Christian Ravier

Born in 1964, Christian Ravier grew up in Bordeaux. His father Jean and his uncle Pierre have a ritual of their own: leaving the city to climb the most challenging routes one can dare, for example at Ossau. Living legends of Pyrenees, the twin brothers sometimes take their sons. An icy bivouac at the age of fifteen at the Cirque de Barroude leaves its mark on Christian. "It's the race where they passed on their passion to me." From 1982, he settled between Pau and the Aspe valley.

Years of climbing later, he climbs with the same flame. A free electron in the mountain planet of the Berlioz district, he lives in Pau. "I like life in the city because you meet other people there." City dweller, but not just anywhere: Berlioz cultivates the non-urban particularity of playing on the direct connection between men and peaks, with associations (1) marking the way like so many cairns.

This dynamic offers him more time to experience the mountain in sharing. For example, he organizes the Verticualidad evenings at the Maison de la Montagne, or is currently participating in the creation of a future guides' office at the Cité des Pyrénées. Community life only suits him if he remains free but has been familiar to him since the Goutte d'eau, which he co-founded with Eric Pétetin and other climbers. The Cette-Eygun lodge accommodates children on training courses and in 1985 hosted an international gathering organized by the French Alpine Club of Pau. "It was a fantastic place for mixing between valley dwellers and young people from elsewhere. Some still talk about it with a tremor in their voices."

Before being swallowed up by the Somport tunnel project and the ecological struggles associated with it, the valley lived its vertical epic. At La Mature, a tribe fueled by the taste of emptiness explored the rock in the wake of Erick Boileau. Christian Ravier was not yet 20 when he migrated to Aspe. He knew he would become a guide. "I like to pass on the mountain. A climb has three stages that are all intense. Before, the dream is a source of motivation. During, it is the committed time of action. After, the memory prolongs the story and makes it rich".

His playground spontaneously expanded towards Spain and the far South, leaving the Alps and their too many ski lifts far away. "For a mountain, I need an approach". Guided by a taste for elsewhere and the sun, he travels in nomadic roped teams, with his friends or clients, unceremoniously combining the pleasures of stone and emptiness with those of the desert and mint tea. These wanderings in Morocco, Algeria or Jordan are passages for him, borrowed and shared. "I don't climb with someone to hold the rope for them or for them to hold the rope for me, but to experience a roped team story". Refractory to any label and sometimes embarrassed by the high-level image associated with him - a reputation linked to his talent for opening difficult routes - he doesn't shun the normal route of Ossau with a client. "I like initiation and my job, introducing someone to climbing is giving them pleasure."