Information

• manufacturer: Simond ; place of manufacture: Chamonix-Mont-Blanc
• dated: 1978
• materials: Aluminum, polyurethane
• dimensions: H: 75.5 L: 25.7 ; weight: 1.5 kg
• marks / signatures: "SIMOND COUGUAR" model name on the handle.

History

This ice axe was used by mountaineer Jean Afanassieff during the first French ascent of Everest in 1978. Jean Afanassieff (1953-2015) is a French mountaineer, mountain guide and film maker. He lived in Chamonix and was a member of the Chamonix guide’s company.

His passion begins on the bolders of the Fontainebleau forest. He then settled in Chamonix where he made several first solo ascents in the Mont-Blanc massif such as that of the Croz Spur at Les Grandes Jorasses (1972) and the north face of the Aiguille Blanche de Peuterey (1973). He then moved away from the Alps and achieved the first ascent of Mont Ross at the Kerguelen Islands with Patrick Cordier in 1975. In 1979, he opened a route that bears his name on the west ridge of the Fitz Roy (Patagonia).

In 1978, Jean Afanassieff joined the French expedition for Everest led by mountaineer and politician Pierre Mazeaud. This summit had been conquered for the first time in 1953 by the Englishman Edmund Hillary and the Nepalese sherpa Tenzing Norgay. On October 15, 1978 at 1:40 p.m., Afanassieff was the first Frenchman to reach the summit a few seconds before his companions Nicolas Jaeger, Pierre Mazeaud and the Austrian cameraman Kurt Diemberger. On the descent, Afanassieff and Jaeger put on skis between 8,200 and 6,700 meters above sea level. They are thus the first skiers above 8000 meters.

The expedition was equipped by the French manufacturer Simond, based in Chamonix. With a long history of manufacturing mountaineering equipment, this historic company has long been a reference in the mountaineering environment. It provided two types of ice axes for the expedition. The first is the “Metallic 720”, a high-end model for mountaineers, it is a Metallic 720 that carried Pierre Mazeau on the images of the summit. It was then handed over to the President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing and it is now kept at the National Sports Museum in Nice. The second model is a “Couguar”, of a lower range than the previous one, intended for ancillary works and sherpas. However, it turns out that it is one of the axes of this second range that Jean Afanassieff used during his ascent.

This ice axe is made of aluminum with the lower part of the handle in polyurethane. The handle is oval in section, slightly curved on each side. The head is composed of a short, slightly concave tip and a pierced blade with a square tip, with four teeth. The notched point is unscrewable. On the handle, the model name "SIMOND COUGUAR" is written in black capital letters on both sides. The ice axe is red except for the tip of the blade and the point, as well as a section in the middle of the handle which is black. The original model also had a yellow label under the head representing an eagle, the Simond logo, but it has disappeared.

This ice axe was given in 1978 to Michel Sallandre, by Jean Afanassieff himself before their departure by helicopter at the end of the expedition. Michel Sallandre was a journalist-reporter for TF1. He participated in the Everest expedition to produce a television film. With his team, he managed to reach Camp 1 at 6100 meters above sea level where they experienced the summit victory by live radio link. At the time, TF1 and France Inter were the sponsors of the expedition. The ice axe was then exposed in the office of Michel Sallandre, who was director of the documentary channel Ushuaïa TV, until his retirement in 2006 when he gave it to his colleague Juliette Barthaux. She finally gave this ice axe to Lorraine Afanassieff, widow of the mountaineer, in December 2018. Finally in an agreement with her children, Lorraine Afanassi donated this historic ice axe to the Alpine Museum

The acquisition of this ice axe for the Alpine museum is an opportunity to complete its collection of ice axes and acquire its most recent model. Indeed, until now it was that of Gaston Rébuffat dated from the mid-1960s. In addition, this object testifies to one of the great achievements of the history of French mountaineering in the 20th century, an achievement which marked the environment of mountaineers but also the general public. As Jean Afanassieff said in the Montagnes Magazine a few weeks after his feat: “Everest, we climbed it for the summit, as the first mountaineers climbed Mont Blanc or La Verte. It is a mountaineering that is lost. However, it is the only mountaineering that marks people.

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