Faces Nord (1987)

On March 12, 1987, the young French mountaineer Eric Escoffier prepares his equipment, very limited in material and food. He is going to chain three mythical north faces of the Alps in winter: the Eiger, the Matterhorn and the Grandes Jorasses at the same time as Christophe Profit who left earlier. The ascent of the first summit, the Eiger is slow, difficult and full of pitfalls. It takes 17 hours to reach the top. Without recognizing the terrain (he prefers to improvise) the mountaineer continues on the Matterhorn. When night falls, anxiety is felt on the side of Zermatt, help is organized to come and get him. Despite his refusal to come down, "Escoff" lost an ice ax while receiving the bag containing the headlamp sent from the helicopter, letting himself be airlifted to the valley, barely 300 meters from the summit. Christophe Profit, a few hours earlier, will succeed him, the sequence of the three summits.