Get a Grip

Maxwell Roche takes axe in hand and hacks his way up a daunting 24-metre ice tower in the French Alps

- Maxwell Roche

As the tip of my axe explodes from the icy wall looming four inches beyond my skyward nose time slows. High definition asymmetrical snowflakes fly by my disbelieving eyes, before being whipped away by funnelling valley winds to settle upon the branches of distant pines. As the debris clears I watch as my arm, now free of the frigid tower, builds momentum. As my weight shifts, the rest of my body slowly turns like a barn door on freshly oiled hinges, disappearing beyond my ears, caught by the howling wind. Seconds later the back of my helmeted head slams into the ice and I’m left dangling by a solitary axe, cramponed feet swinging freely 24 metres above the frozen abyss. “You’re climbing with your feet too close together,” calls a voice from way below “think triangle!”

When it comes to sport the majority are readily available to us Brits. If you wake up after Wimbledon and decide you’d like a backhand to rival Roger’s, you wander down to your local court and start swinging. If après Olympics you fancy burning up the 100-metre straight faster than Mr Bolt, you trot to your nearest track and train. What happens though, when you realise your active outdoor aspirations are altogether less accessible? What if say, instead of tennis or track and field, you hanker for the high mountains, and to test your fitness against frozen facades that loom above moody and merciless mid winter landscapes? Well then, I know just the place.