SUPERCOULOIR - Tormod Granheim

SUPERCOULOIR

Chamonix Mont Blanc, France, 2019

Accessible / inaccessible is a dynamic I try to describe with my photographs. This wall has a lot of it. Good skiers reach the bottom of the wall after an 8 - 10 minute ski ride from Aiguille du Midi. Average skiers don't reach here at all, unless they hire a guide to help them down the fierce Vallée Blanche glacier which has its source, among other things, in the bergschrundt in the picture.

What you see in camera is one thing, but when I saw the image for the first time on screen I was overwhelmed by  that it could be so crisp and rich in detail. This really should be seen physically.

I could have called the image Devil's Back, after the series of needles on the left against the sky, I could have called it Couloir de Diable, after the 850-meter-high white stripe on the left, a line I rode with my good friend Tomas Olsson as training before our trip to Mount Everest.

I could have called it the Gervasutti Pillar, or turned the camera a few degrees to the right and included the Couloir Gervasutti plummeting below the enormous boulder balancing against the sky on the right.

But I wanted to honor the multi-talented Jean Marc Boivin - a base jumper, climber and skier who pushed the limits more than perhaps anyone else of his time. Just reading ski and climbing guides and seeing the lines he first made has been a huge inspiration. Therefore, this photograph must be named after the steep ice line Boivin established in the center of the image, the Supercouloir.