Alain Robert - With Bare Hands the Story of a Reallife Spiderman

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
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
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FOREWORD

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 Grard Hol, Surgeon

PROLOGUE

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.