"In solitude, the biggest difference is a loneliness that communicates a lot."
Loneliness. He speaks Silver Vidal of Loneliness and does it after discovering it, to live with her, to suffer, to face her, to look for her. In the expeditions of it can be more than a month absolutely alone on a hammock of 200 x 80 centimeters hanging from a ledge to many meters of the ground. His is the climbing of large solo walls and alone she means solo. She without company, but also without a phone, without GPS, without radio and without any other device she can interfere with the ascension she is doing. Although that loneliness also has a cost.
"The biggest challenge of being incommunicado for weeks is not to have a meteorological forecast, which would allow me a more accurate logistics. My families and friends I feel very close, I feel that they are there supporting every step I give, despite the physical distance ".
Sílvia Vidal is a reference on climbing and, in certain areas, practically a myth. This November will become the first Spanish to receive a piolet d'or, the most prestigious awards of mountaineering, "for its impressive exploits of resistance" in walls of half a world, such as the west face of the Chilean Cerro Grande, in Chile, where Last year opened a new path of 1,180 meters (A3 + / 6A +) in 33 days. But for the great public she is a stranger. And it's not anyone's fault: it's intentioned.
Unlike most colleagues, Vidal is not based on sponsors, nor does it advertise their challenges, nor is it usually recorded or photographed while scale. The media boom that was generated around the specialty of it after success in 2018 of the documentary 'free alone', winner of an Oscar, nor did it even peek him. She covers the expenses of her expeditions through the talks she offers at mountain festivals, in companies or in institutes and the rest of her life she prefers not to speak. In fact, she prefers not to rule on the documentary 'free' documentary, about the success of climbing in the recent Olympic Games of Tokyo or about possible gender differences on climbing. She lives in her way, although she looks like an anachronism, like her end-of-climbing style.
"This way of understanding escalation] is being lost and it seems that we will still see more applied technology in any area, but who knows, maybe at some other time, another rhythm is prioritized."
As it relates in conversation through email with the world, Vidal, 50, born in Barcelona, started climbing when I studied inef and invited him to participate in an adventure RAID, that is, a week in the mountain doing trail , BTT, Orientation, Rafting, Climbing ... He liked it and a couple of years went from not knowing how to use a piolet to win in 1996 the Spanish gold piolet to the best mountaineer of the country for its first great project, in the Naranjo de Bulnes She then arrived trips to Alaska, Canada, India, Mali, Pakistan or Peru always alone, although she says she is not a particularly lonely person.
"This type of expeditions give me another kind of experiences about when I am accompanied, it is not incompatible to be social and knowing being alone, I think that having a good environment helps to know how to be alone".
In one of his latest expeditions, in Alaska, he had to walk about 540 kilometers loading 150 kilos in 25 kilos packages so he measures until the last gram with magnifying glass. To feed on a wall for more than a month, she is enough from lyophilized food and vitamin supplements, and leisure, nothing at all. Some of her's first ascents did take a book, but not even that. Climbing is the important thing in her adventures, although while she is up there, a world pandemic is up there, as she spent last year in Chile.
"Whenever I return from an expedition, I find it acclimated again to civilization, on that occasion it was easier because we were all trying to assimilate an important change in our lives, and today I still try to fit this new world."
Date Of Update: 16 October 2021, 11:28
