Patrick Gabarrou

Biography

Patrick Gabarrou is a French mountaineer, mountain guide and lecturer born on July 19, 1951 in Évreux. French ski-mountaineering champion in 1989, Patrick Gabarrou is first and foremost a high-level glacier climber, even though he has taken part in a number of high-difficulty rock climbs. He is one of the most active forerunners of his generation: 300 firsts, including fifteen on the prestigious Mont Blanc. He is also the author of several routes in the very difficult north face of the Grandes Jorasses, but also in less known massifs such as the Argentera massif. Patrick Gabarrou has also climbed summits in Bolivia, Alaska, Canada, Patagonia and in the Himalayas (Everest as well as the Unnamed Peak at 7,900 meters). Denouncing what he describes as torture and extermination camps and the Tibetan genocide, he gives the name Free Tibet to the path he opened in October 1996 with Philippe Batoux on the south face of Triolet. In 1996, he opposed a controversial Franco-Chinese expedition to Tibet. During the winter of 2007, he was the victim of an ice climbing accident which caused him a broken rib and vertebra as well as a perforation of the lung. He was president of the international environmental NGO Mountain Wilderness from 2006 to 2010. He is primarily an ice climber and is considered a pioneer of the modern wave of ice climbing. In 2021, for his 60th birthday, Patrick Gabarrou offered himself the opening of a new route at the Tour Noir in the Mont Blanc Massif. A gift he shared with his daughter Heidi who was celebrating her 25th birthday. Training philosophy, he intervenes as a speaker on Team Building, surpassing oneself...