They climbed for what felt like hours. Perhaps days. Time loses its shape in a whiteout.
Jacques Palais / On Demand pages * BigHorn Oldies. 1 year ago. * Jacques Palais presents BIG HORN. 6 years ago. jacques palais's favorites | Flickr jacques palais big horn
He lowered the gun. He smiled.
It was dawn on a cirque lake so still the water looked like hammered lead. The ram stood on a pedestal of granite, thirty yards above him. Its body was the color of old pewter, scarred and massive. But the horns— mon Dieu , the horns—they spiraled past its jaw, past its shoulders, curling into almost two full revolutions. Each tip was blunted, like the end of a caveman’s club. Jacques later wrote in his surviving journal (the only artifact to be recovered): “It wore its age on its head like a crown. I wept. Not from joy. From the terrible weight of seeing something that should not exist.” They climbed for what felt like hours
: A test of strength where competitors must wrestle a steer to the ground. Cultural Significance: The Big Horn Rodeo Jacques Palais / On Demand pages * BigHorn Oldies
The beast did not run. It walked—slowly, deliberately—up a chute of broken shale that Jacques would have sworn was a sheer cliff. He climbed after it, using his numb fingers as claws. The snow erased the world. There was only the dark shape of the ram, a moving shadow against the white, and the sound of its hooves clicking like dice on stone.
In 2022, a particularly fine example of the 180mm Jacques Palais Big Horn with an original dark chocolate patina sold for €24,000 ($26,000) at a Fontainebleau auction. Investors view Palais as an "undiscovered" master relative to Barye or Bugatti; his prices are rising at roughly 12% annually.