Pierre Gaspard (mountaineer)

Pierre Gaspard

Pierre Gaspard
Personal information
Born	(1834-03-27)27 March 1834 Saint-Christophe-en-Oisans, France
Died	16 January 1915(1915-01-16) (aged 80) Saint-Christophe-en-Oisans, France
Years active	1876–1913
Sport
Sport	Mountaineering

Pierre Gaspard (27 March 1834, in

Pierre Gaspard's father, Hugues Gaspard, came from the small village of Saint-Georges d'Entraunes in the former department of Var (department) in Provence. He was a shepherd, who spent each summer with the sheep on the long trip to the Alpine pastures in the Vénéon valley in the Dauphiné. In September 1832, he married an inhabitant of the village of Saint-Christophe-en-Oisans, in the Dauphiné Alps, and settled in the village permanently. His son was born in the village, in the heart of the Pelvoux Massif, in 1837.

Pierre Gaspard took over his father's farm, which consisted of several sections of the field and a flock of sheep. In his spare time he enjoyed hunting

Already by the end of the 1860s he led tourists on trips to the mountains. In 1873, he scaled the ice pass of Col de la Lauze (3,512 metres (11,522 ft)). In 1874, he climbed the Barre des Écrins. The following year, with the support of W. A. B. Coolidge,^{[citation needed]} the Dauphiné Tourists Association (Société des Touristes du Dauphiné) turned to him for help in setting up the organization of the alpine guides.^[1]

As a guide, Gaspard's two most important customers were

Less than four weeks later (16 August 1877), climbing with Gaspard's son (Pierre Gaspard fils), they conquered the last of the great, difficult, and yet unclimbed peaks of the Alps - the Grand Pic de la Meije (3,983 metres (13,068 ft)).[5]^[6][7] On 4 August 1877, Boileau de Castelnau and Gaspard tried a new ascent of the Meije by the south side, a route attempted the previous year by Henry Duhamel. With difficulty^[6] and thanks to Gaspard's audacity, they came to the end of the wall that Duhamel thought impassable, both climbing with bare feet. Forced to abandon it due to lack of time, they left a fixed rope in place.^[5][7] On August 16, Boileau de Castelnau, Gaspard and his son reached the top, not without difficulty: the Meije was defeated. The descent was even more challenging than the ascent, and they were obliged to bivouac on the night of August 16 on an uncomfortable ledge, but managed to return to La Grave the following day.^[7]

Gaspard immediately became famous, and was therefore very much in demand to the extent that it was necessary to retain him in advance. In the following years he devoted himself mainly to the guiding profession, guiding more than thirty of the first parties to climb the

In his own lifetime Pierre Gaspard was called "King of the Alps". Quiet, even phlegmatic, he was a good rope partner and camping companion: he could discuss any topic, and his wit and sophisticated sense of humor have passed into legend. He left 15 children, including six sons (Maximin, Pierre, Casimir, Joseph, Alexandre, Devouassoud), who were also mountain guides.[1]

Ascents

• 1876 - Tête des Fétoules, 19 August
• 1876 -
  Tête de l'Étret
  , 4 September
• 1876 - Pic Nord des Cavales (3,362 metres (11,030 ft)), 10 September
• 1877 - Dôme de Neige des Écrins, 21 July^[1]
• 1877 - Tête du Rouget, Petit Pelvoux (3,753 metres (12,313 ft))
• 1877 - Grand Pic of
  La Meije
  , 16 August
• 1878 - Pointe du Vallon des Étages, 27 June
• 1878 - Pic Gaspard (3,883 metres (12,740 ft)), 6 July^[1]
• 1880 - North summit of the Olan (3,564 metres (11,693 ft)), 8 August^[9]
• 1889 - L'Ailefroide Centrale (3,928 metres (12,887 ft)), southeast face, 8 August^[1]
• 1891 - Summit of Pelvoux by the northwest face of Pointe Durand (3,946 metres (12,946 ft)), 10 July^[1]
• 1891 - West summit of Pic des Souffles (3,098 metres (10,164 ft))

Bibliography

• Bordes, Gérard (1976). Grande Encyclopédie de la Montagne (in French). Vol. 4. Paris: Éditions Atlas.
• Gaspard de la Meije, novel by Isabelle Scheibli

Film

• Gaspard de la Meije

References

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in French. (February 2013) Click [show] for important translation instructions. View a machine-translated version of the French article. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 6,167 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing French Wikipedia article at [[:fr:Pierre Gaspard]]; see its history for attribution. You may also add the template {{Translated|fr|Pierre Gaspard}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Polish. (February 2013) Click [show] for important translation instructions. View a machine-translated version of the Polish article. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 1,456 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Polish Wikipedia article at [[:pl:Pierre Gaspard]]; see its history for attribution. You may also add the template {{Translated|pl|Pierre Gaspard}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.