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Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Patrick Edlinger obituary

12:41 PM
Patrick Edlinger obituary

French climber nicknamed 'Le Blond' who was known for his wild, individualistic streak

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. Looking on, Henry Barber, a brilliant maverick climber from an earlier generation, told a friend he had spent the previous evening with Edlinger, who had thanked him for inspiring him as a teenager on his first visit to America. Then Edlinger began to climb. As the last competitor, everyone at Snowbird knew how high he must get to beat his rivals and win the event. With apparent ease, he climbed past their high-points, until pausing beneath a huge overhang that had defeated all-comers. At that moment, a narrow shaft of sunlight pierced the cloud cover and illuminated Edlinger. When he completed the route, the only one from the world's best to do so, the crowd erupted. Until this point, American climbers had been unsure about competition climbing. After Edlinger, they were converted.

Dangling from his rope as he was lowered to the ground, Edlinger caught sight of Barber in the crowd. "For you!" he called.

There were many triumphant and dramatic moments in the life of Edlinger, who helped to redefine the sport of rock climbing in the 1980s, but his victory at Snowbird was perhaps the greatest. It illustrated everything remarkable about him, his natural sense of theatre and his feline athleticism. But it also caught his impulsively generous nature.

Edlinger was born in the spa town of Dax in Aquitaine and grew up in Toulon on the Mediterranean coast. He started climbing as a young child, but started to take it seriously while at school in Toulon. The sea cliffs at Les Calanques, near Cassis, were a favourite early climbing venue. Daniel Gorgeon, another climber, who met him in Toulon as a teenager, recalled how Edlinger already had the wild, individualistic streak that became his hallmark.

Aged 16 and lacking a regular partner â€" Edlinger was used to climbing alone without ropes from a young age â€" a mutual friend put him in touch with a Marseille climber near his age called Patrick Berhault. "He was," Edlinger said, "the kind of man who made you feel good inside. I haven't met too many like that." Together they began exploring the limestone crags of Provence, then a crucible for the new practice of sport climbing. This involved relying on expansion bolts drilled into the rock for safety, anathema to traditionalists, but allowing a rapid improvement in technical standards. Several Parisian climbers â€" Jibé Tribout, Antoine and Marc le Menestrel â€" brought a metropolitan sophistication to this revolution. Edlinger, by contrast, was more feral â€" and poorer. He and Berhault would steal cars and food to support their nomadic climbing lifestyle, spending winters in the Alps dossing in unheated garages, climbing hard north faces above Chamonix.

Yet it was sunlight and warmth that characterised Edlinger's career. His mane of hair, controlled by a natty headband, brought him the nickname "Le Blond". His tanned gymnast's body swung up the rock as though it was the easiest thing in the world. Training assiduously, he pushed standards in France to new heights. He even discovered a whole new climbing area at Céüse on the edge of the Ecrins, near the village of Sigoyer. Edlinger had got to know the blacksmith in the village of Buoux, then one of the most important climbing cliffs in the world. When the blacksmith retired in ill health Edlinger went to visit him, just before a long climbing trip to America. "When I saw the cliffs," he recalled, "I tore up my plane ticket. I spent the next four years there."

Edlinger's physical genius was the subject of two landmark films by the adventure cameraman Jean-Paul Janssen. Janssen had the perspective to understand what it was about Edlinger â€" his lithe wildness â€" that would appeal to non-climbers. He captured it perfectly. In Opéra Vertical, Edlinger climbed in the dizzying Gorges du Verdon, inspiring Europe's climbers to pack up and head for Provence. A year later, La Vie aux Bouts des Doigts, nominated for a César award, featured Edlinger climbing unroped high above the ground, hanging casually from the fingers of one hand. The films made Edlinger a star in France, with spreads in Paris Match and new lucrative sponsorship deals, but while some climbers regarded him as selling out, he turned down anything that might interfere with his freewheeling lifestyle. Even so, he could see which way climbing was going.

In 1985, 19 leading French climbers, including his friend, Berhault, signed a manifesto decrying the advent of competition climbing. Edlinger was not one of them and he swiftly became a star of this new professional circuit. Within a few years all but one â€" Berhault â€" had signed up as well.

In 1995 Edlinger survived a near-fatal fall that stopped his heart, surviving thanks to the immediate intervention of a doctor standing near where he landed. He struggled to overcome the death of Berhault in 2004. The two had climbed together in the Dolomites in 2000, making a number of hard ascents and reinforcing their longstanding friendship.

After his accident, Edlinger spent time editing a climbing magazine and loved introducing young people to the sport. He also ran a guesthouse in La Palud, above Verdon, and took up fishing. Yet his later years were marked by depression and alcoholism, as he struggled to adjust to the depredations of time. He appeared in interviews puffy-eyed yet defiant and still passionate about climbing. Shortly before his death, which remains unexplained, he was working on his life story with journalist Jean-Mi Asselin, which is to be published next year.

Edlinger was separated from his wife, Matia. His parents, Jean-Marie and Eliane, and his daughter, Nastia, survive him.

• Patrick Edlinger, climber, born 15 June 1960, died 16 November 2012

MountaineeringUnited StatesFranceDocumentaryEd Douglas
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