Francois cazzanelli

For François Cazzanelli, climbing quickly in the mountains is totally natural. This Italian is the epitome of versatility: climbing, ski mountaineering, ice climbing, 8,000s – he prefers not to choose, instead delighting in expanding his sporting horizons. He was born in Cervinia, and still lives at the foot of the Matterhorn in the Aosta Valley. His favorite playground is the one inhabited by his family, who’ve had links to the mountains for more than a century. François Cazzanelli often returns to the Matterhorn, where he achieved a record-breaking sequence on its four ridges (with Andreas Steindl), and more recently, a new route on the immense south face.

After his years of competitive ski mountaineering, François became a mountain guide and member of the Italian army’s specialist mountain infantry corps. First and foremost, François has astonishing reserves of energy for mountain projects. Offering an important safety advantage, speed is an asset that François Cazzanelli has been working on for years. And with astonishing results.

Capable of ascending the 8,501 meters of Lhotse without oxygen, François also climbed up and down Manaslu (8,163 m) in just 17 hours and 43 minutes in 2019. Since then, he’s set a very fast time on Nanga Parbat (8,126 m), again without oxygen, climbing from base camp to the summit in 20 hours and 20 minutes. François also climbed Ama Dablam in half a day (5 hours 32 minutes), a Nepalese peak of 6,812 meters which normally takes three days of ascent!

François Cazzanelli climbs at a speed that very few alpinists can maintain in the mountains, but he also has pure climbing talent, as demonstrated by his opening of the 8a route Incroyable on the Italian side of Mont Blanc at 4000 meters above sea level. Working several days a month in the Aosta Valley as a mountain rescue volunteer, François explains that he does the job because “it’s a way of giving something back to the mountaineering community.” The best way of describing François Cazzanelli? A huge heart and a smile to match!