2023-09-09 19:59:00
A season in the mountainsdossierThe author Virginie Troussier retraces the life of one of the French pioneers of Everest, an outstanding mountaineer with an atypical journey.
It’s the story of a doctor who likes to go high. Nicolas Jaeger was top of his guide class, a “mysterious”, brilliant mountaineer. In 1978, he was one of the first to reach the summit of Everest. Interviewed at this time, he repeated Kipling’s words: “It’s not a man’s world.” “Did they really understand the motivations of the solitary mountaineer? mischievously asks Virginie Troussier, author of this beautiful biography. Do they know this experience of supreme freedom? We imagine not. What we know is that “Nicolas Jaeger likes direct and light confrontation with rock. Fast, aerial climbing with as little equipment as possible. He delights in the brutal or subtle perceptions generated by the altitude, which isolates each fragment of his body, each grain, and generates a state of absolute tension, a feeling of unity specific to refined climbs.
Jaeger loves the mountains, and uses his profession to scrupulously study the reactions of the human body at very high altitude. To the point of bivouacking for weeks and noting everything: pulse, sleep, what your body produces, reactions to the lack of oxygen. He even practices sleeping on the balcony of his apartment in Chamonix in the middle of winter. “One more step towards finding your own limits. He engages in inner journeys which modify his outlook, he accesses certain unsuspected areas, he is never the same when he comes back down.”
But Jaeger is no hero. He smokes like a fireman – a pack of unfiltered gypsies a day, “nobody’s perfect”, cultivates points of view “that set him apart from his contemporaries”, does not fear alienating everyone, locks himself in silence, leaves the table when he is bored… But if he speaks, “he impresses. He is a master, a master without disciples, who does not leave behind him a company of friends and admirers. Prudent are those who dare to rub shoulders with it. Even the formidable Pierre Mazeaud recognizes that the fiery man is “an advanced mountaineer, one who can be counted on in all circumstances, one of the most brilliant in the world”. Mazette! The former Everest winner continues the praise. Jaeger is serious in his weather readings, does the job without ever complaining, always ready to help, scout. “Silent because he has no energy to waste on chatter, efficient and endowed with a somewhat austere common sense, the one on whom we can count,” praises the former mountaineering minister.
“Great acclimatization”
And then, Jaeger writes. This allows him to extend the study. “By writing, he thinks better… He is preparing a book called Carnets de solitude. The idea is to […] maintain the immediacy of one’s thoughts. He has this way of writing that is unique to him, a sober language, like a grater to strip reality from the varnish of fine speeches. And then, the book also shows to what extent the doctor is a precursor, who wishes to make modern mountaineering evolve “towards greater demands. […] A new era, another style. More than the summit, it is the adventure that leads there that is important.
In the middle of the book, we see images of young Nicolas learning to climb near Fontainebleau, making the first ski descent from the summit of Everest with Jean Afanassieff, studying and “observing himself in quest of super acclimatization to the altitude in Huascaran (Peru), reading, all smiles, the Crab with the Golden Claws with his grandfather, a pioneer of aviation. And then there are these letters that tell a little about it. “Sunday morning, I’m waiting in the sun for the plane which is to bring us the canteens and take this letter to Kathmandu. My ideas begin to be clearer after three consecutive nights of ten hours. My wives [ses filles, sa femme] I miss you, I kiss you.” And Virginie Troussier concludes: “His entire life seems to play out in an enigmatic interval, located deep within himself, an unprecedented alliance of seriousness and extravagance.” A real character.
On April 28, 1980, Nicolas Jaeger disappeared after being seen one last time on the south face of Lhotse, in the Himalayas. In his universe, at almost 8,200 meters above sea level.
The Man Who Lived High, by Virginie Troussier, Guérin-Paulsen, 128 pp., 19.90 euros.
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