Mountaineering: Dubouloz, Welfringer and Paulin achieve a winter premiere on the north face of the Grandes Jorasses

New feat in the Mont-Blanc massif

Mountaineering: Dubouloz, Welfringer and Paulin achieve a winter premiere on the north face of the Grandes Jorasses

New feat in the Mont-Blanc massif. Monday, February 13 around 1:30 p.m., after five days and four nights of ascent, the trio of French mountaineers Charles Dubouloz (33 years old), Symon Welfringer (29 years old) and Clovis Paulin (26 years old) defeated the directissime from Pointe Walker, on the north face of the Grandes Jorasses, one of the three mythical summits of the Alps along with the Matterhorn and the Eiger.

Very technical, the 1,200 meter route, reputed to be among the most difficult in the Jorasses, was opened in June 1986 by Patrick Gabarrou and Hervé Bouvard, but had never been repeated since, and never carried out in winter. It is therefore a new first for Dubouloz, who had made himself known to the general public and had amazed the world of mountaineering a year ago by carrying out the first solo and winter ascent of the route Rolling Stones, always on the north face of the Grandes Jorasses, "his second home", said the Haut-Savoyard smiling, reached by telephone on Tuesday.

The trio set out on Thursday, February 9 at dawn from Chamonix to attack this directissime, or, as its name suggests, the most direct route to the summit, without circumventing the difficulties by following the lines of fracture as it is customary in mountaineering.

In temperatures of -15°C (up to -30°C felt on the night of February 10), Dubouloz, Welfringer and Paulin erased a large part of the line in simple climbing shoes and with their bare hands. Armed with a few "succinct" instructions on paper, drawn up thirty-seven years ago by the Gabarrou-Bouvard duo, the three men had great doubts about the route to follow.

"New page in the mountaineering book"

Charles Dubouloz in particular remembers a "very confusing" moment in the middle of the climb, when he and his climbing companions found themselves at the base of a 150-metre drop wall. “There was not really a logical line, recalls the Haut-Savoyard. The bivouacs were not easy to find, most of the time they were simple benches of snow”, forcing the three men to sleep sitting up in the frigid and austere night of a north face in winter.

But once at the top (4,208 meters), Charles Dubouloz, Symon Welfringer and Clovis Paulin could exult: their performance, which has become rare today in the Mont-Blanc massif, is "a new page being written in the great book of mountaineering", describes, for Le Monde, Patrick Gabarrou, present Thursday alongside the three men on their departure.

"It's a lot of happiness," says Dubouloz, who points out that doing this climb with "friends in everyday life, beyond being rope companions", adds an additional emotion to the adventure. "It's three kids' dream of doing something beautiful together that just came true. And it's true that this line is a dream,” says an enthusiastic Gabarrou, who introduced young aspiring guide Clovis Paulin to the mountains.