit of Everest eleven times, told him: 'You no people, you monkey'. - Where have you come from? - ABC. How long did it take? I've been doing five hours thirty nine from ABC (Advanced Base Camp). When is summit day, will you put your tent in here? No, no, no... Summit day... Up and down. Crazy man... I hope he hasn't gone to the Norton corridor. I hope he was intelligent and took the normal route. I think so, because I've zoomed from 7,000 metres, from the North Col, and I haven't seen anyone. But the face is so big that you can't see. We can only wait. So... Now... I am at... 8,400 metres. It feels good but I'm starting to feel tired and... it's hard because it's like 450 metres to the summit and I feel good like I feel no pain in the head and we see the summit just there... It feels so close but it's a bit late... 2:15, so I could be in the summit maybe at 6... When it's night and it's hard to take a decision. No, I think I will go down. So close, but... feels worth it to go down, be safe... 450 metres... Hard decisions, eh? I promised Emily I would be as safe as possible... Okay. Don't regret. Let's go down. - How high did you get? - 8,400. - And you go down straight to ABC? - Yeah, ABC. - Good job. - Yeah. It's 4:50 am, so it's time to prepare I think. So... leaving Rongbuk. Let's go for climbing Everest. There in the dark it's Everest, and I can see some lights. I think it's some people starting from Camp 3. 8,300 metres. Same time, I'm starting here in Rongbuk at 5,000 metres. Beautiful sunrise. It's five in the morning and the sun is touching the Everest slopes. It's so beautiful. Hopefully it gets warm soon. - Ciao. - Ciao. Feeling good. I will see if I can keep this pace up to Camp 2 and Camp 3. Last year, here, the snow was to the waist so... not the same, eh. Beautiful, you can see Cho Oyu there, and Camp 2, Camp 3 and Everest's summit. Today I feel so fucking slow. I was going at a super good pace up to 8,000 metres but it was a bit cold I had to put on the down suit, the gloves and I wasn't feeling really good then. Like I was a bit dizzy and I felt like I wanted to sleep like at every step like I need to just... take a nap. When I arrived to Camp 3 at 8,300, I took a nap, like 10 minutes, 15 minutes nap. But I still feel like strange... Like I do 12 steps and like I just close my eyes and fall asleep and then I wake up like five minutes after. It's a very strange feeling. I have to leave now. At that time in the normal pace I should be in the summit, so I will see. It will be dark when I get there if I feel... not worse and turn around. It's a pity because I was feeling really good up to 8,000... Strange but, that's high altitude, eh? That's an amazing landscape, eh? The K2 face, and Lhotse, and Makalu, the Second Step in Everest, and there we could see Cho Oyu. It's a bit windy up there and I'm feeling shit but it's nice to be here. So, the summit of Everest. I expected more to do 18 hours and not 26 but today I feel bad in my stomach, some diarrhea, and I'm feeling sleepy all the time, so. I don't know why, sometimes it's like that but anyway I'm super happy to be on the summit. The views are... only black but it was nice to see the sunset over Lhotse, and now I will try to go down. It's cool anyway to be able to do one push from Rongbuk, from the Base Camp, and it opens a lot of possibilities. So now we have to take a lot of care... Yeehah! Everest, alpine style, without oxygen... Yeehah! I was doing very well up to 7,600, 7,800... and from there on I started to have cramps here, and then... Where did you get water? - I don't know... Maybe down below - Here? Those who know him, knowing how the first attempt had gone, said: 'If there's a window of good weather, he'll make a second attempt'. It was obvious. If he does it, he won't tell us, so that we won't suffer. And we suffered because we knew he'd do it without telling us. Climbing at Camp 3. 8,300 metres. It has been really windy and very cloudy. Weather conditions were much worse than forecast. It was windy, there was fresh snow, it wasn't the D day we had foreseen. It is super windy today. Not easy to walk up. Super windy... and cold. So... Let me just... Insane, insane. Kilian Jornet has set a new record, climbing Everest twice in a week... Without oxygen, without sherpas... ...and in one push. A feat that defies the limits of human resistance... Second Everest summit. Again in the dark. Not lucky with the views, eh? I arrived the first time at midnight, and the second when night was falling, so I couldn't see much... But why didn't you set out earlier? Just after the summit... I was... I was walking down and at 8,200 I took the North Face, I don't know why. I didn't know if it was a dream or if it was real, I was sleepy... So I find a place like this a bit and I put myself in... When I wake up I realised I was in the middle of the middle of the Everest North Face... So I find a way back here and maybe it's the unconscious that wants me to go to this face now. There's a route there, the Russian route. And the Russian route is V+ at more than 8,000 metres. There are stories of people who have spent many hours above 8,000 metres, they start to hallucinate and experience a reality a little in parallel to the reality they're living. That happens to you... and 95% of the really good ones die there and, obviously all the bad ones. But 95% of the really good ones don't survive. It's a combination of desire, of fatigue, of hypoxia and the will to survive. I'm really surprised that he got to the summit both times. The conditions were so bad. I've seen images of him at 8,000 metres, by people who met him, at 8,500, sorry. It's unbelievable that he got to the summit in those conditions. It's really surprising. Did you see me tonight? I think Kilian could be a really great Himalayist of the 2020s if he carries on and is lucky enough to remain among us. Killian's problem is that right now he's only 29. And, of course, he sees that he can do everything. If Kilian manages to do what he wants to do, he can be the Reinhold Messner of the 2020s. Everyone will laugh at that but we'll see in five years. This time I've fulfilled a dream and haven't ended up sad because I think that a project ends well when it opens doors for you, when it makes you dream even more. And this summit ended up telling me that everything can be done, nothing is impossible. And I think that is beautiful. Yes, she gives him stability. Thanks to her, he's given up Nutella. I said to him: 'You do know you've messed up all your projects? Everything you've done is rubbish. Apart from the Matterhorn, no record is complete, none is perfect. On Denali the weather was so bad on the descent that you couldn't see four metres and you couldn't go quickly. On Mont Blanc we convinced you to rope up with Matheo Jacquemoud and you threw him down a crevasse. On Aconcagua, it was a disaster, coming down like a brainless puppet. And what you did on Everest is nothing. On the two ascents you miscalculated the starting time so you arrived at night. And you didn't bring me a single image for the film. We won't mention Elbrus, because you didn't even make it to the summit. So this 'Summits' project... It can clearly be improved.' |
|