Christophe Profit, a Chamonix high mountain guide and renowned mountaineer, was sentenced on Monday June 5 by the Bonneville criminal court (Haute-Savoie) to pay a fine of 600 euros for theft, after he removed piles metal moorings on the so-called “normal” route of Mont Blanc, in the summer of 2022. The court nevertheless released him for the theft of two of these four piles, planted on neighboring Italian territory, which did not lodged a complaint.
Me Laurent Thouvenot, the mountaineer’s lawyer, informed the Monde that his client, who had claimed the character “ militant of his act at the hearing on April 20, will “most likely call” of this decision halftone “. The prosecution had requested a fine of 4,000 euros, including 3,000 euros suspended; counsel for Mr. Profit had pleaded for release.
Author of much publicized solo openings in the most technical and vertiginous walls of the Alps in the 1980s, Christophe Profit, now 62 years old and member of the prestigious company of Chamonix guides, had snatched, between on June 10 and July 13, 2022, four mooring piles, two of which were installed on French territory and two others on Italian border territory, on the normal route of Mont Blanc (4,807 meters).
Acquired by the town hall of Saint-Gervais-les-Bains, the town on which this route is located, these installations had been carried out by joint decision of the guide companies of Saint-Gervais and Chamonix, and the prefecture of Haute-Savoie, in order to ” to secure “ one of the two routes bypassing a recently formed crevasse near the Bosses ridge, at around 4,600 meters above sea level.
After their uprooting, Christophe Profit had sent an e-mail to Jean-Marc Peillex, mayor without a label of Saint-Gervais-les-Bains since 2001. He had, moreover, publicized his action, before publicly returning one of the piles to the chosen one, the day of the guides’ festival celebrated each year in the valleys of Mont-Blanc to recall, in particular, the founding values of sharing and solidarity of the spirit of climbing.
“Avoid taking unnecessary risks”
On April 20, at the hearing, where the town of Saint-Gervais was not represented, Christophe Profit had justified the dismantling of the piles by explaining that they distilled, according to him, a misleading feeling of security for the some 200 suitors at the top of Mont Blanc which cross daily, in summer, on this tapered section of several tens of meters. His intention, he explained, was to avoid unnecessary risk taking ».
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