He titled his book The 20 Vedas, but he admits that there are a few more. “I didn't want to be heavy,” he joked. In his autobiography, climbing guide and rescuer Albert Segura (Cintminat, 1973) collects his thoughts after experiencing more than twenty situations in which his passion for mountains, adventure, motorcycles, and even cancer and lightning almost claimed his life. Add more by phone. “A few days ago, while I was climbing with a friend, the edge I was leaning on broke. I fell. I broke my shoulder blade and broke my thumb on the inside. Now I wear irons in my hands. It's time for me to climb. Get back to recovery,” he confirms his resignation.
His is a story of continuous overcoming. From getting up after a fall and falling again. “The last two years of my life have been chaotic,” the climber says. “And every month something happened.” At the time of the interview, Albert Segura was recovering after losing his 21st life in a 100-foot fall, but he broke more than 30 bones along the way.
However, his book is not a summary of incidents, but rather a lesson in resilience. “Basically, I think I'm lucky, because among other things, I've done more than 6,000 risky activities and I'm still here,” he says. He remembers discovering his passion “by accident.” It was a sudden crush. “I went to the mountains to go rafting with a friend. I worked in a shop painting sheet metal and cars, played football and a few other things. The adventure captivated me. In a week I had all the equipment and within a year more than 100 valleys had done it,” he admits. Soon after he started climbing.
“I knew I wanted to do this for the rest of my life and I changed my life. I left my partner, my job, everything,” he says. “Climbing, for me, is everything,” Segura adds. “I have traveled to remote places and climbed rocks that no one has ever been before.” “I don't consider myself a big risk taker, and I'm not looking to kill myself, but sometimes things happen, and if you do risky activities, you'll have more numbers that will happen to you,” the rescuer points out.
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Rock up
“Sometimes, there are simply things that are beyond your reach.” A month ago, while he was climbing a route he was preparing to do with a client, a huge rock fell on him. “I broke eight ribs, broke my shoulder bone, punctured my lung and crushed my windpipe,” he recalls. “It was very difficult, because I had just recovered from cancer and had been getting back into shape for months, so, again, they didn't even know if I could walk,” he says.
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