Adversity at Altitude

The wind and snow is whipping at my face. I’ve readjusted the stiff frozen fleece buff around my neck and mouth, desperately trying to protect myself from the -20º bitter wind. Adrenaline is still pumping through my body but I know I’ll start to get cold soon. As I strain my eyes a little, I can barely make out the outline of the cable car station about 200 meters away through the thick snow storm.

I am at 3,900 metres on the mountain. The weather set in quickly and it is the end of the ski day at Saas Fee in Switzerland. Precisely the time when most accidents in the mountains happen. The last cable car to the bottom of the mountain is in 10 minutes.

I trudge back up through the snow to the casualty. Through the thick grey, I see a small, crumpled figure being covered every second by the relentless heavy downfall. The child’s leg is broken. He is slipping into shock, growing pale, cold, and unconscious.

My mind is fogged for a moment as I think back on the unsettling comment from a skier that morning as I was getting out of the cable car. “I love this colour,” he said, while touching my cheek. “You’re the only one of you out here”.

I probably was. The whole year I’d been living and working in the French and Swiss Alps I’d seen one other black person out ski mountaineering. It was a hilarious moment in itself: me trudging uphill and him whizzing downhill, both of us waving frantically at each other, clearly ecstatic to see one another. This moment in the cable car, when I was petted like an exotic beast, felt patronising and threw me off kilter, stealing my confidence.

My teammate, Ed, has marked the incident area with upright skis. The injured boy is just 13 years-old. He’d failed to spot a small hump of snow in the whiteout and fallen awkwardly whilst skiing, twisting his leg.

Having called SOS for a helicopter or a sled to rescue the child, we are now waiting for them to arrive. That was 25 minutes ago.

The terrifying thought of this child freezing to death crosses my mind as I plan what to do next. I wonder if I’m cut out for this. Maybe there’s a reason why there aren’t more black and minority ethnic women working in environments like this. I tighten my hood around my ski goggles and try to quieten my mind. I think about all the reasons that qualify me to be more than capable in this environment, and give myself a mental slap around my face.

The terrifying thought of this child freezing to death crosses my mind as I plan what to do next. I wonder if I’m cut out for this.

I am a nurse, trained in emergency and mountain medicine. In my seasonal job, I help run ski programmes in the Alps for international schoolchildren. I take groups out in the mountains, instructing them along the way. I’m responsible for their wellbeing back at the communal chalet, and I run a clinic in the mornings and evenings ensuring the children are healthy and well. I also manage any minor injuries and liaise with the local doctor or worried parents back home. And so when anyone is injured on the mountain, I am often first on scene.

And whilst the Alps are my favourite place in the world, the mountains can also be terrifying when bad weather sets in. Get complacent out here, and it can kill you. But it’s rare that I experience complacency out here.

That’s because, as a woman who is mixed race, I have found many barriers to overcome to truly feel a sense of belonging to a particular country or place. This is sometimes heightened when I’m in the outdoor industry and environments. The mountaineering scene is very white male dominated. Even more so within the mountain medicine scene. These spaces can be tough and competitive, and even sometimes misogynistic.

Not everyone can be welcoming or accepting. I’ve had unkind looks and comments about my skin tone. I’ve had people marvel at seeing a person with ‘Afro’ hair on the ski slopes, or at the climbing crag. Some even think it’s alright to try and touch my face or hair without asking.

Thanks to my upbringing, I am a resilient person. Born of a black South African father and a white British mother, all my family that I know of, except me, are white. Growing up in close proximity to the Peak District, my mum would always take me walking on the moors, or bivvying in secret valleys as a child. We would forage for bilberries on warm summer evenings and wild swim in quiet plunge pools.

So I grew up happy and confident in the outdoors. My gender or race wasn’t ever an issue when I was out in nature with my mum. Mum’s resourcefulness and passion in wild spaces is something I would eventually inherit.

But it took a long time. As I grew older I stopped enjoying being outdoors, I felt disconnected with the environment. Hill walking became boring, it lacked people my age and culture. I got into a trap of working long hours and partying long nights. I was not living a life that made me feel alive.

In the last few years, I rediscovered the majesty of the outdoors. Ironically, it was when I was living in a big city when I began climbing. In the inner city bouldering gyms, I developed a taste for bigger adventures and, spending every penny I earned from my wage as an emergency nurse, began travelling to the Alps and finding new opportunities. I learnt how to be playful in nature once again. Within a year I’d learnt to climb huge rock faces, and to ski. I even gained an instructor qualification. It was time to develop myself in the mountain medicine field.

There are many challenges of working autonomously in a mountain environment when first on scene, such as having to make a call on the best course of action and being confident in my own decision-making process. In these instances I have to throw aside any issues with confidence concerning gender and race.