Raphael Slawinski

The last time I wrote a post for this blog, I was on a 13-hour flight from Vancouver to Guangzhou, the second of the three flights taking me from Calgary to Kathmandu. A great deal happened since then, most of it unexpected. Was the Nepal earthquake a black swan event ? Or was it merely an instance of Russell's turkey ? I suppose it's a matter of perspective. I wrote about my experiences on the north side of Everest on my sponsors' blogs. For raw impressions of our expedition as it first unfolded and then folded, check out the blogs of Arc'teryx (instalments 1 , 2 , 3 and 4 ), Black Diamond (instalments 1 and 2 ) and Scarpa (instalments 1 , 2 , 3 and 4 ). I didn't feel I had much to add to what I wrote there, so rather than repeat myself I thought I would relive the trip through images. I didn't find the experience I was looking for in Tibet, but I lived through the one nature dished out. I am one of the lucky ones: I still have a future to dream about. ...

The night sky to the north, over the Bering Straight, was the surreal blue of another planet – perhaps the methane-rich atmosphere of Neptune, with all the red sucked out of the light. I was halfway through a fourteen-hour flight, itself only the second of three. Step by step, they were transporting me from the familiar surroundings of Calgary to the alien chaos of Kathmandu. It’s on the plane that a big adventure first becomes alarmingly real. For months we dream, plan, train and organize. Then one morning we wake up, make one last espresso, load bulging duffels bugs into the car trunk and head for the airport. The future becomes the present. What was still in the future, but a very near one now, was my first experience of the highest mountain on the planet. Everest? Really? How is it that after saying for years that I was too much of a climber to have any interest in that massive, graceless peak, I was headed there? What had changed? Photo: Gunther Goberl. Everything is ch...