With Bare Hands the Story of a Reallife Spiderman

299 Pages·2014·5.11 MB·English

by  Alain Robert

THE STORY OF A
REAL-LIFE SPIDERMAN

Published by Jaico Publishing House
A-2 Jash Chambers, 7-A Sir Phirozshah Mehta Road
Fort, Mumbai - 400 001
[email protected]
www.jaicobooks.com
© Alain Robert
WITH BARE HANDS
ISBN 978-81-8495-272-8
First Jaico Impression: 2011
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in
any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical including photocopying, recording or by any
information storage and retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publishers.
Printed by
Sanman & Co.
113, Shivshakti Ind. Estate, Marol Naka
Andheri (E), Mumbai - 400 059.
CONTENTS
Foreword
Prologue
A Newly Discovered Mountain Range
Le Tour de Paris
The Hatchling
European Trilogy
Jailhouse Rock
Fantastico!
Liberty Bell
Alain and the King
Spiderman
Fears and the Sears
Asia Rising
The Sands of Time
F
OREWORD
T he things I do not understand intrigue me. I am looking forward to reading
Alain Robert's book because I hope to find answers to the questions he has
relentlessly posed me over the last 20 years. I focus on hand surgery and
rehabilitation, and I am drawn to Alain's case in particular.
How has he managed to fully recover and even surpass his prior abilities to
climb smooth walls after his terrible fall? That fall should have left him
permanently disabled!
And disabled he is... on paper. His wrists have limited movement; his elbows
do not open fully any more, restricting the reach of his upper limbs; the two
bones of his forearm still do not properly meet. He cannot direct his hands as he
would like to, nor can he completely unfurl the muscles of his fingers, the nerves
of which have been compressed for too long.
How then is he able, with such limbs, to grip onto small protrusions of only a
few millimetres and then have the audacity to risk his life in solo climbs? How
does he manage to exceed his natural abilities and compensate for his failing
joints? Answers are probably to be found less in medical journals than in the
following pages.
In the course of our meetings, Alain has provided some illumination. Without
divulging anything which may affect his reflections, I have come to understand
that it is his particular philosophy which may hold the key. Alain would ask me
whether we have several lives. At worst, he says, we have only one, and therefore
we must do our utmost to fill it with the people and the things we love. There is
no time to spend horizontally on a hospital bed if we have chosen to live
vertically.
On reflection I understand how he convinced me to let him attempt walking
so soon after his pelvic fracture. The pain? It wasn't a problem for Alain. He
accepted it as the price he had to pay and also as a boundary, a natural red line.
Every time we completed a new surgical procedure to repair prior damage he
requested my approval to try out his new limbs as soon as possible on the rock
face, accepting the consequences of his bravado. Alain would overtake me as I
strode breathless on a rough but easy footpath on the rocks of Saou while he was
already at ease clutching onto a '7a' overhang just a few days after his umpteenth
round of surgery.
These are astonishing results that a surgeon, blinded by his own vanity, could
boast about if they weren't the outcome of the victim's determination rather than
the success of the orthopaedic setting.
But 'victim' is not a term that applies to Alain Robert, because at no point
along the path of his surgical saga has he displayed a victim's behaviour. Never
has he looked to shirk responsibilities, to point fingers, to obtain financial
compensation or potential benefits from disability status. There was no time for
such behaviour. There was no strength to squander in these diversions from
physical recovery. To hell with the tribunals, lawyers, experts, certificates, or
indeed insurance and disability allowances — even though he was entitled to
them!
Alain Robert remains a medical enigma, one of excellent functional outcome
in spite of an unimpressive anatomical result. I had given him a poor prognosis
and he has proven me wrong, and for that I thank him.
I look forward to learning how he did it.
Dr Gérard Hoël, Surgeon
P
ROLOGUE
I t's June 1994 and the telephone bursts into life at my little home in my native
southern France. It's a rather intriguing — and, as it turns out, fateful — phone
call. A man from Sector, the famed sporting watches brand and one of the
biggest sponsors in adventure sports, is on the line. Apparently the trendy firm
wants to make a documentary about climbing entitled No Limits.
The guy on the end of the line introduces himself as the film director and tells
me that he has seen what I can do on the rocks and would like me to feature in
his documentary. In an Italian accent he outlines his vision and says he is keen to
show something different from the usual mountaineering stuff we are all used to
seeing; he wants to break the mould and take the audience into newer pastures.
The initial image he conjures up is the copper sandstone beauty of Utah,
rugged landscapes belonging in popular fiction to the realms of the Marlboro
cowboys, but in reality of course to those who live on that arid land, the Navajo
Indians. The second image he describes are the big city glass mountains,
locations which teem with humanity to such an extent that we have utterly
reshaped the environment, creating our own termite mounds of glass and steel.
The director explains he wants to surprise the audience by drawing a parallel
between the famous stony pillars of Utah and the gigantic office blocks of New
York or some other city. In this documentary, he says, it will be necessary for me
to clamber up these dreamlike sandstone obelisks and also to attack a high rise
office block. He asks if I would be interested.
My curiosity is aroused and it seems to be quite a neat idea. It sounds pretty
cool. Why not?
The director butters me up. He boldly declares he has all the angles covered
and I need not worry about anything at all. We shall have shooting licenses and
we will use a nice sturdy rope. Safety, he tells me, is naturally his highest concern.
Location managers are devising a plan to obtain the rights to climb city
skyscrapers as we speak. His crew is canvassing administrations and private
owners to gain legal access to dramatic urban settings. If this falls through, the
director will use special effects and models to recreate the city surroundings. The
task for us is to come back with mesmerising, provocative and juxtaposing
images forming a nice climbing story 'made in America'.
I ask a few questions and he gives encouraging answers, and it all sounds
positive, verbally anyway. So I tell him I am in. He makes a final round of
assurances and tells me his staff will immediately make travel arrangements for
me. As briefly as it began, the call ends.
Fissure escalation — the ascent of igneous, metamorphic or sedimentary rocks
— has been my job for more than ten years. It's no problem, I've mastered it. I
have tackled some of Europe's toughest climbs and have become known for
pushing the envelope further by dispensing with safety equipment and climbing
with my bare hands. Climbing in Utah sounds like a nice day at the office for me.
But it has to be said that scaling the window panes of a tall building is something
else entirely. What kind of idea is that? But never mind, I decide, let's give it a try.
Actually I have never even thought of the possibility of climbing manmade
monuments. It has barely ever been done and I now wonder how I am going to
do it. One of France's top rock climbers, Jibe Tribout, had scaled a building for
an advertisement shot in Houston, so I decide to call him to get his point of view
and gain his impressions on the feasibility of the project.
Jibe picks up the phone and listens thoughtfully before relating his experiences
of such a climb. According to him, the ascent of a skyscraper is more
hypothetical than realistic considering the height and the nature of the surface
we have to work with. Besides, he hardly climbed a floor before jumping onto a
crash mat like a stuntman. Even though he climbed a very different building, his
experience had not left him a very positive impression of building escalations.
I thank him for his input and mull it over for a while. No one really knows
anything about such a climb — it is a step into the unknown and will remain so
until I attempt it. But within a few days I am flying to Chicago and any
misgivings are packed in with my luggage.
On arrival I disembark to the news that we have only ten days to scout
locations. I would have liked to have gotten over my jet lag, but to make good use
of the day I head downtown to get a more precise idea of what we are looking at.
Once I get to downtown Chicago and walk the streets I am shocked! The
profile of the buildings is quite a contrast to the modest heights of French cities.
French cities have been around a lot longer and therefore tended to spread
outwards over the centuries, rather than rocketing upwards as they have in
countries where economies have exploded. Sure, there are tall buildings in
France, but we have nothing like this. Here high rise blocks spring from the