Roger Verdegen

Roger Verdegen, born in 1935, was estranged from his family. Taking his mother's name, he was placed in a wet nurse in the Nice hinterland. He learned the trade of goatherd in Villard-la-Croix. He spent the war years in Auvergne, where he became a messenger for the Resistance. At the end of the war, he was in an orphanage in the Toulouse region. Ill and sent to boarding school, he was neglected and mistreated. Regularly deprived of school, he tried to catch up and joined the army. He worked in various professions both in France and abroad.

He settled in the Grenoble region where he became a gymnastics and outdoor instructor, and a speleologist. He suffered a serious accident, narrowly escaping drowning. It took twenty-five minutes of cardiac massage to revive him. He discovered the Grand Canyon du Verdon in 1968. Based in La Palud-sur-Verdon, he explored it for years aboard a small canoe made of rubber tubes and photographed it in all seasons. He became a guide and, like Isidore Blanc half a century earlier, led generations of amateur adventurers in aquatic exploration, thus revealing all its wild beauty.

He is responsible for half a dozen books. His Guide to the Verdon Gorges, published in 1974, and his Complete Guide to Routes and Trails, published in 1984, continue to be indispensable references. But the book of his life is Extraordinary Canyon and Marvelous Verdon, published in 1981, a richly illustrated book, the fruit of ten years of intimate knowledge, exploration, and often very risky rescues. It was justly awarded the European Prize for Nature Conservation and the Biguet Prize of the Académie Française.

Roger Verdegen's unique, uncompromising temperament drove him to wage fierce battles in defense of the Grand Canyon, against hydroelectric development projects, high-voltage power lines, and the excesses of a certain type of tourism. He did not hesitate to go on hunger strike or join forces with others like Patrick Edlinger to prevent the work undertaken on the Blanc-Martel trail in 1992.

Roger Verdegen died on December 5, 2024, in Marseille.