Gil Bodin

Gil Bodin (real name Gilles Bodin) is one of those mountain dwellers whose eloquence brings us back to the epics of the 1960s. Originally from Indre-et-Loire, it was during his adolescence in Paris that Gil Bodin discovered the joys from the vertical, awake on the blocks of Fontainebleau. A classic "Bleausard" adventurer's route which was to lead him with his brother, Patrice, to the Chamonix valley where he will pass his guide diploma to live from his passion at the foot of Mont Blanc. In 1966, he was part of the band of snipers who, in front of the guides of Chamonix, the soldiers of the EMHM and the teachers of the national school of ski and mountaineering, succeeded in extirpating these two German prisoners of the Drus in their narrow bends. With Gary Hemming, François Guillot, Lothar Mauch, René Desmaison and others, Bodin had ignored institutions to bring the two castaways back to life. The happy epilogue against a background of controversy was to contribute to the evolution of rescue in the Mont-Blanc massif. In 1968, he was at the foot of the Shroud in the Grandes Jorasses, with Desmaison and Flematti, when the latter made his first winter broadcast live on RTL. A great guide with gypsy blood boiling in his veins, Bodin was the first to take a client to climb the terrible Nose in the 900m wall of El Capitan in Yosemite (USA). Basically, he had the look and the free spirit of Californian climbers. A form of independence that led him to create the independent society at the end of the 1970s, breaking the monopoly of the venerable Chamonix society, with statutes dating from 1821. Today the international association of Mont-Blanc guides, rue des Moulins, has in turn become an institution. This love of the summits, he had passed on to one of his three sons, Kim, who had become a guide like him, when Grégory, a computer scientist, and Titouan, an actor, had opened up other professional paths to him of which he was proud. Also a four-time grandfather, his children were the other passion that occupied and thrilled his heart. He died on October 7, 2019 in Lyon, at the age of 80, from cancer. A family ceremony bringing together his friends took place the following Saturday at the Maison de la Montagne in Chamonix.