Description
Vivian and I have had versions of this conversation many times in the mountains. We just never had a camera recording.
We first met when I moved to Chamonix in 2011. Vivian was one of the people who introduced me to steep skiing and, through it, to another way of understanding mountaineering and moving through the mountains. Over the years, we have shared many days outside, learned from each other, and gradually found that our ways of seeing the mountains became closer.
In this conversation, we talk about creativity and performance, the patience behind Vivian’s project to ski the 4,000-metre peaks of the Alps, how snow shapes the decisions we make, and the complicated relationship between commitment and risk. We also talk about becoming fathers, how that changes our perspective in the mountains, and how we pass on experience and mountain knowledge in a world where so much is now seen through social media.
My book Beyond Endurance tells the story of linking the 82 peaks over 4,000 metres in the Alps in 19 days, and of the glaciers and ridges I crossed along the way, many of them changing fast. Find it here: https://bio.to/KilianJornet
00:00 Intro
00:22 Meeting in Chamonix, 2011
02:48 Creativity over performance
05:13 Getting lost, finding a line
06:37 Imagining the big link-ups
09:39 Staying calm
12:12 Skiing all the 4,000ers
14:46 Bringing partners into your project
18:30 Becoming fathers, rethinking risk
22:59 Learning the mountains in the social media age
26:32 Rescue gear isn't safety
29:24 Feeling over numbers
31:54 Passing it on
33:25 What we look at on social media