Eric Escoffier

Éric Escoffier is a French mountaineer born on August 9, 1960 in L'Arbresle in France and died in the mountains, at Broad Peak, on July 29, 1998 in Pakistan. In 1984, he made a winter run on the north face of the Grandes Jorasses. In September 1987, he was the victim of a car accident in the Arly gorges in Haute-Savoie and became 35% hemiplegic on the left side. However, by dint of courage and re-education, he sets out again to attack the Himalayas. Escoffier was constantly inventing new challenges: lining up the summits, taking part in the Monaco rally, flying hang-gliding or paragliding, practicing free solo climbing... In 1985, among some of his many exploits, he succeeded in overcoming three eight thousand meters in the Himalayas, Gasherbrum 2 (8,035 meters) Hidden Peak (8,068 meters) and K2 (French premiere, 8,611 meters). Two years later, a terrible car accident stops him in his tracks... no matter, he rehabilitates, in front of a flabbergasted doctor who wonders if this guy who does everything at top speed will also recover faster than the others from his wounds. Even if other accidents retained: falls in paragliders, another in a crevasse at Mont Blanc. Escoffier advances, Escoffier unrolls, Escoffier wonders all the same if he is not missing something by going at that speed. "Touch everything, have fun with the mountain by launching insane challenges and also without preparing simplified", launches the commentator of the documentary a little provocative, who highlights this sentence of the mountaineer, who looks so much like him: " It is better to live a short time like a lion than 150 years like a sheep. Eric and his rope company Pascale Bessière disappeared while attempting the ascent of Broad Peak on July 29, 1998. A Polish mountaineer, Piotr Pustelnik, had seen them one last time on the summit ridge while a very strong wind was blowing. The day before, they had spent the night without bivouac equipment in a snow hole dug at 7,700 meters, under the pass which leads to the summit ramp. "Nothing is impossible", Eric Escoffier liked to repeat to anyone who wanted to hear it.