TOM HORNBEIN, LEGENDARY EVEREST PIONEER, DEAD AT 92

Tom Hornbein has just passed away at the age of 92, in the middle of the high season of the siege of Everest, barely two weeks away from celebrating the 60th anniversary of one of the most daring ascents to the roof of the planet in history. of mountain climbing.

Our society has changed so much in these six decades that Everest now accommodates the unimaginable, the conventional, commercial, hunting. selfies, the tails of the absurd and also a certain sadness. With Hornbein goes that kind of curious, brave, rebellious man, never a sheep, someone who has nothing in common with those who now huddle together clinging to a rope like children tied to their mother’s hand. They don’t even want to imagine what it could be like to seek an unknown path to the top: safety above all, they proclaim, but Hornbein could answer that safety in the mountains requires autonomy, experience and the mastery necessary to imagine challenges.

which stand out from the banal. However always graceful, Hornbein never criticized the drift of the events on the roof of the planet. He passed by, did what he wanted, and drew his bow: he continued to climb and walk all his life but never again joined any great expedition. In fact, he used to refer to his time on Everest as “one more adventure to add to the many adventures I’ve had over the years on different mountains.” Climbing a tree or the roof of a house were his first great adventures, the ones that time does not erase because they remain engraved in the DNA.