Above the Clouds

June 15, 2020
A Catalan endurance athlete recounts his experiences and how they have shaped his worldview. As Jornet, only 32, unwinds his exciting life story--tales of mountain climbing, ski mountaineering, ultralong-distance running, mountain biking, and "skyrunning"--he also reflects on the effects of his adventures on his soul. The book, he writes, is "not about what I have achieved but what I have experienced, about feeling at peace with my values when I do something and embracing the possibility of change and failure as a reward for my soul." (To view his many achievements, check out his Wikipedia page.) The author's prose is unadorned, and while his insights on the adventurous life aren't groundbreaking, he successfully brings readers directly into his dangerous predicaments on the mountain. "Climbing a mountain is just putting your life in danger to try to reach the summit, then coming down again," he writes. "Clearly, this puts you in a category closer to stupidity than heroism." It's evident that competition with others is important to him, but he is more interested in testing his own abilities and keeping up with the level he demands of himself. For Jornet, there is nothing more glorious than just getting out there and running or biking or climbing; his virtuous cycle is to eat, train, eat, train, sleep, and repeat. "We must be the ones to manage our own bodies...they should always be under our control," he writes. Ultimately, the author wants to attain a "fleeting moment that ends with a sigh," to feel his "love for the mountains with total madness"--as euphoria or an "orgasm of adrenaline." It is not just an altered state, but a place of complete freedom. "Mountains," he writes, "are (still) a space of freedom, where lawlessness reigns for the good of everyone." Risks and rewards abound in Jornet's tutorial of how to experience the outdoors.

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