Good evening.
This mic is working!
What makes a climber climb mountains?
Passion.
I started out climbing mountains, mountains made of rock,
and I still remember the first time I put my fingers and feet
on the mountain face and the grips, and I felt like it was poetry in motion.
From that moment on, I was immersed in a passionate adventure,
and, of course, I ran into my first obstacles.
The first one was my mum saying: 'You're not going.'
(Laughter)
Getting her permission was very difficult,
but I kept climbing and going to the mountains,
and I realised that I had her support because she had no other choice.
Later, I needed that support and much more intensely
when my dream took me to the other side of the planet
to the Himalayas, the world's highest mountains,
Going after ideas,
when few people trusted me or when many people didn't agree,
gave me inspiration.
Because if I had an idea, I was sure it was possible.
After two expeditions to the Himalayas,
a golden opportunity finally presented itself.
This was to join a women's expedition
to try to climb a mountain over 8,000 metres high in Tibet.
So there I was.
Before I went, a lot of questions came up,
most of them repeated over and over.
'Hey, you're a woman. Why don't you do something that's really for women?
That's a man's sport.'
Well, the fact I'm female doesn't stop me carrying heavy rucksacks
or fixing a rope or sharpening my crampons and ice axe.
In fact, my gender never led to any problems
when it came to other climbers allowing me to join their teams.
Another question I was asked time and time again:
'That's a really expensive sport.
Since it's not an Olympic sport and the government won't give you help,
how will you manage?'
How many activities aren't Olympic sports?
I had to work extremely hard, but indeed it was possible.
Another: 'How do you think you'll manage to climb to heights of 8,000 metres?
The highest mountain in Mexico doesn't even reach 6,000.
How will you know if you can do it?'
Well, I had to find out and keep going.
After the invitation to Tibet from the women's group,
I woke up one morning to the unwelcome news
that one of the barrels containing the equipment had been stolen -
and that the one which had been stolen was mine, and that my boots were missing.
How could I dream of climbing the mountain without boots?
However, I kept going. I walked and arrived to the base camp.
There I found an Italian expedition that was on their way back,
and one of them, who was small like me but had bigger feet,
sold me their boots.
After many pairs of socks, I managed to get them to fit,
and I was also lent equipment because I was missing a few things.
We finally started the job of setting up camps on the mountain
and getting our bodies used to the lack of oxygen.
As I was doing this job, I realised that the initial plan
to go with the women's team wasn't working for various reasons.
Then I thought: 'This is my opportunity, I can't lose it. What am I going to do?
I'll stick with the ones who are climbing.'
So I kept climbing with them,
and then came the moment we'd all been waiting for:
our attempt to get to the summit.
We set off early in the morning that day,
and after sunrise,
I saw some other rocky peaks to the side of the mountain,
and I made them my goal.
I said: 'I need to get there.'
After much effort, I did get there,
and I sat down to breathe the oxygen.
I realised I'd already climbed a long way
because there were mountains and lots of clouds below.
We kept going, and as I went further,
the distance between rest stops got shorter and shorter -
until I arrived at 8,000 metres,
the height at which commerical planes fly.
Suddenly the strategy needed to change.
My strategy had to be to go a few steps at a time.
After 20 steps I would lean against something,
and the reward was a short rest to take in some of the little oxygen that was left.
As I got higher and higher, those 20-step segments
got closer and closer to being five-step segments.
Finally, there wasn't any mountain left to climb.
I was at the top, and that moment made all those questions,
questions based on uncertainty, turn into great certainty.
People wanted to sow doubts,
but being on that peak for me was a certainty.
And being the first Latin-American woman to climb a mountain over 8,000 metres,
and breaking that kind of barrier is so important for me.
That's when you say: 'Yes, it's possible.'
Being up there made me realise -
that all the mountains I was seeing,
and I translated all of the mountains I saw into climbing opportunities,
are just waiting for daring climbers.
Then I went off to Patagonia, the most southerly point in South America.
The altitude wasn't the difficult part;
it was the technical difficulty and, above all, the weather conditions.
Winds of over 100 km/h.
You can't put a tent up; it would be blown away by the wind.
Your strategy needs to change.
You can carve out a cave in the ice and stay there until the time is right.
That's how I gave myself a chance of getting to the Aguja Poincenot,
which no woman had ever climbed.
That was also very satisfying.
An experience I want to quickly share with you is my climb
of the world's highest mountain.
I didn't get to the summit on the first attempt. It took me three.
On the first one, I got to 8,750 metres,
98 metres from the summit.
You might wonder: 'Why didn't you keep going? You only had 98 metres left!'
I had early signs of brain swelling; if I'd continued, it would have worsened.
If it had worsened, I'd have died, and if I'd died,
I wouldn't be here to tell you all about it!
(Laughter)
In that moment I learned that I wanted to be a living story,
not a dead statistic: statistics are very simple.
With that in mind, I went back to the mountain 10 years later.
At that time I was a mother, so I had a great responsibility.
Starting back in my training days, I kept saying to myself: 'This time I'm winning.'
With that conviction, I went to the mountain,
and after two months away from my country,
I arrived at the world's highest summit.
(Applause)
What happens when mountains you haven't chosen come into your life?
One of these unchosen mountains came to my house,
and the route was the stairs between two floors.
I started climbing them but couldn't.
I had to rest my head on the handrail,
and unlike that experience I shared of my first 8,000-metre climb,
when I took some air and recuperated, this time I didn't recuperate.
It started with some intense palpitations that I couldn't control.
Eventually I reached the top, and then I fainted.
When I regained consciousness, I was met by my children's faces.
They were saying: 'Mum, what's happening to you? You used to climb mountains!'
My daughter said to me later: 'Mum, I'm scared. If you die, what about us?'
Right then I had to transform
both my children's fear and my own into positive actions.
I said to them: 'I'm going to die, just like everyone else but not now,
so let's go find the best doctor out there.'
They gave me a pacemaker and said: 'You'll be okay with this pacemaker.'
I was very happy, and I dropped my kids off at school like any other day.
Then I went out running as I'd often done after dropping them,
and I'd hardly been running two minutes when I felt my right arm go numb.
I started shaking it and said: 'What was my running posture?'
I live in a town where everything is close together.
I looked at my arm and thought: 'What's going on with my arm?'
I felt my hand start to stiffen,
everything started going white,
I began to lose my hearing,
and I was getting dizzy.
I was going to faint.
I looked for a place to recharge and not hurt myself.
While I was there, the right half of my body started to paralyse.
I thought: 'No, this can't be,' and something incredible happened.
My brain divided into two halves.
One half said to the other: 'Are you giving me a blood clot?'
I started feeling my face drooping,
and the other half said: 'Well, I already have, at least make yourself pretty.'
I yanked on my face, and I think that funny moment, that moment of opening,
made the veins in my brain open
and made the small coagulation I'd had go away,
and the ischemia too - that's its technical name.
Finally, one half of my brain said to the other:
'Hey, imagine what would have happened.' -
this was the victim side, right? -
'You and your kids would live by giving lectures.'
And the other half said:
'It didn't, so move forward, keep going, and let's get a move on.
Even if you have to drag yourself, you're doing it.'
And that's what I did.
Since then, I've had four strokes.
During one of them, feeling all my senses intensify was incredible.
When the doctor arrived and asked for my hand,
I felt every ridge of my fingertips on his skin.
My sense of smell was incredible.
I could hear from a distance the conversations people were having.
That was when I realised
that this was like a call for me to wake up.
It's an awakening in my life, and I'm aware of my condition.
I know it's there, but nevertheless, how do I want to live my life?
Suffering? Or with intensity, full of joy?
How to let go of the past? How to live the mountain of life?
Disconnecting from the past meant
putting an end to an image the press had taken upon themselves to create,
an image of a superwoman who could do anything with the will she had.
That mountain made me realise that I can do things,
but that I also want to open my heart.
I want to feel, I want to be vulnerable, I want to be pampered.
For me, living intensely means surrendering every single moment.
Waking up, being aware that I'm breathing, and then sharing that,
because then I feel like I'm being hugged,
and I feel loved, and I want to feel that forever -
sharing that love with the people around me.
So how do you want to live your life?
My dream is that all the climbers in life,
like you, dare to be a living story,
not a dead statistic.
I hope you all live day after day with passion, at your peak.
Thank you.
(Applause)