When you ask snowboarder Thomas Delfino what he remembers most vividly about the Chronoception trip, he doesn’t talk about the endless days of trekking gear to base camp. Or the hours spent freeing the expedition truck when it sank past its wheels in mud. Or the weeks languishing in tents, hoping the weather would break. What he recalls is his descent from Night Butterfly. The exhilaration. The fear. The beauty. The joy. A sliver of time in an expedition that lasted weeks and was years in the making.
Chronoception follows Delfino, snowboarder Léa Klaue, and skier Aurélien Lardy as they travel to the Tian Shan mountains on the border of Kyrgyzstan and China in search of adventure and epic first descents.
The film’s director, Guillaume Broust, says the way in which experience shapes our perception of time informed his approach to Chronoception from the beginning. “Time can speed up or slow down. Everyone can understand this because everyone experiences it.“
The team’s descent from the 5,056-metre Night Butterfly was the crux of the expedition.
“This was a different kind of riding, a different kind of snowboarding,” says Delfino. “Because it is a big mountain with a lot more objective danger. A lot of seracs and steep slopes where if you fall, you are dead. So, you need to be fully focused.”
“For the Night Butterfly descent, we were not sure about the weather,” he adds. “There was a thunderstorm coming. But it was like the shaman was with us. The weather cleared, and we dropped, and it was so beautiful— not only being at the top but jumping in from the little pass with perfect conditions. It is the most intense memory I have.”
The idea for that descent began with a map. “I love looking at maps,” Delfino says. “When I looked at this area, I could see there were fat glaciers and steep mountains — exactly the kind of terrain I was looking for. The perfect spot to launch an expedition. But it is very hard to access!” The remoteness of the area – 6,000 km from their homes in France, the rough terrain, and the lack of roads meant the team spent weeks just getting to the foot of the mountains.
“Thomas had looked at these lines years ago on Google Earth, and anticipation makes something very desirable,” Broust points out. “If this line was in your backyard and you can do it when you want, it doesn’t have this impact. The fact that you wait for so long makes it memorable.”
Like Delfino, Broust’s most vivid memory is the team’s Night Butterfly descent. “I wasn’t on the mountain with the guys. The film crew were down below. The storm was very intense when they were at the top. We felt a lot of pressure. When they all arrived, it was a huge relief because everybody was safe. When the crazy sunset lit the peaks at the end, we said OK — we did it! We were all cheering — it was a very special moment.
“And time slowed down.”
Watch Chronoception as part of the 2023 Banff Centre Mountain Film and Book Festival.
Author: Debra Hornsby
