Lionel Daudet

Born: 1968-02-04 in Saumur, Maine-et-Loire, France

Lionel Daudet, known as "Dod," born on February 4, 1968, in Saumur, is a French mountaineer, adventurer, and writer. Known for his solo ascents and his purist ethic (he often climbed faces independently, completely cut off from the world), he has undertaken expeditions to mountains in polar climates. Living in L'Argentière-la-Bessée in the Hautes-Alpes, he is also a writer and a high-mountain guide. Born to schoolteacher parents, he quickly developed a passion for climbing and mountaineering, which he first discovered through adventure books. Family hikes allowed him to experience the peaks that fascinated him. It was through the French Alpine Club that he pursued his passion at the age of 13, climbing notably with his younger brother, Damien. Around this time, a lecture by René Desmaison in Saumur had a lasting impact on him. After completing his physics degree, he decided to pursue mountaineering full-time. At 23, he was selected for the FFME's (French Federation of Mountaineering and Climbing) high-level Young Mountaineers team and the CAF-GHM (French Alpine Club - High Mountain Group) high-level team. He received the collective Piolet d'Or in 1993 for the Pamir-Alai expedition and was nominated for the FFME Crystal Award. In 1994, after numerous ascents, he embarked on a year-long world tour of remote peaks and faces. In 1996, he repeated this feat with an 18-month "Vertical Odyssey," which took him from the walls of Greenland to the United States and Mexico. Since then, his list of distant summits, new routes, and attempts has grown. He received another Piolet d'Or in 2000 and the FFME Crystal Award for the Alaska 99 expedition to the Burkett Needle. In 2002, he received the FFME Crystal Award for Eldorado. Also in 2002, he attempted a solo winter trilogy of the great Alpine north faces (Grandes Jorasses, Matterhorn, Eiger) via direct routes. Severely frostbitten, he had eight toes amputated. He returned in 2004 for a closer adventure, "The Skyline," a tour of the Écrins massif from above. Attempting the direct route trilogy again in 2005, he turned back after a few days. Not wanting to "do one solo too many," he definitively gave up on extreme solo climbing. In 2007, he completed a tour of the Hautes-Alpes, a warm-up for his "Tour de la France, Exactement" (Tour of France, Exactly), a project to closely follow the land and coastal borders of mainland France for fifteen months, during which he combined numerous non-motorized activities and made countless encounters. He also developed a passion for the Southern Ocean, which he explored on several occasions: the Kerguelen Islands approached aboard the Marion-Dufresne, South Georgia, and Antarctica by sailboat, skippered by the navigator Isabelle Autissier. In 2013, he received the André de Saint-Sauveur Prize awarded by the French Academy of Sports. Since 2018, sea-to-mountain expeditions, particularly in Greenland, have held a special place in his heart. He is deeply concerned about the climate upheavals that are severely impacting high-altitude mountaineering, having served as an international guarantor for Mountain Wilderness. He also opposed the installation of high-voltage power lines in the Haute-Durance region. The climbing gym located in Pollionnay in the Monts du Lyonnais bears his name.