Lionel Daudet

Q&A

How did you first get into exploring and mountaineering?

As with many mountaineers, I was born in a place with no mountains. My family, and the books of adventurers I read, gave me this passion. When I was around 23 years old, I joined a young French mountaineer’s team, which allowed me to progress. This was the starting point of almost 30 years of mountaineering, searching for the most remote places on Earth, always with the spirit of the great adventure and a global vision of the mountains. The approach, the planning, is as important as the climb itself.

If you had to give one piece of advice to any budding explorers out there, what would it be?

Always keep your flame alive! Just go because you’d like to go, and after, share!

What is the most challenging or rewarding expedition you have achieved?

Quite a difficult question! Many expeditions have all been challenging and rewarding in different ways:

• My “Tour de France” was the longest with 15 months away from home
• The Antarctica expedition, “Nomansland project”, was 3 months of sailing and climbing hard new routes. This was by far the wildest
• My solo attempt of Trilogy in the Alps in 2002 was the coldest. I lost eight toes!
• My South-East Alaskan expedition in 1999 was the boldest with no radio, only a meeting with a boat after 41 days in the wilderness , and 25 days on a wall
• My expedition in British Colombia on Mount Combatant was, with a hellish three-week traverse of deep forests, the toughest

Anyway, all my expeditions were a spring of enthusiasm…