Archive for mountain guide
Rumpe Cuou, Sormiou, in an electricity ad
Posted in Mountains, pictures, Travel with tags advertising, big wall, CIRM, climbing, CO2, EDF, Electricité de France, electricity, greenwashing, Le Monde, Luminy, Marseille, massif des Calanques, mountain guide, Rumpe Cuou, Sormiou on July 15, 2025 by xi'an
Houcheanographerc almost making the local news!
Posted in Statistics with tags ambulance, ambulanza, Bormio, Chamonix High Mountain Gendarmerie Platoon, Chamonix-Mont-Blanc, crevasse, glacier, helicopter rescue, icefield, ISBA 2024, Les Houches, MCMSki, mountain guide, mountain rescue, news, Ocean, off-track skiing, PGHM, ski accident, Vallée Blanche, Venezia, Venice, weekend, workshop on March 9, 2025 by xi'an
climbing encounters
Posted in Mountains, pictures, Travel with tags 4⁺ route, Briançon, climbing, French Alps, Marseille, mountain guide, multipitch, Navy, Oisans, Orsay, ski brand, ski race, tuberculosis on August 28, 2020 by xi'an
A nice if easy climbing morn on Éperon de Bouchier (à ne pas confondre avec Crochet de Boucher!) a week ago with a local guide, François, who happened to be a formidable character (even conditioning on him being guide). He left school at 14 to become a car mechanic, join the French Navy at 16, caught tuberculosis on a Navy basis, was sent to the Alps for recovery, caught a fatal and definite mountain attraction while there, got training supported by the Navy for an higher mechanic degree, took qualification courses to become a French mountain guide, started being interested in learning techniques and abilities through his training ski schools, experimented new teaching methods with kids from the Marseille suburbs, eventually joined a Master in biomechanics and ergonomy at Orsay and ended up with a thesis on the topic, worked with French ski federation and a French ski brand, and is still guiding, training and researching despite having passed the retirement age! A wonderful chance encounter, with the facility of the route making chatting not an issue. (Except that some puritan ayatollah had recently removed most of the bolts, which did not make things harder in the end but exhibited an absurd degree of self-righteousness on a route that easy…)
And then an even more rewarding climb today with another local guide, Cathy, who gave me a great and profitable climbing lesson for over three hours, allowing me to reach a higher climbing level than I had previously achieved on an outside route. With a high degree of pedagogy and support. I ended up fairly tired, but exhilaratedly so!
insanity at its height
Posted in Mountains, pictures with tags bottleneck, climbing permit, death rate, death zone, Everest, Hillary's step, mountain guide, mountaineering, Nepal, summitting, tick a box on May 27, 2019 by xi'an
going on a bear [and a whale] hunt
Posted in Mountains, pictures, Travel with tags bear, black bear, Black Bear Kayaking, British Columbia, Canada, hypothermia, inlet, mountain guide, outdoor, Pacific North West, Pacific Ocean, sea kayak, Tofino, Van Isle, Vancouver Island on August 27, 2018 by xi'an
Among many and diverse outdoor activities during our vacations on Vancouver Island, a rather unique trip was to go kayaking near Tofino to try to watch black bears. In a group of three sea kayaks, at dusk, with a fantastic guide. Bears foraging for crabs on the shore at low tide are not unusual but, as it happened, we were quite lucky to spot five different bears over the two hours we paddle along the fjord, including a big one standing on its back legs to catch berries. From a few meters away, this was an incredible sight! [About the title: We’re going on a bear hunt is a classic of children books.]
We were less lucky when whaling out at sea, only spotting a blow on the trip, even though we spotted many seals and a few sea otters. The most exhilarating wildlife experience of the Van trip was however swimming with seals on the northern coast of the island, where on several days one or two seals came to check on me while I was swimming in the ocean in the early morning. (Managing to avoid cold shock and hypothermia by only staying less than 20 minutes in the 17⁰ water.)
