Farewell Guillaume Pierrel

Farewell Guillaume Pierrel

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Guillaume Pierrel has died in the mountains. Writing those words feels almost impossible. Guillaume was a friend. He was swept away by an avalanche in Pakistan. He was a mountain guide, skier, climber, and filmmaker. In just a few years, he had become one of the most remarkable figures in steep skiing. But listing his achievements, however impressive, does not truly convey who he was. Behind his...

Farewell Andy

Farewell Andy

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I remember Andy Lewis perched on a ledge of the Jonte cliffs in the south of France, back when highlining had ceased to be just a climbers’ pastime and had become a world of its own. It was the mid-2010s, a time when the world wasn’t doing so badly: the two war criminals, Putin and Netanyahu, were already there, but a certain Barack Obama was keeping them in check. In Millau, France, a historic...

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Farewell Andy

I remember Andy Lewis perched on a ledge of the Jonte cliffs in the south of France, back when highlining had ceased to be just a climbers’ pastime and had become a world of its own. It was the mid-2010s, a time when the world wasn’t doing so badly: the two war criminals, Putin and Netanyahu, were already there, but a certain Barack Obama was keeping them in check. In Millau, France, a historic...
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Alone to the North Pole: 40 Years Since Jean-Louis Étienne’s Historic Feat

Forty years ago, on May 11, 1986, Jean-Louis Étienne reached the geographic North Pole alone, after 63 days of walking and more than a thousand kilometers across the pack ice. Hauling his sled, pushing forward no matter what, through pressure ridges shaped by the wind, extreme cold — minus 52 degrees Celsius! — and the drift of the frozen Arctic Ocean. And then, at the end of this “inner pole” —...
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Ice as resistance to the modern world

It’s not a scoop,  but it jumped out at me during this immersion in a place that has nothing to offer but its ice. No trails, no view that carries, no wall that climbs. No game, no crystals. Not a moped, not a bistro. Nothing but ice. And avalanches over it when the conditions are not suitable, 99% of the time.  Nothing slams, nothing shines. It’s a modest ice but one that must be...
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Cow-boy Ben

Could it be a lonely cowboy lost in his scotch behind the bar of a Chamonix saloon? Or perhaps an adrenaline junkie having a bad trip? A high-level athlete in the middle of a descent? From Mont Blanc, of course. For a few more seconds. Too many. Or could it be the relentless gaze of the mountaineer, and more recently ridge climber, on the Matterhorn, the Eiger, and the Grandes Jorasses? Read...
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Everest in 5 days, including xenon gas and testosterone

Everest has fallen. It was literally taken over by four soldiers dressed in black, in their attempt at speed ascent: Garth Miller, Alastair Carns, Anthony Stazicker, and Kev Godlington. In the race for Everest and novelty, Lukas Furtenbach has set the bar very high. A few weeks ago, we told you how the Austrian guide planned to take four clients to the summit of Everest (8848 m) in seven days,...
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Avalanches: thank you for staying out of trouble

It’s a sensitive subject. For the victims above all: mourning a death in an avalanche is simply unbearable. The death of a 14-year-old teenager in Les Arcs on 25 December, that of Swiss snowboarder Sophie Rédiger two days earlier, and the more recent death of an off-piste skier at La Norma, all made headlines in the general press. It’s as if the contrast with the almost obligatory...
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Painting the mountains, full movie

by | 5 Mar 2025

The Patagonian mountains attract the best climbers, but more rarely skiers, and for good reason: the tawny granite spires that streak across the skies of El Chalten are big walls where there is...