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tgr news |mission steeps |high fives |andreas fransson jp auclair |andreas fransson avalanche |andreas fransson
By Tess Weaver
Swedish ski mountaineer Andreas Fransson moved to Chamonix in 2006 and immediately started turning heads by skiing the area’s most notorious routes, often solo. He’s notched a first descent on Denali and climbed and skied numerous high peaks around the world, redefining modern ski mountaineering and establishing himself as one of today’s most exciting skiers. And he’s just 30 years old. Fransson spent the summer and fall skiing in Peru and Chile. In November, Fransson’s climbing partner Magnus Kastengren took a fatal fall while the two were descending New Zealand’s Mount Cook. We talked with the well-spoken Fransson about humility, adventure, mortality and sharing the mountains with others.
Why do you think it's better to talk about what one has done rather than what one is planning on doing?
When I was a kid, I observed many of the skiers, climbers and adventurers from back then holding press conferences about mountains they were going to ski or climb. They usually said, “I’m going to ski this line...” and continued in a very serious manner on the subject of their plans. Of course it’s a way of getting or pleasing sponsors, but it’s also a very presumptuous way of approaching the mountains. You need humility out there, and you can’t follow your one-dimensional thoughts in a three-dimensional mountain environment. It’s unwise to create unnecessary pressure when you are in pressed life and death situations. Also, it’s easier to come back and meet the press after an eventual defeat if you didn’t brag about what you were going to do. If you try to do real adventures, it has to have uncertainty thrown into the mix. You’re probably going to fail most of the time, but when you actually obtain your objective it’s going to be with a real taste of sweetness and worth, and you will probably have learned important things about your self.
What is real adventure?
I think that for a project or an adventure to be a real adventure it has to have some amount of uncertainty. If I know I will succeed from the start, it will be a mechanical venture. It can be awesomely amazing anyway, but I will not sense the thrill of adventure that only comes when I don't know how a venture will end. It doesn’t have to be big and risky though. It could be a local ski in Chamonix when I don’t really know the snow conditions or it could be hitchhiking to London. The uncertainty is the spice that brings rock n’ roll to any action.
What are some things you have learned by leaving your comfort zone?
When you leave what you know, you are widening the reality you live in and thus widening your own consciousness. If we feel safe everyday, we aren’t really living; we’re only repeating what we know. Living, for me, is expanding ones own reality as far as possible.
You have seen death up close and personal. What's your relationship with your own mortality?
Part of me is curious for what I will experience after death. This is of course implying that I don’t believe in death in the traditional western sense of a big black end to it all. But I also feel fear, because without fear I wouldn’t respect the greatness of this experience. I think it’s something I look forward to with delight and curiosity, but I’m not in a hurry as I know my day will come sooner or later and I love the flip side of death which is life.
Why are you pursuing professional guiding?
I love sharing beautiful mountain moments with others. We mountain people get to live the most awesome days in the mountains all the time and guiding is a way of giving back and sharing the secrets I’ve learned with others. Sharing beauty gives meaning and I guess I try to give more aspects of meaning to my own life.
Images courtesy of Salomon and Salomon Freeski TV.
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About The Author
stash member Tess Weaver Strokes
I am a freelance writer and editor based in Aspen, Colorado. I have worked as an editor at Powder magazine, a senior writer for Freeskier magazine and a sports writer for Oakley, Inc.