Dhaulagiri - Spring 2021

 I'm writing this blog post with immense gratitude to everyone who supported our adventure in Dhaulagiri, to Tommy and Kellon for all their incessant work during the trip for documenting everything as close as a camera can capture reality and especially to Carla and Cory for the moments lived up there. Typing these lines brings me to the one of the ultimate goals in every adventure, the goal of sharing about an expedition that has become another turning point in this path of climbing mountains, and I do this with the utmost respect and joy.

There are many questions that have become important after that trip, a bunch of those surrounding the idea of believing in oneself and beating one's fears and doubts. In Dhaula I gained the opportunity to see inner strength that changed the way I operate today. This happened in the summit bid, when even without a summit, the reward of that day was a very unexpected and precious gift. After that season, a lot has happened, friends have left and the mountains have showed me new values and emotions. All this new events have helped bringing contrast and perspective, with the ultimate breeze of refreshment that has the realization of seeing how regardless of the outcome, every event in life is an opportunity to evolve.

In some ways these questions have roots in the spring of 2013, when coming down the slopes of the classic route on the north side of Everest I had the opportunity to see for the first time what I had only red in books. A moment of clarity that comes from the mix of physical tiredness and the acute mental state needed to survive at high altitude.  It was my first expedition to Everest, and we had decided to play the game without bringing oxygen tanks, trying to do all the work we could within the possibilities of a small team and trying to keep things as simple as we could. That minimal approach was for me the justification to go and pursue the goal of seeing how high I can really go. It was never about summiting Everest, it was all about opening a door that in the future could take us to the vertical world in the highest places.

As you can imagine, the unexpected became the normal in an journey like that, many things changed and changed us, and in the last days of that trip as I was coming down alone from the summit, at 7600m a storm was voraciously covering all the ropes and the path, then graciously the mountain uncovered a vision for me. Fighting like a wounded animal to get down to safety it became evident that this day was only the beginning, the clouds started to recede and as the stars shone above in the dark sky, as a mirror of this starry night a question started to shine inside: how can I take things one step further in that arena?. As simple as that, the idea of a new route on Everest became the center of the universe for me.

In that journey, trying to explore this new idea that felt like trying to explore a new universe, I met Cory, and together we unveiled some of the mysteries that this new adventure was hidding.

After an attempt with Cory in 2019, the beta, the experiences and the views of our evolution in the goal only strengthened the feeling that this is a path worthy of all the dedication, joy and discipline. The flow of life took us to Dhaulagiri, thankfully that flow brought a third member in the team, especially one that has been with me in some of the hardest moments before: Carla. And starting that expedition is when the tide brought the real hard questions.

Is normally during times of crisis and despair that fears and doubts start creeping in with a strength you didn't know those monsters could have.

After Cory decided to leave the expedition on the second day in base camp, my motivation to give my best certainly fell down. This loss of motivation was not rooted in experiences I had in my life before the expedition, it was connected to the practical fact that he stopped believing in himself as a value in this exploration, and hence his believing in the project hit rock bottom. A rope that connects a few humans in the mountains becomes a high tension wire that for me is not only the means to achieve some of the most glorious experiences I’ve had in life, it could also transmit one of the worst diseases I’ve been able to experience: lack of faith.

And that lack of faith is what feeds the demons within.

Initially after it became evident that the idea of the SW ridge wasn't going to be a realistic approach for our team of two, intuitively we moved on to the normal route as a way to make all the dark moments go away. Now I see that in the move from point A to point B, if darkness starts to make the path unclear, the worst one can do is to stay there and become a victim, the only way to find light is to move away, to keep the faith in that spark within and to just keep moving. 

The season proved to be a tough one and we got meters of snow, we got sick, we doubted our bodies and their ability to be at high altitude. Every time we reopened the route to the lower camps in waist deep snow, unburied our tents or walked kilometers of moraine that separated our lower base camp from the beginning of the classic route, the monsters gained strength. Fears and doubts attempted to bring us as far as possible from our essence.

It was the love for climbing what kept us trying. After a very tough couple days of breaking trail and giving a hard fight to get to high camp we were exhausted, weak and very poorly acclimatized since the mountain never gave us a chance to go high before that point. The laughs about the tiny eagle nest at 7300m that we were sleeping in, the camaraderie of sharing a tiny space in the middle of such a beautiful beast, the anecdotes of a day of deep snow and patches of hard bullet proof ice and the fire fed by curiosity were the elements that put us to bed that night.

We woke up and we continued with a clear idea: to not lose faith and go to the end of the journey. To be in the mountains and be part of that beautiful place. To climb as high as we could.

At around 7500 meters, after hours in the darkness trenching up in deep snow, when Carla realized that her fingers and toes were calling for her to descend and head to our eagle nest to rewarm them, a big moment came for me. My first reaction, given the intensity of the situation, was to call it good for both of us and go down with her. She is probably the one that knows me the best and she also understood that a big opportunity to get closer to my truth was unexpectedly just appearing in front of me. With some words of encouragement but also of clarity she helped me to see that my journey wasn't over that day.

And so I kept going up. A couple more hours of deep snow gave me access to better conditions, and with the sun rising I also saw closer the opportunity to stand in the highest point. At about 7800m, in the beginning of the infamous traverse things changed drastically. Alone I understood that the slope could avalanche off at any point, the potential of avalanches was a constant for the whole trip, but at that moment the risk went beyond that line that makes all efforts justifiable. I couldn't find a way to get in the ridge as the first ascensionist did and a moment of truth came.

A couple hours negotiating, maybe a little higher, maybe a little lower…

Going down is always bitter but this time it was also refreshing, I had pushed my faith more than I could have imagined and this push let me see some strength and clarity that became my gift from Dhaula after that trip.

In moments of doubt I believe that the first step is narrowing one's window to the most basic thing: the next second.

To me this has opened an opportunity to see my true essence in circumstances when the difficulties that one face take you far away from your truth. After many years of pursuing my vision of a perfect line or a line that pushes me to elevate and aim for the best version of me, I have seen that my truth, thought as that idea that is worth living and dying for, is not hidden anywhere close to the tops of the highest mountains or protected by mountains of accumulated success, my truth is dancing somewhere in the deep connection with the mountains: that moment when I can be one with the world and give my best.

Today I know that in the hardships of life one has to let beauty take over. Let the beauty of the mountains sink in and simply take over. This will bring the light to see all the circumstances as they are: just circumstances. And only then see through the fog and find the questions that encourage one to stay in the path. To stay in this path and maintain these acts of love and faith  as signs of proximity towards that idea that constitutes my escence, that idea for which we live and die.