Watched (with supplementary oxygen) The Alpinist in the plane to Jeddah. It is a documentary (made by the same filmmakers who filmed the Dawn Wall) about the amazing Canadian alpinist Marc-André Leclerc, who died in 2018 on the Mendenhall Glacier, Alaska, in an avalanche, after achieving extraordinary complex solo climbs as eg on Mount Robbson, Cerro Torre in Patagonia. These are winter climbs, partly ice climbing, where no repetition is possible and where the objective conditions (hence dangers) may vary considerably. In that regard, these achievements could be argued to go even beyond Alex Honnold’s free solo climb of El Capitan, where Honnold practiced the route over and over before making his successful free solo attempt. (Obviously an inhuman achievement when considering the hardest bits are at least 7c!) Watching Marc-André Leclerc when mixed climbing is just as heart stopping as watching Honnold rock climbing. He must have been incredibly strong to master these monstruous icy walls and maintain his absolute vigilance in each crampon move, in each ice-pick placement. Sadly it ended up with an avalanche… I obviously enjoyed X’ing many places I had visited, like the approach walk to Robson (in 1991!), the Three Sisters of Canmore [below], and routes of Squamish [above]. (I wonder who filmed during these non-advertised climbs. For instance, he told no one except his partner when he summited Mount Robson. In some cases he was clearly self-filing at lower intensity points, but in others it could have been an helicopter (or a drone?). In this respect, but by far not only in this respect, his blog is definitely worth the read.)
~
. and of her ascents in the Yosemite valley, I was definitely looking forward my visit there… While not planning to do any climbing there, I was expecting some out-worldy quality from the place. The first vision of the valley when getting out of the Route 41 tunnel is indeed stunning with the perfect face of El Capitan blocking most of the view. The thousand vertical meters of the face are both daunting and oppressive!
