| From: | France 🇫🇷 |
| Date of birth: | 14th Nov 1963 |
| Age: | 62 years old |
| Gender: | Male |
| Hardest Boulder (Worked): | 8A |
| Hardest Sport (Worked): | 8a+ |
Boulderer and alpinist.
Another champion of Bleau and beyond in the 1980s: Alain Ghersen. His personal obsession was to statically climb every move that others tackled dynamically. No more dynos — a technique commonly used in Bleau on boulders where bad falls are unlikely. Unlike Jérôme Jean-Charles, Alain Ghersen — now a mountain guide and instructor at ENSA — is a world-class alpinist. His solo ascents in the Mont Blanc massif, especially his link-ups in the late 1980s, left a lasting mark on the history of alpinism.
In an unpublished profile of Pierre Allain ('Pierre Allain, or the Prevalence of Pleasure, April 2015'), Alain Ghersen recounts a baroque link-up from the summer of 1987: a Paris–Bleau–Saussois–Chamonix journey starting from one of the most renowned routes in the forest, Le Carnage at Bas-Cuvier. Alain Ghersen: “In just over 40 hours, I linked together ascents of Carnage (7B) in Bleau, Bidule (8a+) in Saussois, and the full Peuterey Ridge on Mont Blanc — all solo.”
In the summer of 1990, Alain Ghersen once again demonstrated the extraordinary technique and endurance he had developed in Bleau on its most extreme circuits. Solo, without any self-belaying, and in a single continuous push, Ghersen climbed the Directe Américaine on the Drus, the Walker Spur on the Grandes Jorasses, and the full Peuterey Ridge. Three historic, major alpine routes — it’s hard to top that. [1]
In 1987, Ghersen succeeded in climbing all problems in Fontainebleau graded 7A or above. [2]
[1] Modica, Godoffe, 'Fontainebleau: 100 ans d'escalade', p.232, Les Editions Mont Blanc, 2017
[2] OTE Guide, 1997