We know absolutely nothing about survival, but with this kind of person, we have the impression that we could go to the end of the world tomorrow. And too bad for these stories of scorpion stings and respiratory stops, we will pretend not to have heard. Loury Lag, a 35-year-old Frenchman, is what we call an extreme explorer. It has been six years now that he made it his profession, after selling his box of building green houses.
Since then, his record has been impressive. In particular, in 2018, he became the first man to cross Vatnajökull, one of the largest glaciers in Europe located in Iceland, in total autonomy and without assistance in 12 days. From Friday, he tackles another great first, in a different genre but with adventure still at the heart of the project: running the Marathon des Sables barefoot.
“Being barefoot develops my immune system”
It is true that this race of 250 kilometers divided into seven stages in the Moroccan Sahara, without any external assistance, was not hard enough like that. You might as well add a little additional difficulty. But why ? “Being barefoot is a feeling that I really like,” replies Loury. It’s a lifestyle that suits me, at home [à Biarritz] I live like that. It denotes my freedom, I guess, and then it has great benefits for me. It builds up my immune system, which is important for my expeditions. “
This is the first time that a competitor has tackled this legendary race in these conditions. That’s why he does it, by the way. “What interests me is making a difference, making an impression,” he admits. The leitmotif of his adventures. In reality, this is only a training for what will follow, a way of not losing control while waiting for the Covid-19 pandemic to settle down and for it to start again. Last year, she forced him to crash home while he and a friend attacked the ascent of Denali, Alaska, via the Northwest Passage. The second stage of his great Icarus project, which consists of climbing the highest peak of the seven continents (the famous “seven summits”) and connecting them without motorization.
He receives advice from Mathieu Blanchard, third in the last UTMB
“It had to be digested. When you have prepared an expedition that has been going on for 18 months and you are repatriated after 15 days, it’s complicated, he says. But it’s part of life. I redirected my work philosophy, I signed up for races, while remaining in my dynamic adventure. »Go for the Marathon des Sables, which he will discover a little more than a month after having finished the MCC of the Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc (40 km and 2,300 m of elevation gain) in 88th place out of 1000. Not bad for someone who is not a trail runner.
To prepare, Loury was however able to count on the advice of a master in the field, Mathieu Blanchard, one of the very best ultra-trail runners in the world, 3rd in this last UTMB. The two men met last April. The agreement was immediate, and they organized training sessions. “The trail cannot be improvised, it’s very technical. I learned a lot with him, ”notes Loury.
A taste for risk and family life
“He is very strong mentally, determined, he shows a lot of rigor in the preparation and the realization of his adventures, analysis for his part Mathieu. We have a lot of similarities in our personalities. His will is immense, and this challenge in the Sahara desert will be for him just a step in the journey of achieving much greater adventures. “
Indeed, this is a preparation for a new expedition scheduled for 2023-2024, with many sub-Saharan biotopes on the program. Next year, he will also take his two daughters, aged 5 and 6, through a desert. One way to make them discover what his life is like, because you cannot leave regularly for several months in a row without consequences for your family.
“It’s very hard to reconcile,” he conceives. A lot of things have happened to me, times when I almost died. I wanted to give them a satellite call, but they didn’t pick up. As they grow older, it makes more and more sense to them. I tell them what I’m going through, the animals I meet. I know the values I want to convey to them. It’s a choice, another way to get involved, but when I’m with them, I am 100%. “
“A real hell” lived in the Grand Canyon
Loury Lag is well aware of playing with fire. Self-taught in survival, 1,000 things have happened to him, not all of them relatable, since his first expedition to the United States at 17, where he left to flee a family home in which he could not find his place. We will relate one, anyway, this time when he was stung by a scorpion in the Grand Canyon. He almost spent there, taking 36 hours to get out of there due to paralysis of the limbs. “A real hell”, he sums up. On this notion of fear, which is all the same the first thing that comes to mind when we discover his adventures, he develops:
I am not an example to follow. I have been very lucky in my life, but I need some thrills, sometimes in a brutal way, to learn. I see it as a kind of “masterclass”, and the only way to do it is to go. This is how I led my first expeditions. I am afraid to die but I am not afraid to face death, the nuance is important. I have a well defined concept of time, I like to enjoy life as long as I can. I took a lot of risks. Afterwards, I am a resourceful person. And survival becomes easier as soon as you know a little about it. “
If the experience tempts you, know that the “Mike Horn of the Basque Country” also organizes survival courses or discovery of polar and tropical environments for the general public. Just after the Marathon des Sables, for example, he left for Guyana to guide 10 people in the Amazon rainforest. Thrills guaranteed, but in a well-marked setting, rest assured. Small prerequisite, all the same: “Better not to be afraid of ants”, he says, laughing. We understood the idea.