Christophe Profit

Christophe Profit

Nascimento : 1961-02-15, Normandie, France

História

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. After such successes, Christophe Profit could only be caught up in the high peaks of the Himalayas. On August 15, 1991, he was with Pierre Beghin at the top of K2. The duo have just climbed the second summit of the Earth by a new route and in alpine style. “Total commitment, perfect osmosis”. What else to do? How to return to the land of men? As if saturated with too much sound and fury, Profit turns the page on the publicized exploit and devotes himself to his job as a guide. For the joy of sharing. Because it is up there that he feels fully alive.

Perfil

Christophe Profit
Christophe Profit
Christophe Profit

Filmes

Eric Escoffier, la Fureur de Vivre
Self
Chamonix - Mont Blanc, Une histoire de conquêtes
(archive footage)
Le Monde de Gaston Rebuffat
Self
Directed by Gilles Chappaz.
Baquet's Comeback
Himself
In July 1956, together with the mountaineer Gaston Rébuffat, the actor and cellist Maurice Baquet made the first ascent of the south face of the Aiguille du Midi (3,842 m/12,606 ft), a magnificent wall of red granite soaring up like a rampart above the Vallée Blanche (the White Valley) in the Mont-Blanc Massif. Thirty-two years later, as if to pay tribute to the memory of his friend Gaston, now deceased, Maurice Baquet once again climbed this mighty crag, suspended between sky and earth, behind Christophe Profit.
Trilogy for One Man
Self
The most legendary 'sequence' ever achieved by a mountaineer: on 12 and 13 March 1987, in 40 hours, 26-year-old Christophe Profit managed to climb three of the highest north faces in the Alps, in winter: Grandes Jorasses, Eiger, and Matterhorn. But over and above this 'coverage' of the feat, we discover the wings, the story behind the project, the peaks and troughs of the preparations for it, and the personality of the man behind the climbs, a dancer on sheer rock faces, focusing all the energy and reflexes of life itself in his fingertips.
Faces Nord
Self
La Lumière du Rocher
Self
Les Conquérants de l'Impossible: Portrait de Groupe
Self
The North Face of the Camembert
himself
While shooting Gerard Mordillat's film, "Billy ze Kick", Christophe Profit, one of the best climbers in the world, was asked to stand in for an actor. He will, without ropes or belay, climb the smooth side of a 60 meter building.
Christophe
Self
It is 1 p.m. on June 30, 1982, when Christophe Profit, 24, shows up at the foot of Les Drus with his pof bag, his climbing shoes and nothing else. He will try the west face of Les Drus in "solo", in the Mont Blanc massif by "Directe Américaine", 1100 meters of vertical and smooth rock. Christophe will achieve the feat of climbing the wall in free solo, without using a rope or any belaying technique. At 4:10 p.m., barely more than three hours after the start of his ascent, the new climbing star can embrace the Virgin of the Drus at the same time as the career of a high-level mountaineer. Three years later, on July 25, 1985, he climbed the north faces of the Matterhorn, the Eiger and the Jorasses in the same day. Awarded at many mountain film festivals, this great documentary is a magnificent testimony to one man's passion for climbing, the mountains and adventure.