This is truly sad news.Patrick was the most gifted,smooth,and natural climber I ever had the privlage of tying in with. He was also a fun person to climb with as well as do a wee bit of partying with to boot. I had the good fortune of hangin with him in Boulder and Yosemite. I remember we often would go out to some bars in Boulder after climbing and shoot endless games of pool with him and Maurice.After one late nite session he gave me his Petzl harness because he thought mine was too big and heavy(it was a Frog Harness). He was always ready to offer advice to improve your climbing,such as telling me to splay my hips in order to get my weight more in over my feet on a certain 5.12 we were doing. Or in Yosemite once when we were bouldering and he had his eye on trying Midnight lightning he pronouced he would try it right along with me.One time climbing with him sticks out in my mind the most.....We went up to a steep route in the flatirons called The Guardian 5.12c ? Bob H. went first and Patrick made sure he did not watch so as to get the true on sight(I think we distracted him by smoking something funny) Then when patrick climbed it he made it look like 5.7,but when he got to the anchors he did not have a draw to clip in with(Bob had mistakenly threaded it and removed the draws at the anchor) So Patrick just shrugs his shoulders and proceeds to down climb the entire route removing the draws as he climbed back to the belay....once again making it look like 5.7 He truly loved to climb and it showed!!!
R.I.P. Patrick Edlinger (say hi to Derek for us) Peace.
"But Patrick Edlinger also had demons. According to the writer Jean-Michel Asselin, who is working on a biography of the climber, it suffered from alcoholism. ..."
Kenny, Hiker is only trying to help. Patrick died at home in the Verdon, you know. You can always use Google Translate, you know, or many different plugins or desktop tools if you don't read french. Most of the news results are in french so far. This is giant news, although at this point, mostly just abroad. Climbing has never really "taken off' here as it has in France and western Europe. As Gill just upthread implies, Edlinger and Bachar were similar grand masters and their departure is really effing depressing.
Again, what a loss, and how very sad such a great light should come to such an end.
I just got the news. Planning and operating the Snowbird '88 event was a huge risk for me, personally. We made the whole thing happen in the short span of February to June. I didn't get the invites out to the climbers until late March or maybe even April. I was extremely gratified that virtually all the top climbers came at such short notice. I took their comittment as a vote of confidence. I had never before organized any kind of event I had never designed a climbing wall and this one had to be designed with the architect of the Cliff Lodge so as to enhance the design, rather than detract from it. I also had to work out the details of the major features, including the relative friction of the climbing surface and the strength and rigidity of the whole wall, its' anchorage to the concrete walls of the Lodge. On and on, really...So it felt good to be validated by the climbers, who trusted me enough to take the big leap with me.
Most of the climbers were respectful of all the effort and money behind the show, with a few glaring exceptions. But the biggest star, Patrick Edlinger, was also the most gracious and thankful of all, Patrick let me know that he understood the risk and work behind the show and let me also know that he trusted my vision and passion as a climber, to do things well.
Before the event, I picked Patrick as the winner-on a different spiritual plane from the rest,
hey there say, jello... thank you for the nice note, on patrick...
i never knew or know, so many of you all...
i just got to know about patrick now...
and to ionlyski:
you see--you had a gut feeling to post about someone very special...
someone whose friends and family, as well, would agree, would LOVE
sharing and reading all this...
you gave him a wonderful salute...
only god (as in how i see it) or powers that be (as others see it)
knew that his time was short and near to end:
thus--you were the one that was 'nudged' to do a very special honor
to a very special climber, before he passed....
for that, ionlyski, be humbled and honored, and please do not
feel bad or troubled...
you were part of a deeper picture here, that was due to come to
pass, anyway...
god bless to you for posting...
and god bless and condolence to the family of patrick edlinger...
:(
and--i am glad for to know him, through this history, and through the joy
of the thread, just before his passing...
Inspirational. It's tragic for one so young and gifted to go, and it doesn't matter if it was a fall or at home. I watched the Snowbird VHS tape until it would no longer play.
Patrick Edlinger a effectué l'ultime ascension. Âgé de 52 ans, il a été retrouvé sans vie à son domicile de La Palud-sur-Verdon, dans les Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, selon les informations du «Dauphiné Libéré». Le héros blond de «La vie au bout des doigts» a durablement marqué le monde de l'escalade. Dans ce film de Jean-Paul Janssen sorti en 1982, la France a découvert le style époustouflant de cet adepte de l'escalade libre. Le quotidien local ajoute que le sportif, qui devait participer à un festival de cinéma prochainement, confiait encore en début de semaine se définir comme «un homme libre».
Véritable artiste de la discipline, Patrick Edlinger avait continué de documenter ses exploits, notamment dans «Opéra Vertical», où on le voit évoluer pieds et mains nues à des dizaines de mètres au dessus du sol dans les majestueuses gorges du Verdon, qu'il s'était choisies pour voisines.
Mais Patrick Edlinger avait aussi des démons. Selon l'écrivain Jean-Michel Asselin, qui travaille à une biographie du grimpeur, celui-ci souffrait d'alcoolisme. Patrick Edlinger s'était confié à l'auteur: «Tu sais, je suis seul à pouvoir trouver une solution, c'est le combat le plus dur que j'ai jamais mené, comme un solo impossible, mais je vais m'en sortir».
My translation, loosely based on the Google Translate result:
Patrick Edlinger has made his final ascent. Aged 52, he was found dead at his home in La Palud-sur-Verdon in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, according to information from Dauphiné Libéré. The blond hero of the film Fingertip Life made a lasting mark in the world of climbing. In this film by Jean-Paul Janssen, released in 1982, France discovered the amazing style of this free-climbing master. The local newspaper adds that this athlete, who was about to attend a film festival, had earlier in the week defined himself as "a free man." (Note: although not mentioned in the Paris-Match article, the rest of that quote, from the Dauphiné Libéré, is "I have no regrets about the path I've taken.")
A true artist of the discipline, Patrick Edlinger had continued to document his exploits, notably in The Vertical Opera, where we see him flowing, hands and feet bare, tens of meters above the ground in the majestic Gorges de Verdon, which he had chosen to live near.
But Patrick Edlinger also had demons. According to the writer Jean-Michel Asselin, who is working on a biography of the climber, he suffered from alcoholism. Patrick Edlinger had confided in the author: "You know, I'm alone in trying to find a solution, this is the hardest battle I've ever fought, like an impossible free solo, but I'll top out. "
So sad to hear of the passing of a legend, and younger even than me.
I remember him winning at Snowbird, back in the infancy of climbing comps, and how the sunshine caught him as he pulled the final overhang.
His movie La Vie au bout des doigts was captivating, and I particularly remember the seemingly gratutitous nudie scene and thinking, "Too funny! He's so French."
So when Pat Ament writes of Patrick Edlinger walking around his place naked in front of him and his girlfriend, I just had to laugh!
Rest in peace, Patrick Edlinger. You were an inspiration. I'm sorry I never had the opportunity to meet you.
Well you are insightful and kind as always Neebee. Yes, I have asked myself why. We all have our own ways of explaining that which we don't understand.
Yet this is and always was about Patrick and now his loved ones and friends too. I never met Edlinger, not even close but I feel I know a little of his fine spirit now.
"On Friday 16 November 2012 Patrick Edlinger died aged 52. The Frenchman was one of the early pioneers and absolute legends of sport climbing.
It seems almost impossible, but the news has been confirmed by French newspaper Le Dauphine which stated that on Friday 16 November Patrick Edlinger passed away aged 52. It's superfluous to say that the news of his death has profoundly shaken the sport climbing community which recognised the Frenchman as being one of the greatest of this sport.
Born on 15 June 1960, Edlinger began climbing aged 13 and right from the outset it was clear that climbing would take over his life, become his raison d’être. After having repeated all the hardest routes close to home, the youngster didn't think twice, abandoned his studies and hitchhiked to the South of France where he was awaited by that famous, infinite sea of limestone and a sport which still needed inventing.
It was at the famous Luberon crag Buoux that Edlinger first began to leave his indelible mark, climbing numerous routes up to 7a solo (such as the exposed Pilier des Fourmis), succeeding 30 years ago in the world's first 7b on-sight (Captain crochet) and then, in that magic 1982 and still at Buoux, managing to on-sight the world's first 7c, La polka des ringards. These extraordinary performances were repeated in other exceptional crags such as Cimai (were he carried out the audacious free solo of Orange Mécanique 8a in 1989) and obviously also the Verdon Gorge which would then become his second home.
In those starting years Edlinger also took part in numerous competitions and he won the first official sport climbing events, Sport Roccia at Bardonecchia and Arco in both 1985 and 1986. Thanks to this immense talent Edlinger succeeded in first ascending and repeating cutting edge sport climbs, which include Les Specialistes in the Verdon. A route for which he put forward the first-ever 8c grade and which over the years has become a total reference point, a line that all the strongest in the world wish to repeat. Even if the time wasn't perhaps sufficiently ripe for this enormous step forward (the route was soon downgraded to 8b+), Edlinger didn't lose heart and repeated the incredible horizontal roof Le Plafond (also known as Maginot Line) at Volx (by discovering a heel-hook which "sweetened" the grade from 8c to 8b+) as well as Azincourt, the monstrously powerful 8c pocket climb at Buoux.
But apart from these albeit important details, Edlinger will be remembered for another, immeasurable contribution to climbing: the development of one of the most beautiful cliffs in the world, Ceuse. Towards the end of the '80's this band of perfect grey limestone split in two by its famous waterfall captivated the climber, so much so that for numerous seasons it became his "secret garden" where he imposed a style of ascending new routes - extremely severe but always completely loyal - which was copied worldwide and which rendered sport climbing far more than just a simple execution of athletic moves.
Yes, climbing for Edlinger represented the search for an innate beauty applied to faultless technique, often described as a vertical ballet and if one thinks about it, "Le blond" was destined right from the outset to become much more than just a climbing rock star. His roles in the films "La Vie Au Bout Des Doigts (Life at Your Fingertips) and the unforgettable Opéra Vertical, both by filmmaker Jean-Paul Janssen, shot him to stardom not only in France but also throughout the rest of Europe. These timeless classic were followed by a series of other films as well as books which taught and fuelled the dreams of entire generations.
Dreams. Perhaps this is the key to understanding the legend called Edlinger. Ever since childhood Patrick knew how to live out his dreams and perhaps it is because of this that, for those of us who started to climb by imitating his technique, he is an absolute Legend. One of those with a capital L, just like his great friend and partner of a thousand other adventures, the other climbing Patrick, Patrick Berhault. This is why we like to remember Edlinger as he was when we met him at Trento three years ago, when he wanted to talk about his friend who had died prematurely, about Ceuse, about those daring early years and about his climbing. Yes, an authentic dream."
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