Swiss Sylvain Saudan, “skier of the impossible”, died Sunday evening at the age of 87 in Les Houches. He was a pioneer of steep slope skiing, from the Alps to the Himalayas.
Father of extreme skiing
Born in Lausanne in 1936, Sylvain Saudan became known in the 1960s for his first ski descents. Although he is not the inventor of extreme skiing (the first steep descents recorded in France are those of Paul Clément and André Giraud in the Davin corridor and the Barre Noire corridor in Oisans, in 1965), he remains a pioneer alongside the Italians Toni Valeruz and Stefano De Benedetti and the French Serge Cachat-Rosset, Patrick Vallençant, Anselme Baud, Jean-Marc Boivin. Even today, he still retains the paternity of the discipline.
An alpine skier in the winter as an instructor and a mountaineer in the summer, he set off to explore the world – the United States, New Zealand, Scotland – before settling in the Alps, where he made a series of firsts from 1967 to 1973, starting with the Swiss summit of Rothorn.
At the Aiguille de Blaitière, he skied the Spencer couloir in September 1967. The following year, he was the first to ski the Aiguille Verte via the Whymper couloir. A few months later, he skied the Gervasutti couloir on Mont Blanc du Tacul under the eye of the camera. In 1969, it was the turn of the Marinelli couloir on Mont Rose to see his spatulas pass through, with a drop-off at the summit by plane. The same year, he skied the north face of Bionnassay.
In March 1970, he achieved fame with his descent of the north face of the Eiger, the flagship peak of his native country, by helicopter, as he would also do at Mount Hood (United States), the Grandes Jorasses or Mont Blanc, not without criticism. In 1972, however, he demonstrated his mountaineering skills by climbing Denali (6,190 m) in Alaska, which he descended via the Messner corridor.
The last feat of arms in the Alps of this prosperous period: the couloir to which he gave his name on the west face of Mont Blanc: 1,200 metres graded 5.4, descended for the first time in June 1973. “No one had really thought that you might go down with skis where people are with ice axes, ropes and crampons,” testified the skier in the recent film on the history of the steep slope in the Verte.
Gasherbrum I, first integral of an 8,000 on skis
Skiing down the big walls of the Alps is great, but there comes a time when the slope is no longer steep enough, no longer long enough, no longer high enough. Especially when your name is Sylvain Saudan.
In the summer of 1977, following an unsuccessful first attempt the previous year, “the impossible skier” began his Himalayan adventure by setting up his snowboards at 7,135 metres, at the summit of Nun. An unprecedented ascent and four hours of descent for the first time on skis from a 7,000. After his experiences at Denali and Nun Kun, he was now ready to set up his skis at 8,000 metres. In 1979, Saudan attempted Dhaulagiri but a tragic avalanche (three deaths) put an end to the expedition. And then on July 28, 1982, five years following the Nun, he definitively entered the legend of steep skiing by successfully descending Gasherbrum I (8,068 m), the first 8,000 in history to be skied entirely (following the first of Manaslu by the Austrians Josef Millinger and Peter Woergoetter the year before, skiing 30 meters below the summit) despite an avalanche triggered in front of him.
This new feat crowns an incredible career that has made him one of the legends of steep slope skiing, in whose footsteps today ski the aces of steep slopes under hypoxia (Andrzej Bargiel, Bartek Ziemski, Boris Langenstein & Tiphaine Duperier), but also Vivian Bruchez and Paul Bonhomme in the Alps.
In 1986, he treated himself to a descent among the rocks of Mount Fuji (Japan) for his 50th birthday. Sylvain Saudan had kept up a skiing activity since he guided clients in heliskiing in the great massifs, in Kashmir. In 2007, an expedition had almost gone wrong. Sylvain Saudan lived between Switzerland and the Chamonix valley.
