Heavy Weather Marc-André Leclerc — Sioux Wall VIII 8. Scotland.
words & photography :: Paul Bride We woke up at 2:30 a.m., drove to the parking lot and got out of the car to nuclear rain—like the worst day in Squamish kind of rain. It’s pitch black, my pack and camera gear is probably close to 70 pounds, and as I’m putting on my boots for the hour-and-ahalf headlamp approach in 60 kilometre-anhour sideways, hammering rain Marc says to me, “Man, I love bad weather.” As we got higher, the snow turned to ice. At the wall, there’s slough coming down, really heavy weather…are we really doing this? Its Marc, Paul McSorley, me, and a Brit climber Ian Parnell, who was already up there. My camera is in a bag in my jacket, and the moment I’d pull it out, the storm was blowing so hard my lense would fill with snow instantly. I got four shots that day. Marc loved it. He was always stoked on bad weather, always out when everyone else would stay in, or turn around and go home. It would get me stoked too, feeding off his energy. I always felt better with him, like yeah, it’s gonna be good! On this trip, I had brought four new jackets for him from Arc’teryx to get shots with. He showed up in a jacket held together with safety pins and would have gone in that. Marc was on a different level. He was like a monk.
60
