Gilbert Vignes

In 1975, Raymond Renaud, Yves Pollet-Villard, Maurice Gicquel, Maurice Cretton, Jean Coudray, Yvon Masino, Walter Cecchinel, all teacher guides at ENSA in Chamonix, with the help of the Indian Mountaineering Foundation, set out to cross the 2 peaks of the highest mountain in India. After 43 hours in a truck, 10 days of slow and difficult approach walking, helped by goats for the portage due to lack of sherpas, the base camp is set up on the Nanda Devi glacier. Two groups share the two eastern and western slopes, 3 kilometers separate them: the goal being to meet between the two summits by the ridge. But on the big day, with the monsoon, bad weather arrives with wind and snow, we will have to give up. Like the French expedition of 1951 which lost two mountaineers, Roger Duplat and Gilbert Vigne, to whom Paul Gendre and Louis Dubosc pay tribute.

In 1951, the 3rd French expedition to the Himalayas set out to conquer Nanda Devi (7,800 m). The attempt to cross the ridge between the main peak and Nanda Devi East resulted in the death of two members of the expedition. Expedition leader Roger Duplat and Gilbert Vignes disappear on the ridge somewhere below the main peak. Tenzing Norgay is part of a support team on this expedition; he and Louis Dubost climb Nanda Devi Est in search of the two missing people. A few years later, Tenzing discovered that Nanda Devi was the most difficult climb he had ever made.