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.)

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While in Puerto Varas for BNP13, I tried to summit the nearby
When we started again the wind had strengthened with the incoming dawn, rising to a point where we could hardly stand up to it, and our guide eventually decided to turn back, as it was only to get worse in the remaining 600m to the top, confirming the earlier prediction of 70km/hour winds… Yichin was of the same opinion and hence we reluctantly turned back down to the bottom of the slope, with the wind mostly on our back and a pleasant steady gradient descent. (Although my tights are still sensitive three days after the climb!) Surprisingly I was not feeling particularly cold (and with the right face protection my nose was not close to frozen, which happened on Monte Rosa in 2016). Even after seeing my best North Face mitt been blown away within a second of loosing grip of it! (Anyone with a spare left hand down mitt?! Because it had to be
Obviously, this was quite disappointing as I had planned the climb for weeks, brought all the layers to face a potential -20⁰ windchill, was in good enough shape, did not feel any 

