About halfway along the Clarée (the local river that gives our valley its name), an asphalt road turns right into the mountains, winding up to the Col d’Echelle through a pine forest with fresh needles (it's spring). Between mid-high mountains lies an open meadow, where you'd want to leap out of the car armed with a checkered blanket and a wicker basket to have an impromptu picnic. The route then crosses into Italy, or well, not quite, but a somewhat dark, steep descent overlooks the valley of Bardonecchia, with narrow tunnels and crumbling mountainside, border police hidden behind sharp bends.

Here in Briançon, you occasionally see a child climbing up an overhanging wall. Young talents, not yet in puberty, with lean bodies that seem to consist only of the necessary mechanics. Not an ounce more.

They often say: she/he doesn’t have any weight (yet) to hoist up. And I end up thinking the same, but not without a bit of pain in my heart. I can’t deny that there’s an ideal weight-to-strength ratio for an ambitious climber’s body compared to other weight-to-strength ratios.

Dynamic belaying. That sounds like a very exciting topic.

That's why I want to talk about it at length and in detail. Because nothing in climbing is as nice as a belayer who belays dynamically; then you end up in a bed full of soft clouds as a reward for facing the fierce physical and mental challenge above the bolt.

A static belayer on your lifeline feels, by comparison, like bouldering without a mat. You'd rather not fall. While lead climbing is already (fantastic but) a bit scary for many of us, a static belayer can be deadly for any ounce of fun above the bolt.