Above the Clouds

That summer, I participated in the Three Nations. In the fall, I did the 80-kilometer Caballos del Viento route, and I also entered the Centro de Tecnificación de Esquí de Montaña, the national youth team for mountain skiing, since my mother thought I should channel my energy in an orderly way. It was lucky that I enrolled, because that’s where I met two of the most influential people in my life: Jordi Canals, the center’s director, and Maite Hernández, my first trainer.

In the summer of 2004, Maite Hernández gave all of her young students a gift: a little stone. That spring, she had climbed the north face of Everest as part of a women’s expedition and had brought that little keepsake down from the mountain for us. I stowed mine away like the treasure it was.

Jordi had already been to Everest twice, as part of the first Catalan expeditions in 1983 and 1985, when Òscar Cadiach, Toni Sors, and Carles Vallès reached the summit. Jordi telling us about his experiences taught us to perform as well as we could in competitions, but also to be safe and fully equipped on a mountain. I have the impression he, in fact, doubted that any of his students would end up becoming professionals and contend for world championships, and that’s why he focused on making sure we first enjoyed the mountains and the effort.

During one of those trainings, as we were climbing the Tossa d’Alp for the second or third time that day, a few feet before reaching the highest slopes, those of us who were up ahead, making a huge effort to catch up with Jordi—who was climbing calmly—stopped to take off our skins to go down and do another ascent. He planted himself ahead of us with a hand on his chin, striking a thoughtful pose, and, in a sarcastic tone so as not to sound too important, he let slip:

“The summit’s up there, you know!”

We looked at him to see if he was being serious. We had come there to train, to cover the meters of that slope without wasting any time. Even if it would take us only twenty seconds to reach the highest point—taking off our skis, walking a little to the summit, then putting them back on—it would cause us to lose a couple of minutes on each ascent and disrupt the pace we had set.

Jordi was adamant. “Well, do we ski and climb mountains, or not? And mountain climbing is all about reaching the summit, right?”

There is no equality in competitive sports. If, for example, I had wanted to be a basketball player, even if I had been passionately committed, tried with all my might, and broken my back with the effort, the truth is, I wouldn’t have gotten very far. Already, as a young kid in the admission tests for the Centro de Tecnificación, I showed the necessary qualities to forge a future in mountain endurance sports. Despite being at the lower end of the group for strength and explosive power, I felt comfortable when we ran uphill, and I could hold my own alongside those who were older than me. It must have been because I had a high capacity for recovery and a small, light body, which helped me a lot in the beginning. We can’t choose our genes or our build, and they’ll be with us for our whole lives. But they’re far from enough in determining who will be successful. Natural predisposition should always be accompanied by hard work and passion. I’ve had the good luck to be able to bring these requirements together—something not all athletes can do. There are those who approach their activity passionately. Maybe their body and their abilities don’t match their passion, and after years of stoical persistence they can achieve great results, but without the necessary extra factors, they can’t achieve full excellence. There are also people with immense ability but who don’t love their sport enough to have a successful career. They don’t put enough effort into it and end up unmotivated.

Though it might be hard to believe, I didn’t plan to practice mountain sports. It was my parents who introduced me to this world, when I was very little, as they also did with my sister. We lived in a mountain refuge at an altitude of 2,000 meters, and the shelves were filled with books by mountaineers Kurt Diemberger, Roger Frison-Roche, and Walter Bonatti. During school vacations, we always went somewhere in the Pyrenees or the Alps to do mountains.

It may seem like a paradox, but often such an intense immersion in an activity can lead a child, in adolescence, to do exactly the opposite of what their parents want. But I imagine both my sister and I still love the mountains because we built a much deeper relationship with them that went beyond the simple pleasure of practicing a sport.

I remember that when we were still little kids clinging to our mother’s legs, sometimes, after dinner, after we’d put on our pajamas and brushed our teeth, our mother would take us by the hand and lead us outside. We would go into the dark forest with no light to guide us. We would stray from the paths and walk on the moss and fallen branches until we could no longer see the light from the house, and then she would let go of our hands, tell us to listen to the sounds of the forest, and find our way back to the refuge alone. At first, we were afraid of the sounds and the darkness. “What if there’s a wolf? What if we get lost and can’t find our way back?” and then we would get frightened and run for our mother’s protection. But gradually we grew accustomed to the darkness and the night’s murmurs: a branch creaking because of the drop in temperature at night, the hum of the air stirred by a partridge flapping its wings as it took off, or the whistle of the wind through the trees. When we heard all this, we regained our calmness, greeted the wind and the animals, and followed the signs leading us back to the refuge. In this natural and almost unconscious way, we learned from our mother to be part of the mountain.

Years went by, and when I was a teenager, I discovered that I had masochistic tendencies. That was when I put the last, indispensable piece of the puzzle in place, completing the picture that would open the door to being a professional athlete. I had put the first piece in place the day I began to sculpt my muscles and tendons and to move naturally over uneven terrain, during trips into the mountains with my parents. The long hours on mountain trails had also trained my heart for stamina. Now my body was primed.

Despite being a good student, I was bored by the scene at school. I had zero social life and didn’t even try to make friends. I was interested only in learning. While my classmates waited impatiently for the bell to ring so they could go have a drink, play in the park, race home to play video games, or try to hook up with someone, all I could think about was putting on my sneakers to go for a run. I wanted to feel exhaustion in my heart and pain in my legs again.

I took advantage of any free moment to train. Before sunrise, if I could, I slipped out to ski with my mom, or just went out for a run, or slid the 25 kilometers from home to school on my roller skis. At lunchtime, instead of heading to the dining hall, I went out to bounce around on the outskirts of town, and on the three days when Maite Hernández had me do strength training, I went to the city’s gym. When I came home in the afternoon, I’d barely even put my backpack in my room before taking off on my bike or going for a run. If Maite told me to rest, I was glued to the TV, watching the DVD La Tecnica dei Campioni over and over again, in which the movements of the greatest ski mountaineers, such as Stéphane Brosse, Rico Elmer, Florent Perrier, and Guido Giacomelli, were analyzed in simple terms. I didn’t care if I had no friends or people called me weird because all I wanted to know was how far my body could go.

This dynamic continued in college. Apart from my classmates who were also involved in sports, my social life was limited to the people I saw at races. I never went on any end-of-semester trips, never put in an appearance at parties or dances, and never touched a drop of alcohol, except at times when I was, shall we say, forced. I avoided these kinds of situations because I had the impression that they were just a waste of time and energy, and that it would be more helpful for me to train or rest.

If you’re thinking right now that when I was young I tended to disconnect from my surroundings and had a closed outlook, you’re probably not far off. I had no doubt, from the moment I decided to dedicate my life to sports, that for some doors to open for me, others would have to close forever.

To me, sport doesn’t mean a life full of sacrifices but rather one full of choices. You make choices about where you want to go, and the secret lies in prioritizing what you really want to do and sticking to the plan you’ve made without hesitation. At the end of the day, what’s more important? Having friends and a girlfriend or striving to become the world champion of your discipline?

I began to train myself during my early years in college. For five years, with Maite as my coach, I learned the basic rules of training, like rationing my efforts and understanding the relationship between workload, rest, and overcompensation, and planning my training in the mid- to long-term according to my goals. In those five years, I managed to turn the masochist, thoughtlessly tackling ascents, into someone who could train to win important races. In addition to Maite’s patience as I incorporated these ideas and put them into practice, the other factor that helped me improve was an injury when I was eighteen, which kept me out of action for six months. The surgeon who operated on me noted that I might not be able to perform as well as before. The anxiety he instilled in me and the realization that an accident can ruin a career inspired me to study the factors that influence athletic performance as if I were possessed: biomechanics, training, psychology, technique, equipment, diet … It was a good lesson. Having to deal with a defective leg was not a hindrance but rather allowed me to open my mind to important decisions I would need to make on my journey. The questions I asked myself about the workings of the mind and body intensified in the years when I studied physical education in college. But I have always been impatient. I was incapable of waiting around to learn about conclusions that might be of use to me. Now that I was winning races and felt confident in my daily training, I began to experiment with my body.

My idea was to push a specific aspect of my body to the limit, such as my metabolism’s ability to work at aerobic capacity with no energy input, or the possibility to repeat anaerobic exercises at a high altitude and then recover, to mention a couple of things that preoccupied me. If I solved these mysteries, not only could I take advantage of the results and theoretical adaptations, but also I would feel the potential and the limits of my body, in all its rigor, with total precision.

Of course, to conduct those experiments I had to take advantage of periods when I wasn’t competing, so I had enough time to recover if things got out of control. I also had to conduct them on safe, familiar terrain that was nearby, in case I got hurt and had to rush home.

During my college years, I went to only one party, which a classmate tricked me into attending, after one of these training experiments. And even today, I still believe I let myself be convinced because my will was crushed by exhaustion.

It must have been the spring of 2008. I was in Font-Romeu and wanted to test my body’s capacity for action without any energy input. In other words, I wanted to know how many days I could spend training and running without eating anything. To find out, I went about my life as usual, running two to four hours in the morning and another hour in the afternoon, but eliminated all meals. I had to adjust the logistics ahead of time since I had no doubt that if there was food in the room, my hunger would take over. I emptied the fridge and the pantry, handed the contents to a friend, and gave him strict instructions not to feed me anything, even if I showed up begging in the wee hours. I only allowed myself to drink as much water as I liked.

I should clarify that all I wanted to find out through this experiment was how long I could run without added energy, with only the fat and muscle protein my body already had as fuel, and to study the stages of the process. I never for a moment thought of it as a weight-loss therapy or a way to discover if I could perform as well while eating less.

Unfortunately, in extreme sports, especially in disciplines in which weight is very important—and that includes ski mountaineering—many athletes are obsessed with losing weight, and for them, this is a recurring and highly relevant problem. I know athletes who have spent half a lifetime going hungry to maintain their target weight; others who get up at the crack of dawn to ransack the fridge because they can’t stand to train anymore without eating; and those who induce vomiting after they eat, to trick their hunger and keep their weight down.

If we have to accept that extreme sports are unhealthy because we take our bodies to the limit and run the risk of injury, we should also be clear that we must be the ones to manage our own bodies and that they should always be under our control. When we’re guided by our basic urges, we’ve already lost. If we’re not in control of what we do, the sport loses its beauty and leads us into a downward spiral that can plunge us into the darkness of depression or illnesses like bulimia and anorexia. In extreme cases, we lose our sense of the meaning of life and throw it away. Sadly, this continues to be a taboo topic in the sports world, but it needs to be brought out into the open.

Let’s get back to the experiment in Font-Romeu.

After removing all the food from my room and with the will to reach the end, I began to run. Since I was young, my body has been used to running for hours with my parents without eating anything, so the first day, I didn’t notice any decline in my performance. Well, to be honest, at the end of the day, when I was alone in my room, I was ravenous. After a night of hunger, in the morning I set off on my usual route, which took between three and four hours. I went out to the Font-Romeu Hermitage and up to the highest part of the ski slopes, down the other side, and looped around one of the lakes, climbing one of the peaks of the Bouillouses or Pic Carlit. On my way back, I headed toward the area above the ski slopes and then back down to the apartments. During the gentle ascent to the slopes, I could assess the effects of my experiment clearly.

My overall pace had hardly changed, since I was able to run at a moderate speed for hours with no great difficulty, but whereas I usually sped up as fast as I could during that climb to the slopes, after a second day without eating, it was impossible. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t sprint. My body had become a tractor running on diesel that could move slowly across great distances but had lost its power.

On the third and fourth days, everything stayed more or less the same. But on the fifth, during my morning run, I fainted and collapsed on the ground.

Luckily, I came round by myself a short time later. I hadn’t been in any danger because the path was well traveled, and if necessary, someone would have been able to help. I went back to the hermitage, went to my friend’s room, and ate.

That same week, I was persuaded to go to an end-of-semester party. I spent a moment or two in the limelight, because I passed out drinking an orange juice.

Since then, I have practiced a method for getting to know my body and the benefits of better training. I have experimented with sleep, hydration, and several kinds of training, running at high altitudes, trying out different equipment, and practicing a hundred hours a week. Most of these experiments have ended up in disaster. I didn’t perform the way I hoped to, and I was so tired that I didn’t get much out of it. Despite this, through each of these experiments, I found clues and ideas for improving and pushing my limits.

My most recent experiment allowed me to explore how I adjust to high altitudes. When I began the Summits of My Life project in 2012, during which I sought to set ascent and descent records on the world’s highest peaks, this was one of my greatest concerns. And ever since my first trip to the Himalayas, in 2013, each year I have done at least one expedition or spent a period at high altitude trying out different methods of acclimation—always with the intention of not staying long, because there are more interesting things in life than spending three months at the foot of a mountain.

Though I acclimated well on my first trip to the Himalayas, I would have liked to be able to climb faster. Then, in 2014, I went to Denali, Alaska, and I burned out. Despite feeling good at the end of the first few days—we were there two weeks—after going up and down the mountain quickly, I had no energy left. Later that same year, I went to Aconcagua. I wanted to do an acclimation exercise in the Alps, and it worked out well. After four days in Argentina, I reached the summit of Aconcagua, but later, my desire to train faster and faster had a negative effect, and the day I broke a record, I suffered a cerebral edema, completely losing control of my legs in the first half of the descent. They seemed to be made of Jell-O; I lost my balance and kept falling onto the ground.

Over the next three years, I went to the Himalayas and tried out various strategies: low activity, high activity, gradual or rapid training … In the end, when it came to the expedition to Everest, my acclimation and high-altitude performance were perfect.

I know the way I train can be dangerous. For one reason: my method is oriented toward figuring out my limits. In the worst-case scenario, and depending on what I’m trying to accomplish, I could end up overstepping those limits and risking my life. It’s different from preparing your body to be at its peak and in the best possible condition on a given day to take on a challenge or break a record. Very different.

Had I kept running without eating after having passed out, during that experiment in Font-Romeu—which I don’t recommend anyone try—I have no idea what the consequences might have been. If, on another occasion, I hadn’t hydrated after aching all over and noticing that my urine was blacker than coal, I would have suffered acute kidney damage. These are extreme cases—there’s no doubt about it.

The purpose of my experiments wasn’t just physical; they also allowed me to gain confidence in myself. I knew firsthand what I was capable of, and I learned to suffer and get the most out of my body, squeezing every last drop of energy from it when I lost my strength or my motivation dwindled. You have to be fast to win races, but that alone isn’t enough to make you competitive. You must be aware that you can’t overcome your body’s physiological limits. On the other hand, if you want to do as well as possible, what you can do is build up an armor made of different pieces: mental preparation, technique, the kind of equipment you use, and your strategy. Your body possesses immense knowledge and, when necessary, sends signals asking you if you want to keep going or not. Those warning bells are called fainting, leg pain, hallucinations, and vomiting. Whether you want to break the final barrier depends on you and you alone.

There is one more limit, a psychological one. This one is called fear. It’s a great travel companion and has two sides. On the one hand, if you ignore it, you can overcome all your psychological obstacles and gain a true understanding of how far you can go. On the other, if you don’t learn how to listen to it, it can end up leading you into an abyss. You must assess which is the better partner to dance with.

I love physical training. Years and years of work and almost total abstinence in search of the ideal, fleeting moment that ends in a sigh. It’s different from intellectual activity, in which the knowledge you constantly acquire and accumulate stays with you. When you work with the body, nothing you win ever belongs to you or lasts forever, since you always have to keep training just as hard, to keep the bar as high as you want it to be.

Many athletes train from childhood to compete and be champions, but only a very few chosen ones end up making it. Often the result is people with hugely inflated egos, carrying around a backpack full of frustration. I believe that children should be coached not to win but to train. If this were the general pattern, everyone would have their slice of delicious cake, and the competition would just be the cherry on top. I was lucky enough that this was the first thing Maite Hernández and Jordi Canals taught me. Training was necessary, competition was optional, and the time to compete would come when it came. This approach turned out to be very useful to me years later, when I was climbing Mount Everest.

Maite and Jordi also taught me to be methodical and analytical, to note everything about my performance so I could analyze it later and identify anything that hadn’t worked out well. This meant tallying everything up: the time and kilometers I trained, the number of hours I slept—and whether I had taken advantage of them—and more.

I wrote everything down, without missing a detail, in a notebook with square, ruled pages—I was meticulous. Every two weeks, Maite and I would get together to review it and talk about what I should do in the next two weeks. From her, I learned the importance of taking precise notes and not leaving out any detail that might be important later.

I remember one day when I was training at the center. It was very hot, and as usual I had no liquid with me. After a few hours of activity, I was dying of thirst, and Maite offered me some water. When I leapt forward to grab her flask, she suddenly snatched it away.

“Haven’t you learned anything from what I’ve taught you? Imagine if I had a cold and you drank this water that I’ve been drinking, with all its viruses and bacteria. What about the week of training we have planned?”

When I began to train alone, I continued with the methodical task of writing everything down. In 2006, I made an Excel document where I recorded everything: each activity, every day I was sick, every car or plane journey that affected my rest, every public event that made me lose concentration when training, every strange or pleasant sensation.

Interpreting all this data is a complex task that requires me to keep my feet on the ground. I have to be as honest as I can in my notes. If I’m not, a few years from now, when I want to know why I did so well in a given week, everything I might extrapolate from these records would be wrong. Despite the fact that I’m the only person who reads this document, sometimes it’s hard to avoid falling into the trap of false modesty or overvaluation.

For example, one day I wrote:

“February 16, 2005. Pulse 42 when I woke up, 2 hours 30 minutes of ski mountaineering—2,300 meters. 30-minute warm-up, 6 sets of 15 seconds at maximum, and 5 sets of 6 minutes at 180 pulse with 1 minute rest. In the first rest periods I went down well to 130 pulse, from the third on I didn’t go below 150. Afternoon stretches. I have a cold.”

And another day:

“June 14, 2011. Morning: Les Houches, Mont Blanc (4 hours 7 minutes), a bit tired, but I can still force myself. 4,200-meter slope. Afternoon: gentle bike 1 hour 30 minutes, 300 meters, legs heavy but in good cardio shape. Interview and trip.”

The notes were still important as far as races and goals were concerned, because I could see from them whether what I’d done had been of any use:

“August 14, 2013. Sierre-Zinal, 20 miles, 2h 34m 15s: legs very heavy from the beginning, I feel good cardio-wise, but zero legs, pain in left hamstring and right calf. I can’t take the pace, not fast enough on flat ground.”

“August 30, 2008. UTMB [Ultra-Trail du Mont Blanc], 100 miles—32,808 feet: 20h 56m 59s (real time 19h 50m), feeling good. Out on my own at my own pace, in Fully, a little sleepy, didn’t eat well, awake and running well again in Champex. Later, the organization stopped me for an hour, and I finished at Mermoud’s insistence, very unmotivated, disappointed and angry.”