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that would be an empty existence. I’d just be here in Arco, climbing, and that would be it. Now I get to climb here, then go home to something even better.” The next day, Steve fancies a rest day from climbing but this doesn’t mean sitting around the hotel. It’s time for a six- hour via ferratta. “I can’t sit still,” he explains, as he clipped into the starting chains. As we clip and weave our way up the rusty iron cables, I ignore my growing feelings of vertigo and pick his brain about his relationship to climbing. “I think that everyone goes through three stages of climbing: environment, performance, then back to environment,” he said, unclipping from the cable to leap across a gap, much to the horror of a German group behind us. “The environment stage is nice and easy: you can’t fail, you’re just going for a nice day out. Then you start to push yourself, and real failure becomes possible. But, eventually, you’ll fi nd yourself back in the environment stage again, enjoying pottering about.


PHOTO: IAN BURTON.


PHOTO: ALEX MESSENGER.


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