El Cap at arms strengh

El Cap at arms Strengh

by Clement Perotti from Sandstones Media

One morning while checking facebook, I saw a link to something that stopped me. It was about a lady planning to climb El Cap, without the use of your her feet. And to accomplish that, she needed support, so I cliked this link <a href="http://www.kisskissbankbank.com/fr/projects/el-cap-a-bout-de-bras?utm_source=critsend&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign="> and learned a few things about this beautiful project, but I felt like there was more to say, so I got in touch with Vanessa, and asked her a few question. Here's her answer !

Could you introduce yourself for us ?

I’m Vanessa François from Belgium, and a nurse. 10 years ago, I took a break from work in Chamonix, and fell in love with the area. I met a lot of people there to climb the amazing mountains of Mont Blanc massif, and have made the first winter female ascent of the Manitua, on Grandes Jorasses north face.

Could you tell us how your accident happened, and how you reacted to it?

I was climbing in the mountains on a beautiful spring day, when a big frozen chunk of snow hit me in the back. We were a lot on the face, but I was the only one to be hit. I knew straight away than my leg won’t move anymore, and stayed conscious waiting for the rescue team.

It didn’t took long before I wanted to go back to the mountain, and after some swimming, I started backcountry skiing. It helped me to stay positive during the rehab and filled me with tons of energy. And as soon as I could pull hard enough, I started climbing again and prepared El Cap at arms strength.

Talking about this project, it has been crowfunded, and you reached the initial goal in less than 24 hours ! Can you tell us what it is about ?

We’ll be in Yosemite in October 2013 with Liv Sansoz, Marion Poitevin and Nicolas Potard to climb the Zodiac route on El Capitan, Yosemite. We plan to spend 5 days on the wall, and I’ll jumar the whole thing, and sleep in a portaledge.

Yes ! It felt amazing to feel the people support. I’m going to keep the fundraising open so we can document better our trip, and then share the whole experience !

Thank you Vanessa, any message you’ll like to share?

First of all we should all enjoy the moment, from a nice light to a friend’s smile. And never hesitate to give a hand to somebody. That helped me a lot to keep moving !