His mystical journey on the stacks of the world

A vaporous mist hides the high cliffs and the shaved grass. The Etretat needle (Seine-Maritime) is before us, invisible citadel. Jumped on the downstream cliff facing him, we do not perceive his silhouette, the sea, nor the heavens. Nothing. We are in the clouds and no longer know if there is a top and a bottom. “The spectra of the surrounding cemeteries visit us,” exclaims Sylvain Tesson, seized by the Shakespearean atmosphere of the decor.

In his new book, the writer pays tribute to his father, Philippe (1) (1928-2023), who venerated the theater and hated vacuum. He, Sylvain, cannot help climbing everything that gets lost, alpine peaks, roofs of Paris or Notre-Dame.

We remember that one day, he fell, bordering on death before undergoing a thousand operations and rehabilitation. It is there, today, the body riddled with plates and screws but still standing, on a rocky ridge of the Côte d’Albâtre.

Surrounded by his loved ones, he pays tribute to the faithful friends, and first at the end Roseau who walks in front of us in Panther, the climber Daniel du Lac, former world climbing champion: “He has experience, intellect and animal side: he thinks as a strategic and acts in primitive. He took me where nobody could take me. »»

Where it all starts: Étretat, cradle of Tesson’s climbs

“It is on the Etretat needle that this project of ascension of stack Around the world, continues the writer camped in the mist. Five years ago, lake and I climb up up there (2), our first stack.

” A stack, It is an erosion pillar of hill -off, but in French it is less poetic! I see there the concentration of everything I like, launches the adventurer: the risk, a certain form of insolence, a fanciful game, a reverence to the beauty of a changing and extravagant place, and then the symbol of separation: the cliff which departs, and this candlestick, this magic distaff that stays there, while the coast decreases. Finally, faithful to the Arsène Lupine of Maurice Leblanc and his Hollow needle, Civil disobedience and gaiety, premiums! »»

The adventurer writer had already surveyed the shredded coasts of Celtic Europe and contemplated these “pillars of the sea” (read With the fairies, Ed. Ecuadors). In 2020, after this first ascent, in a confined and anxious era, an entirely mapped world where it seems that nothing remains to be discovered, a somewhat crazy idea germinated in the head of the climber poet: to take a tour of the world of needles to gain lightness …

The moment of grace: the Etretat needle revealed

“She’s here, she’s there!” We do not know who gives the alert, but the veil has torn; The massive needle is essential. The time of a photo, then it’s the descent. “The tide is low, we go through the hole to man, and go at the base of stack, To pay tribute to him. Quick, Sylvain alert, we go. »»

But what are these stack Represent Sylvain for you, in fact? Welcome? The last of the Mohicans? “Geologically, the stack stands out in a reef of the plateau by the power of the waves, which over time dig a arch, he explains in the cry of seagulls. Then the deck collapses. The continental mass, which for me symbolizes the community, the mass diluted in consumption, technique and statistics, retreats; THE stack Stay alone. Who could we compare it? He is not a fighter who withdrew to better prepare the attack, like De Gaulle or Hugo. It’s a dandy! But not frail like Proust, or a hedonist who would go for jet ski in Phuket … Rather a rebellious, lonely dandy, a hermit. His motto could be “not undergoing, do not harm”, or, to use the words of the poet Walt Whitman: “I have nothing to do with this system, not even enough to oppose it.” Poetically, it is also Jacques Brel, Baudelaire or Mallarmé. »»

We reach the Platière, these washed rocks and covered with algae that lead to the needle. Tesson and the lake are rushing into a tunnel dug under the cave – twenty seconds in the dark – and go out, slipping on the pebbles. In the blink of an eye, they are in a jersey. Back bag, climbing slippers on the feet, they cross the water. We don’t believe it, but yes, they will do it! Before our amazed eyes, here they are climbing, a few meters – fortunately no more – on the Etretat needle, the time of a greeting at stack and a photo shoot.

106 stacks for a vertical world tour

“Today, we stayed in the dark gray area, at the base, where the rock is washed by the sea; Here it goes, but higher, the limestone is rotten, it is a chalk card castle, blows Sylvain by dressed. “Pitons sink like butter, adds the lake, you have to climb quickly!” But the worst part is the shale of Scottish peaks. »»

From Great Britain to the Marquesas Islands, the world tour was done by geographic areas, for 106 small stack With friends. With each time its share of adventures. Walk in peat bogs with inflatable canoe, supplies and climbing equipment on the back; Navigation at night, day. Then climbing.

One in two, they are the first. Sometimes they were preceded by egg hunters … with them, always, photographer Thomas Goisque, who damaged the two knees, and reported sublime shots. At the top of each stack, Two men savor in the wind. Of the lake makes with his arms the V of victory. Tesson turns his palms towards the ground in homage to the rock. It’s about giving thanks.

Breathtaking images: the art of capturing the adventure

In the evening, surrounded by his friends, on the small scene of an old barn bought by his parents and transformed into theater, Sylvain Tesson holds a conference, emphatic, in front of breathtaking photographic panels: the Chair of the Philippines, the stack Orcades in Scotland, that of Cape Horn.

He concluded with a thunderous: “We have the stack In order not to perish continental sadness, literature and poetry so as not to perish boredom, Nietzsche so as not to perish others, and Shakespeare so as not to perish ourselves! If he climbs, he admits, it is because he does not know how to pray. For him, the world is a theater, and climbing a mystical liturgy.

1. Founder of the Paris daily newspaper, Philippe Tesson wrote dramatic criticisms for different newspapers for more than fifty years. They are gathered in anthology A freedom in freedom, Ed. The theater forefront.
2. Recall that it is forbidden to walk at the foot of the cliffs of Étretat, to access the rocky spurs, the cave and the tunnel of the hole to the man.