you should see the other guy
That was the first thing that happened when I decided to resume my alpine climbing training after a 2-year break during the pandemic.
By the End of 2021, I got in touch with a friend based in Chamonix, and we had an interesting phone call talking about getting back to the mountains to climb and film. We laid out a solid plan for two weeks to ease into climbing while figuring out the dynamics of how we could film and climb simultaneously.
Feb 2022, I was ready to tackle the new challenges we discussed, And we thought Ice climbing would be the best option to start the trip with. But in the mountains, sometimes things don’t go as planned.
We got to that beautiful Gorge, which had a 60m+ ice wall. We started getting ready, John started lead climbing for about 10 minutes and disappeared, so I moved below his line to keep an eye on him since I was the belayer. I looked down to avoid standing on the rope with my crampons, and my eye flashed as I lifted my head. I couldn’t see anything! A few seconds later. The blood flow rushing into my face broke that stun I was in, leaving me with confusion and pain. That was when I realized a chunk of ice had just scored 10 points from bashing my face!
I had to continue belaying for another 15 minutes without knowing how severe the injury was. And I started feeling the warmth of my blood mixed with lots of tears pouring down my cheek. The swelling and the constant flow of tears made it difficult to see, so I had to belay with one eye.
Finally, I Lowered John after fixing the top rope and took some selfies to see how bad my face looked, which wasn’t that bad. I cleaned it up with snow and decided to do a couple of pitches since the bleeding stopped.
By the second pitch, the swelling started making me nervous… So we decided to go to a nearby infirmary and have it checked. The physician who was examining the wound made me even more anxious with his sound effects! “Ohh! No, no! That looks deep. Good news though, you don’t need stitches.” dude, Seriously?
I got myself patched up and went back to the Gorge to do more pitches. I was fortunate enough that the ice chunk was considerable, making it hard to hit my eye. Thus, my face got the best of it.
A few days later, I walked around town with a black eye repeating that lame joke whenever someone asked. Weirdly tho, I started noticing people with black eyes. Apparently, it’s a thing in winter sports. There was that girl queuing at the Midi who had a black eye too, and I looked at her with a head nod. It was kind of like hey, Sup? from a distance.
Tough lessons like this one are hard to forget. I’m always grateful for those life lessons. I believe they build a person’s character and, Of course, make you a cool storyteller.