inscriptions
Race
Usually he is laconic. Prefers to listen carefully to the interlocutor. A few specific questions during the conversation and a short monologue – this is the usual style of conversation between the president of the International Centaur Association Grigory Nikishkin.
But today it is hard to recognize. For more than two hours now, he has been talking, stopping only occasionally in order to sip tea or listen to some extra urgent information on the radiotelephone.
A few days ago, Gregory returned from the Paris-Dakar rally, in which he participated as a full-fledged racer, and decided to share his conclusions and observations, in a word, to throw out a load of impressions. Suddenly I catch myself thinking: but with his heart he is still there – in a race, in the mountains of Spain, on the rocky plateaus of Morocco, in the sands of Mauritania and the savannahs of Senegal … Maybe what he says will seem interesting and instructive for those our compatriots, who, in a year, may want to repeat the risky experience of pioneers and go to the start of this prestigious race, having managed to avoid the annoying mistakes and mistakes made in the first “journey of amateurs.” So, a word to an eyewitness and a participant in the events … Continue reading
Vertical dancing
Today in France there are more than a dozen of them – single climbers, whose ascents are akin to solo performances of dancers. And there is nothing surprising in the fact that these people are called “soloists”, but they are served by the sheer cliffs, reaching a height of more than half a kilometer …
And the beginning of such solo performances a little more than a dozen years ago was laid by the young French rock climber Patrick Edlenge, who became the hero of the world-famous documentary thriller Life at Your Fingertips (excerpts from this film the Russian viewer could see in the eighties in the television program Travelers Club )
What made the twenty-three-year-old Patrick Edlenge at one time abandon the traditional climbing techniques with the usual safety equipment and do what one cannot look at without a shudder — single ascent to the rocks, and even without any insurance at all? Continue reading
“Red Angels” Alpine Peaks
The town of Zermatt in the Swiss Alps, at first glance, is no different from neighboring towns and villages. The same neat houses with a bright smear of indispensable geranium on the window are also unpretentious and at the same time cozy cafes, bars and bistros; on the streets, as elsewhere in alpine towns, the multilingual rumble of tourists. They perfectly understand each other without translators. The euphoria of novice climbers, wherever they come from, helps them in communication. Everyone who comes here, of course, seeks to climb to the top, known as the main local attraction.
It is loudly called the Mountain of Mountains, although the height of this peak is far from the record one and is 4478 meters above sea level, but its silhouette, resembling an almost regular pyramid, seems to embody the idea of perfect geometric shape. And everything perfect, as you know, attracts a person uncontrollably … Continue reading
