Mathieu Maynadier
The quest for the summit !
- Country
France
In mountaineering, the risk of serious injury or worse for the ambassadors of the sport is particularly high. A mountain guide by training, Mathieu Maynadier started out by roaming Le Massif des Écrins, his favorite mountain range, and then quickly broadened his adventure horizons after a first big attempt on the northeast face of Mount Dickey in Alaska in 2008.
Since then, he’s been constantly on the move. Mathieu has enjoyed a sequence of fantastic successes such as Latok II in Pakistan, and Gaurishankar, one of the most difficult 7,000s in Nepal. Since then, he’s returned to Pakistan again and again. Until one day in the summer of 2018 when he was seriously injured by a rockfall.
But “Mémé” got back up. From his base camp in Briançon, he continues his quest for cool routes, with a particular preference for ice climbing and mixed climbing lines, ice axe in hand. He’s always loved exploring the vast playground available to him, even if the ice and snow make his experiences transitory. In fact, this is what gives them their charm. “On expeditions, I’ve always sought out adventure and new sensations,” he warns. Uncertainty is the very essence of mountaineering: Mathieu Maynadier has made it his specialty, including on skis when he made the first ski descent of Diran, a beautiful 7,266 m peak in Pakistan, of course.
In 2023, Mathieu Maynadier found the holy grail: a mythical, rare but very real summit in India known as Meru. Here he climbed an new exceptional route (with Roger Schaeli and Simon Gietl) called Goldfish – the culmination of years of expeditions to the four corners of the Himalayas. No doubt he’ll be back there very soon, as well as heading out to his other base camp, the Verdon Gorges.
Other athlete
- Mathieu Maynadier
