PIERRE ALLAIN MTN 62

audacity in conception, prudence in execution.

Madame et Monsieur le PA!

1949
PA teams up with Emile Bourdonneau, a fellow climber, whose family own a shoe factory

1950
First commercial slipper-style rubber rockclimbing shoe is produced under the joint collaboration.

Shoe has the appearance of high-top basketball shoe with lacing to the toe, and a fully randed sole

Colour was navy blue cotton canvas with white suede leather reinforcing.

The initials "PA" are stamped in a circular leather inner ankle pad.

? year
Pierre Allain takes his name to the French mountain boot company, Galibier, who produce the PA with black canvas and red suede leather

Emile Bourdonneau retains rights to produce the original shoe,which is technically superior to the new Galibier PA, but now brands it “EB.”

1975
90% of EB production is exported from the Paris production plant company is awarded a French Oscar for export sales

[Aside the PA (Pierre Allain), Galibier also produce RD (Rene Desmaison), and Yosemite RR (Royal Robbins),]

[There was also the Galibier BB, designed with Australian climber, Rick White, presumably after his 1968 grade 19 first ascent Beau Brummel)
but none of these Galibier boots dominate the market quite like EBs

Source: http://www.inov8.au.com/compass/ebsupergrattonhistory.html

DURING THE 1980S, WHEN I was the editor-in-chief of the French magazine Alpinisme et Randonnee, I spent several days in Grenoble each year for an international trade show. My meetings were exhausting work, happily interrupted by visits with good friends, which allowed me to forget, for an hour or two, everything that the show signified: that the mountains had become a business and that we—the journalists, the guides and the technical consultants—were all part of it.

The encounter that gave me the most pleasure was with a smiling, elderly gentleman who had a gentle voice and an impish gaze. Dressed like an ordinary retiree, he seemed out of place amid the flashy crowd of young athletes. It was the legendary Pierre Allain, now in his eighties, here to display the carabiners and caving ladders that he still manufactured himself, with the machine tools he'd designed.

Who would have thought, at the sight of this modest character, always joking (but without any spite) amid the climbing community he'd watched evolve for more than half a century, that this was one of the greatest alpinists of the 1930s, as well as an innovator of lightweight carabiners, rappel devices, down jackets and climbing shoes? Or that he was the first ascensionist of the North Face of the Drus!

After a bivouac, Allain and Leininger reached Lambert's highpoint. Allain saw a double crack above him, some forty meters high, with an overhang at the end. With his arms in both fissures, his feet in opposition on the slabs, he couldn't place a piton for the first ten meters. Legendary alpinists who climbed the wall after him—including Lambert, who made the second ascent in 1936, with Loulou Boulaz—all confirmed that it had a difficulty without equal at the time in the entire massif.

Allain later confessed to me that he had a predilection for cracks, something of an anomaly for a Bleausard. In Fontainebleau, fissures are rare, so he'd searched them out, unearthing the "Fissure des Alpinistes" in a lost corner of the forest (now graded 5c, but Bleau grades are stiff). Unfortunately, the Fissure Allain on the Dru is no longer frequented. After the sixth ascent, in 1945, the French climber Felix Martinetti found a much easier crack to the right.

To attain the summit of the Petit Dru, Allain led an icy chimney without crampons. They weathered their second night out on the descent. All evening, the snow drifted through the darkness, yet their bivy sacks worked marvelously.

TOUTE UNE HISTOIRE

1904 : naissance de Pierre Allain à Mirebeau dans la Vienne

1910 : arrivée à Paris.

1931 : début en alpinisme après ses premiers pas à Fontainebleau.

1932 : première grande course, la traversée Charmoz-Grépon.

1933 : invention du mousqueton asymétrique et premier essais à Fontainebleau de ses chaussons souples.

Première de l’arête sud de l’aiguille du Fou

1934 : s’installe rue des Ciseaux dans le VIe arrondissement de Paris, puis rue Saint-Sulpice, pour vendre du matériel d’escalade.

1935 : première de la face nord du Petit Dru. Directissime de la face sud de la Meije. Deux voies qui incarnent la rupture vers l’escalade moderne.

L’expédition française au Caucase teste son matériel de bivouac (sac de couchage avec compartiments en duvet, veste gilet en duvet, matelas pneumatique, veste cagoule en soie, pied d’éléphant).

1936 : expédition française au Hidden Peak (8068m) dans le Karakoram Himalaya

1940-43 : invente le descendeur, qui prend alors la forme d’une fourchette. Puis le fameux dérocheur, un crochet à ressort.

1948 : début de la commercialisation. de ses chaussons P.A.

1963 : quitte Paris et s’installe à Uriage.

1994 : retraite officielle à 90 ans.

2000 : mort le 19 décembre.

Antoine CHANDELLIER