It had taken me my entire adult life and required traveling 4,500 miles around the world, but halfway up a frozen waterfall in Norway, I could cross something off the bucket list: I was finally in Conrad Anker’s pants.
I was also in Steve Swenson’s gloves… The French Ace Mathieu Maynadier’s jacket. And German ice-wizard Matthias Scherer’s sunglasses.
Matthias Scherer on
Flågbekken. Photo: Heike Schmitt.
While the gravity of the coronavirus pandemic was beginning to dawn on much of the world back in early March 2020 the frenzy of buying essentials like skim milk and toilet paper in unreasonable qualities was still weeks away my main concern at that moment was that Lufthansa had lost my luggage during my four-flight marathon travel day to the Arctic Ice Festival here in the small village of Tennevel, in Troms, Norway. I was going to be here for nine days and, stranded without my personal gear, the Petzl athletes had taken pity on me and kitted me out as best they could.