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Hello! My name is Gilian Puchois, I was born in France in 1998 on the French Riveria in a town called Cannes. My father is from northern France and my mother is from the Netherlands, making me Half Dutch and half French. However, my family is pretty much the only thing European about me, as we moved to Montreal, Quebec in 2001.
Growing up I was not the academical one of my family, I was way more a hands-on kind of guy, that liked to go out and explore and figure out how every mechanical or electronic little thing worked. (At 3 years old I was trying to start my father chain saw).
I was lucky to be able to go 2 hours north of Montreal every weekend, in a small town called St-Donat (Inhabited Natural Park). During the summer, I could water ski, mountain bike and hike. During the winters, I was part of an alpine ski race club called, Mt Garceau Race Team. After an ACL and meniscus injury took me out for a complete season, I wanted to stay in the ski racing community, but as I started competing again, races started to be further and more expensive in the under 18 division. I then decided to get my certifications and start coaching the u10 and u12 division of my club for 3 years.
At 17-year-old I started technical studies in Industrial Electronics, but two years into the program I realized the kind of life that I was going to have while working in industries. Not wanting to work inside and in cities I decided to quit my studies to become a dog sledding guide and start ski touring in the mountains around me. I then had the opportunity to work for Club-Med in Mexico as a water ski instructor GO. These past two jobs made me realized how much I liked to have contact and build relations with the clientele I meet while doing these awesome jobs. So much so, that the clients with whom I went dog sledding came for vacation at Club-Med and the clients I met in Mexico would come and dog sled with me in Quebec.
Now wanting to pursue a career in the tourism industry, I came across the TRU Adventure Studies program, which fit perfectly for what I wanted to do. Havin done a year of the Adventure Certificate and then started working as rafting guide in Clearwater, it then started to turn south when my pre-existing knee injury came back to haunt me. Not knowing how serious and recurrent the injury was I backed out of the Adventure program and joined the BTM.
A notable sporty and adventurous event that happened to me at the start of my climbing career.
We just received our brand-new traditional gear while visiting my friend in Mt Robson and wanted to go test it out in Jasper. We decided to go do B-Major, a 7 pitch 5.9 trad route just by Hinton. The drive there was more complicated then expected, we had to pass through private land outside of the park and pass through a muddy road to get back in the park on the other side of the Athabascan River. After a 45-minute walk on the train tracks we finally reached the first pitch of our climb. With lots of loose rocks, trouble placing gear, long pitches, new shoes giving me pain and the loud train passing by making it hard to communicate with one another, we’ve finally made it to the top before the sunset after 8 hours of climbing. Thinking that our adventure was almost over, we hiked down the mountain on what was supposed to be a 30-minute scramble down to the train tracks. Unfortunately, we got off track and ended up in a pitch-dark canyon, where we had to rappel several times around trees, climb along the stream and swim across a pool. What was supposed to be a 30-minute scramble down a mountain turned into a 3-hour canyoning trip in the dark. This adventure turned out to be an 18-hour long day including the driving back to Mt Robson.
“You cannot stay at the summit forever; you have to come down again. So why bother? What is above knows what is below, but what is below does not know what is above. One climbs, one sees, one descends; one sees no longer. But one has seen ” Rene Doumal