The effect on Edlinger was profound. It meant to be on the edge of things, to be the honest outlaw, living by your own rules. 2.7K 0 1 0 0 0 edlinger escalade verdon. “Mort au loup,” it said. “I think also that by saying publicly he was in this terrible situation he thought he would get out of it. He was something important.”. Finally, when they separated, he was alone in the Verdon.”. She recalls meeting Edlinger with the filmmaker Gilles Chappaz. “Le Blond” spent his weekends at the Verdon or Cimaï with his friends from the MJC and took his first trips abroad with them, flying to America for the first time, climbing Half Dome and the Triple Direct on El Capitan. © 2021 Getty Images. The French climber Arnaud Petit said in the mid 1990s that 80 percent of those, including himself, climbing in France did so because of La Vie. The event may have been a financial train wreck, but as a piece of theater it could not have been better. Icône mondiale de l’escalade, depuis la sortie en 1982 du célèbre film de Jean-Paul Janssen, La Vie au bout des Doigts, le grimpeur surnommé l’ange Blond, Patrick Edlinger, est mort vendredi 16 novembre dernier, dans le Verdon. They filtered upwards, through the pages of climbing magazines and into publications like Actuel, and attracted the attention of documentary filmmakers. He broke barriers.”. They followed what each other did and when Berhault called Patrick with an idea to climb in the Alps, he said yes without asking what it was. Days after Patrick was born, Éliane took the baby to live with her family in Barcelonnette, while Jean-Marie continued his service at different bases in France and in Algeria, where the French were on the verge of losing the war of independence. Tribout wanted to know on what basis Edlinger felt able to judge his route? Il était originaire de la vallée de l'Ubaye. Patrick had always isolated himself to a certain extent; he never ran with the pack. Sign Up or Log In. The Verdon is where he felt most free; it would also be where his life would end. I asked him what he was afraid of, whether it was seeing people, or people seeing him? It was like a bomb going off; nothing was ever the same. There were plenty of drugs, although Edlinger steered clear, and plenty of women eager to meet him, which was a lot more congenial. Why not? He was at the singer Serge Gainsbourg’s house and hung out with the maverick comedian Coluche. The impact Patrick had on our burgeoning climbing dreams was monumental. He was nationally famous in his early 20s, but his best climbing achievements came later. “There were no arguments,” Asselin says. In the ski town of Snowbird, Utah, in 1988, Patrick Edlinger, who has died aged 52, was preparing to climb in the first major competitive event ever held in the US. He would rather be traveling or trying new routes. Trouvez les Patrick Edlinger images et les photos d’actualités parfaites sur Getty Images. Réputé pour ses ascensions en solo intégral, il est un des pionniers de l'escalade libre de haut niveau, il a été dans les années 1980 l'une des premières figures médiatiques de la discipline. Jean-Marie had found Patrick on the floor of his bathroom with a head injury. He had an agent who created a big problem with Japanese TV that ended in the courts.”. They were as they had always been.”. But he didn’t care much for cold bivouacs or steep ice. I tried to convince him, said that people wanted to see him. The whole effect teeters dangerously toward the parody of a 1980s rock star, except for the eyes. “When I’m climbing rock,” he told Actuel magazine in 1981, “it’s like I’m talking to it. Amateur d’ascensions en solo, Patrick Edlinger, entré dans la légende avec "La Vie au bout des doigts", est mort vendredi. Jacques Perrier changed all that in 1976 with Pichenibule, a masterpiece of route finding equipped from above. That film was galvanizing.”. It wasn’t always like this. Asselin plays me his final interview with Edlinger, made 10 days or so before his death. Et l'escalade moderne. 2.7K Shares. His win at Snowbird was glorious, and he also won the Arco Rock Master, but the grind of competitive climbing began to take its toll. Perhaps it was an early indication of how their paths would eventually diverge. There was something wolfish about Patrick Edlinger, who spent his last decade here. It's superfluous to say that the news of his death has … His father, Jean-Marie, was a pilot for the army, flying reconnaissance missions. One prompt came from the old blacksmith at Buoux who had retired through ill health and was now living in Sigoyer on the edge of the Écrins. A French newspaper is reporting that Patrick Edlinger, one of the great free climbers of the 1980s, has died at age 52. The first routes had been done on aid, ground up, and followed crack lines between the soaring blank walls. But the pleasure he took from their holidays at Ailefroide, and his fluid, easy movement on the boulders there, persuaded Jean-Marie that his son had talent. Patrick Berhault freed Pichenibule, still a notorious sandbag at 7b+ (5.12c). Walking in warm sunshine through the cobbled streets to the Bar de la Place, I bought a coffee, sitting outside at the table where Patrick had often stopped after a day’s climbing. Edlinger first came here in 1975 as a 15-year-old, part of a gang of climbers from Toulon dubbed La MJC (Maison des Jeunes et de la Culture). The doctor took one look and said the only option was a hospital—and amputation. En Souvenir de Patrick Edlinger " le grimpeur blond " Patrick Edlinger, né le 15 juin 1960 à Dax dans les Landes et mort le 16 novembre 2012, est un grimpeur français. Janssen couldn’t believe it. Four days before Patrick died in 2012, he and Asselin spoke for the last time. An engineer and entrepreneur, Bottero invented a new kind of combined-harvester and adapted all kinds of machinery to work in the mountains; Patrick also loved machines, especially cars and motorbikes. Later, having held his infant son, he learned the aircraft had crashed and his friend was dead. There’s respect in the way I use the holds. Patrick’s maternal grandfather, Louis Bottero, was also, according to the biography Patrick Edlinger by Jean-Michel Asselin, a powerful influence. Réputé pour ses ascensions en solo intégral, il est un des pionniers de l'escalade libre de haut niveau et a été dans les années 1980 l'une des premières figures médiatiques de la discipline. Patrick Edlinger, who has died aged 52, was a masterly French rock climber known as “le blond” and revered for his hair-raising ascents of the limestone cliffs in southern France. Patrick’s mother warned Kiki that her son had the habit of sleepwalking; she’d once had to rouse him from the bathtub. How he doesn’t need anything.”. Select from premium Patrick Edlinger of the highest quality. “You always have that awareness that you might die, but please believe that I don’t want to lose my life looking for some kind of glory. Patrick often told the story of how Louis near-severed two fingers on a metal grinder and summoned the doctor to see if anything could be done. Patrick was due to appear in Grenoble, at a special screening of La Vie. They might have seen people in Fontainebleau. Edlinger in 2008, while lrunning a guesthouse in the Verdon area. I can climb 9a, 9b.’ I said, ‘That’s true, you are Patrick Edlinger. At the event, last to climb, Edlinger flowed past the high point of each of his competitors, Tribout included. It didn’t help that the road from Castellane to La Palud-sur-Verdon was closed for repairs. Passionné d'alpinisme, Jocelyn Chavy est co-rédacteur en chef d'Alpine Mag. The French public had never before seen anything like Patrick Edlinger. Footage of the two of them in this era, at the start of the 2000s, shows them climbing hard routes in the Dolomites, like Fisch on the Marmolada; it’s moving to see these childhood friends reunited, still climbing hard and in love with it. When Patrick turned 13, Jean-Marie tried to get the boy into the French Alpine Club, but in those days it had an age limit. Patrick Edlinger And His Bride In The Mountains. “They just had different goals. He said, ‘Ah, le cons. But those startling images of a beautiful young man high above the ground and his passionate explanation of a life lived on his own terms set him unknowingly on a course that would end 30 years later in tragedy. They spent months together at Hueco Tanks during Edlinger’s bouldering phase. Some suggested a near-fatal accident Edlinger suffered in 1995 might have prompted his decline. Boards are the best place to save images and video clips. After all they’d faced in the Alps—the cold, loose rock, avalanches—it didn’t seem that asinine to them. Ses doigts de serre ont démocratisé la grimpe dans les années 80. The back-story was Edlinger’s recent repeat of Jibé Tribout’s Verdon route Les Spécialistes. Edlinger articulates his desperate journey through depression and alcoholism, how he lost confidence in himself, how he made mistakes and endured terrible loneliness. He created a kind of vertical dance as an art project, set up climbing youth programs in the suburbs of Lyon, and even settled down for a spell as a farmer and carpenter in the Massif Central. Timmy and I lived together our Sophomore year at CSU in Ft. Collins 1987. Journaliste, photographe et vidéaste, il aime le Dal Bhat, les crochets à goutte d'eau et les drones. 390 mentions J’aime. He was more private, more focused. Both starred at Snowbird. rockandice.com is completely free. Frequent contributor Ed Douglas is the author of Statement: The Ben Moon Story, among other books. Edlinger’s climbing wasn’t a symbol of anything, in the way Annapurna had been; it was a way of life, a state of mind. He compared climbing to yoga; he described himself as an ascetic. Their appetite for rock seemed insatiable. Climbing in the Verdon, they’d squat in empty vacation homes and sleep rough in barns. The birth of their first child was not only meaningful to Jean-Marie and Éliane in the way it would be to anyone, it also prompted a shocking coincidence, one that would cause Jean-Marie to regard June 15 as his own re-birth. What Berhault didn’t do was participate in climbing competitions. He motivated me. You know you’re in one of the world’s premier climbing destinations. Yet while there was a creeping sense of nostalgia in these projects—such as when, in 1998, he appeared in the movie Verdon Forever—it’s difficult to see quite when and how his life fell apart so badly. It’s fair to say that of the two, Patrick Berhault was the more devoted acolyte. He later told Jean-Mi Asselin that in the helicopter on the way to the hospital, unable to move, he contemplated ways to kill himself if he really was paralyzed. It’s easy to lose yourself in the hills around the Verdon Gorge. Sometimes he’d manage to pick up a partner for the day, but mostly not. On Maginot Line Edlinger even figured out an elegant new sequence that took the grade down a notch. “He said it’s not for me. And now here was this guy, very beautiful, very elegant.”, The film’s money shot was Edlinger hanging one-handed from the overhang on the crux of the four-pitch 6a+ (5.10c) La Beda. How the climbing world itself felt about Edlinger’s sudden rise to international fame was more complex. Click here to request Getty Images Premium Access through IBM Creative Design Services. Asselin says the article enraged Edlinger. The times I spent eating dinner at his house, laughing, working together for “Rock and Wall” magazine, and climbing on the beautiful cliffs of Southern France were precious moments of life.