The name of Sophie Lavaud is now written in large letters in the books of French mountaineering. At 55, she indeed became on Monday the first Frenchwoman, women and men alike, to have climbed the fourteen summits of more than 8,000 meters on the planet.
“The more I climb these big mountains, the more I realize that we are nothing in the face of the immensity of the Himalayas”, she explained a few days before embarking on the ascent of Nanga Parbat, summit located in Pakistan rising to 8,126 meters above sea level.
Heavy snowfall and squalls
After twelve hours of extreme mountaineering, in difficult conditions marked by heavy snowfall and squalls, the climber realized her dream, a project started more than 10 years ago, making history at the same time. of the Himalayas.
“The entire team of our expedition managed to climb Mount Nanga Parbat”, said early Monday morning, the operator Chhang Dawa Sherpa, in charge of the ascent, on social networks. A few hours later, Sophie Lavaud’s entourage confirmed that the group was safe and sound and had stopped at Nanga Parbat camp 3, at 6,750 meters above sea level, to spend the night before returning to camp on Tuesday. basic.
The expedition, made up of twenty experienced mountaineers, including the famous Norwegian mountaineer Kristin Harila, who seeks to climb the 14 highest peaks on the planet (over 8,000 m) in less than six months, has achieved its goal. at 9:15 a.m.
Sophie Lavaud, also Swiss and Canadian, discovered the mountains while growing up in Argentière in Haute-Savoie. But her project began to take shape in her mind in 2012, when she reached her first “8,000”, the Cho Oyu, a Tibetan peak. “In 2015, I resigned from my last job (she ran an event company) to take the plunge and devote myself fully to this objective (…) I like the adventure that is part of each expedition, I I like the countries, the villages that we cross, the meetings, the life on the base camps”, she had detailed.
The Italian Reinhold Messner, first to pass the “8,000”
About 40 men and women worldwide have climbed the fourteen Himalayan giants, according to the online database The Himalayan Database. Italian mountaineer Reinhold Messner, in 1986, was the first to do so.
In the 1990s, several French mountaineers attempted to achieve this. Parisian Chantal Mauduit had reached six, without oxygen and in alpine style, between 1992 and 1997, but lost her life a year later at 34, attacking Dhaulagiri in Nepal. Just like Gapençais Jean-Christophe Lafaille, who died in 2006, while tackling the first solo winter ascent of Makalu, his twelfth “8,000”.