Christophe Profit

Christophe Profit, originally from Normandy, started climbing at the age of 16. In 1980, he did his military service in Chamonix with the GMHM, before obtaining his mountain guide diploma in 1986. To date, he has climbed the North face of the Eiger 10 times, including Heinrich Harrer - even said that a “man [who would make the ascent twice] does not exist and will doubtless never exist. A mountaineering giant, his words on the mountain invariably evoke the happiness of being up there, the commitment, the need to chart his course. In the summer of 1982, Christophe Profit stunned the mountaineering community with his full solo ascent (and the cannon time of three hours ten) of the mythical American Direct. “When I was a kid, I had imagined going up the west face of Les Drus at the speed of a walker”. One thousand two hundred meters of plumbline vertical cracks of the impressive granite spire. Seeing the images of the athlete in a red tank top chaining movements in the immense dihedrals of granite twists the guts and gives a feeling of absolute vertigo.

The chroniclers do not yet speak of speed-climbing but Christophe Profit atomizes all the timetables: two and a half hours for the north face of Les Droites, four and a half hours for the Couloir Nord des Drus, barely ten hours for the first solo ascent in the day. of the north face of the Eiger, thirty-two hours for the integral of Peuterey in winter. A speed and ease that allow him to consider the accumulation of the mythical north faces of the Alps: Matterhorn / Eiger / Grandes Jorasses. He chained the three walls in one day in July 1985.

Profit is the spearhead of a new generation of versatile, trained and highly motivated mountaineers. In the mid-1980s, the media were once again invited to the great game of “live mountaineering” and reveled in supposed or real competition. A few crazy years where climbers make their exploits visible and readable. The broom of helicopters and cameras feed the opening of television news and the covers of magazines. The duel Profit - Escoffier spiced up the reports: the two climbers pulled the plug. "This 'competition' between us has set the bar so high, it has made us so strong that I have no regrets. More centered, better prepared, it was Christophe Profit who won the day in March 1987 with the success of the winter trilogy in 42 hours. “Profit has killed the history of mountaineering” wrote the writer Yves Ballu somewhat provocatively.