“I still have a passion for records”

You have set records in the high mountains. So much so that you were nicknamed “ the Everest sprinter ». Do challenges still mean as much to you?

Even though I’m my age, I’m still addicted! Four years ago, I even suffered a ruptured aneurysm, but it didn’t dampen my motivation. This nickname of sprinter was given to me by a newspaper. I was 37 years old, I had just climbed Everest in less than twenty-four hours, without oxygen, an unprecedented feat. The same year I reached four more peaks over 8,000 meters, again without oxygen. Of course, at the time, a competitive spirit drove me, like all athletes!

But above all I wanted to prove to myself that I was capable of tackling the mountain. The media followed me frenziedly and I didn’t take it very well. At the age of 43, I even stopped mountaineering for almost twenty years. I was experiencing a great upheaval in my life, because I finally accepted my homosexuality. It took me a while to rediscover who I was, before coming back to the mountains.

Has the experience made you more cautious?

I understood that sometimes it was more glorious to give up on reaching a peak. When I returned to mountaineering in 2017, I began a series of major climbs around the world. I was training because I had a new dream in mind. I wanted to become the first man to climb Everest without oxygen at the age of 70.

But in 2021, I went on an expedition to the Himalayas with Pasang, my Sherpa friend, and something clicked. We had to pass through a very unstable icefall, and we crossed paths with a climber who was coming back down. He had just avoided an avalanche and almost lost his life. I told Pasang that we had to turn back because this path was too dangerous. He cried with relief! Now, I still have the record bug in the back of my mind. But it’s no longer a priority, and I don’t want to live under pressure.

What is it like to climb the roofs of the world?

I am a fairly nervous, restless person, I sometimes have a bad temper (laughs)! The mountain is an escape for me, a way of channeling myself. When I climb the rocks, I feel a great calm, because I am in symbiosis with nature. Expeditions are tiring, and you have to get up in the middle of the night to reach the peaks in good weather conditions. But when I arrive at the summit of Mont Blanc, for example, and witness the sunrise over the Alps, I tell myself that all these efforts have paid off.

Of course, my kids worry sometimes. In 1992, I was preparing to open a route to the summit of Grandes Jorasses, in the Alps, in the middle of winter and alone. My 13-year-old son asked me, “Aren’t you going to die if you leave now?” » I told him that the mountains were my passion and that if I abandoned it, I would become hell.

Does this fascination come from childhood?

As a kid, I knew nothing about mountains or climbing. My modest family lived as peasants in Lot-et-Garonne. I was a very uncomfortable, fragile teenager until the day my mother sent me to apprentice at a wood school in the Pyrenees. I discovered the mountains and the great outdoors there.

My teachers saw that I had an above-average physical condition. I was fast, endurance and agile, interesting qualities for climbing at high altitude. So I stopped my training to take the mountain guide competition in the 1970s. Little by little, I also gave conferences. I went to schools, businesses and told my story.

Your new expedition to Everest, in the Himalayan range, is planned for April 2025. How will it go?

It will be a climb like no other! I will inaugurate a new route to the highest mountain in the world (8,849 meters above sea level, Editor’s note) with a team mainly made up of women, including my daughter, Cathy. The emotion will be intense, because female expeditions are rare in mountaineering.

And then, I have been preparing this new route for three years*, with a group of rope climbers and mountain enthusiasts. We named it the “Sundaré way”, in homage to a great Himalayan guide. It provides access to Everest via Nuptse, the closest mountain. The objective? Bypass what is called the “normal route”, the route leading to Everest and which terrifies the greatest mountaineers.

Why is the route to Everest so dangerous today?

The normal route is very difficult and many people take it without sufficient preparation. To reach the summit, mountaineers must cross an ice waterfall, at an altitude of 5,000 meters, and they sometimes find themselves in traffic jams in the middle of the mountain!

This landscape made of crevasses that we must cross with ladders, we must imagine it as an ice cube tray, with ants moving on the ice. As soon as the tray moves, the blocks collide and the ants can be crushed within a minute.

The Everest glacier is moving one meter every day and global warming is accentuating this phenomenon. So, sometimes seracs break loose and avalanches carry away everything in their path. In 2014, eleven guides died suddenly on this icefall.

So will your new path be safer?

I sure hope so! My team has consolidated it over the years with iron bars sealed to the rocks and fixed ropes, like via ferrata (equipped with specific metal elements, Editor’s note).

In the Himalayas, this type of installation is rare. They are mostly found in the Alps and many mountaineers do not view them favorably. For these purists, there should be nothing between the mountain and man, except crampons and ice axes.

I have a different vision because I think we need to make the mountains more accessible to less adventurous audiences. I also want to advance the issue of security. We don’t go on an expedition to die!

However, performance and a taste for risk are part of mountaineering…

It’s true, but I have worked as a mountain guide since the 1970s, which gives me a feeling of responsibility. When you take clients on expeditions, you have to learn to balance risk. It’s not the mountain that kills. Sometimes the weather proves unpredictable at high altitudes and leads to fatal accidents. But most often, the accident results from lack of vigilance and technical errors.

The mountaineering world is too elitist and this atmosphere creates an unhealthy form of competition. We must always go faster, always further, always higher! I find this striking at the National Ski and Mountaineering School (Ensa); it pushes young people to the cult of performance, but it is not reasonable.

What values ​​do you want to transmit to those who discover the mountains?

I want to show them that it is not reserved for a handful of rich and ultra-sporty types. Last year, a young man, Inoxtag, caused a sensation by filming his ascent of Everest (in a documentary available on the YouTube platform, Editor’s note). He prepared in a very professional manner, and addressed the problems that this massif suffers from: pollution, overtourism… But he left with high-end equipment, around ten sherpas and oxygen bottles. All of this is very expensive, I find it a shame to rely on money to climb a mountain. You have to experience the ascent in all its difficulty, without artifice, even at an altitude of 8,000 meters! I remain convinced that the mountain remains accessible to everyone, provided they tame it. As a child, she saved me, and she can save anyone who feels misunderstood.

* The Mountain and Humanism association, which Marc Batard founded, is responsible for raising funds for this challenge. Donations are possible on helloasso.com: the project is named there “ Alternative Everest ».