Gaube

There are ascents that some do, simply for the kudos, but there are other types of adventures made by the creativity and perseverance of the individual.

> Text by Jordi Tosas 

> Visuals by David Arinio

 During many days of the pandemic - and now with the war - I was thinking a lot on how many times we are looking for the steepest, the hardest, the highest, the most difficult. Forgetting the beauty. We live in a pretty world filled with nature that we are destroying with tons upon tons of rubbish, we are polluting and using this world just for one photo or for one exploit to grow our egos. We don’t care about the fragility of our winters or the wild animals, or even for the short seasons of winter ice climbs. One trip to far lands to discover nothing new when in our backyards we have countless uncharted areas and new challenges waiting to be discovered. Simply being ourselves again in contact with a wild, unknown nature gives us the gift of exploring in a different way. The path of the simplest is the path of respect.

"Our goal was not to make one of the steepest descents in the Pyrenees, it was, just to write one short poem about our dreams, the dreams that are lived through open eyes."

Gaube was the dream of two close friends: David and me. David loved to climb that amazing line that splits the great wall of Vignemale. The magical geometry of one simple line. My dream was to ski that mystical line trapped between the light and darkness. David is a solid cameraman and I asked him to leave his mark in the way he knows, the visual poetry. Our goal was not to make one of the steepest descents in the Pyrenees, it was, just to write one short poem about our dreams, the dreams that are lived through open eyes. 

Gaube Couloir was first ascended by the extreme audacity of H. Brulle, J. Bazillac, R. de Monts, C. Passet and F. Rooms on 7 August 1889 and has long been the reference for ice climbs in the Pyrenees.