Born in 1936, Simone Badier passed away last March. She was one of the first women climbers to make a name for herself in the 1960s, in a very male-dominated alpine environment. Claude Gardien pays tribute to this fantastic climber who was ahead of her time.
In the spring of 1969, when I made my climbing debut on the limestones of my country, Burgundy, in France, my mentors told me about a woman who had climbed many difficult routes in the Vercors, the Chartreuse and the Dolomites. There weren’t many girls who tried such climbs, and above all, they rarely passed by… Simone Badier loved our cliffs, and I met her a year later, on the rocks of Fixin, an old “climbing school”, as we used to say, very close to the house, just above a beautiful winegrowing village.
She was a smiling young woman with a sparkling look