French mountaineer Hélias Millerioux. JEROME TANON
“The Nuptse will remain the highlight [moment fort] of my life. » When Hélias Millerioux recounts the ascent of the Himalayan summit that he accomplished in 2017, we feel both the fascination and the fear that the 2,200 meters of the south face of Nuptse (7,742 meters) inspired in him, at Nepal. “A super-intimidating wall, one of the faces that left the biggest impression on me. » The line that he opened with Frédéric Degoulet and Benjamin Guigonnet, known as the “French route”, will earn his companions the Piolets d’or 2018: the consecration, the “Oscar” of mountaineering.
The three men brought back images of their journey and, six years later, have been scouring specialized festivals since the fall to present the documentary. Nuptse. The absolute inaccessible that they got from it. The film – awarded numerous times – will be screened Monday December 18 and Tuesday December 19 at the Grand Rex, in Paris, as part of Montagne en scène.
It traces how Millerioux, Degoulet and Guigonnet encountered this mountain close to Everest three times, sometimes performing “the same relays, in the same places”. He recounts the difficulties of the ascent, the rope spirit which united the trio for life on the Nuptse wall. It also relates how the “West Summit” (its name in Tibetan) became an obsession, the quest of a lifetime for mountaineers who had already distinguished themselves in 2014 on the west face of Siula Chico (6,265 meters), in Peru.
With this “French route”, the “gang of mustaches” – their nickname – signed this day in October 2017 one of the most resounding mountaineering exploits of the last twenty or thirty years. Not that the “French Way” was the first line opened on the Nuptse, it was even the fourth, but “it was the steepest, very technical”.
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Hélias Millerioux carries the feat in his flesh. “The Kurd”, his nickname since university, reached the base camp as best he could, after having broken four ribs and three vertebrae on the descent from the summit, the victim of a falling rock. The episode illustrates the physical involvement that the man, then aged 30, put into this climb; an experience, he says, that changed him forever. “This Nuptse was three years of commitment and stubbornness”wrote Hélias Millerioux on the social network Instagram.
“Mountaineering is exploration”
However, nothing predestined this original Parisian, “a childhood spent in the 13th arrondissement, in the Olympiades district”, at the high peaks. In the Millerioux family, we spend the winter at the sea, the summer in the mountains, “it cost less”. At 11, it clicked. “I want to be a guide”then released young Hélias to his father at the top of the Col du Borgne (3,039 meters), in the Vanoise massif, too frustrated to see the family hikes stop each time at the foot of peaks and glaciers.
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2023-12-18 14:30:04
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