Jeff Mercier

He has onsighted 8a in the south of France and the epic ice of La Lyre (WI6), made the first spur-less ascent of one of the hardest mixed routes in the world, Jedi Mind Tricks (M14), climbed A3+ aid routes and countless hard and committing alpine routes. Jeff is no stranger to the competition circuit either, winning the 2008 Ouray Ice Festival and having multiple podium finishes in ice, mixed and dry tooling events around the world.

“At the beginning I was basically involved in rock climbing, then I started dabbling in a bit of everything. At 23 I joined the French national team of young alpinists (FFME). At the same time I started ice climbing. I discovered dry tooling back in 1998. From 1998 to 2002 I participate to the Ice Climbing World cup. At 30 I became Mountain Guide.

Since then I have repeated another then I put up a couple more, only one of them has been repeated. Nowadays at 40 I’m still able to redpoint 8a but my motivation is more orientated to alpinism. Here in the Alps a lot of routes generally climbed with a fair amount of aid climbing happen to be climbable using dry tooling techniques which test the climber’s skills in a environment more serious than a dry tooling cave. That’s how we climbed routes like Gabarrou-Silvy on the Aiguille Sans Nom and the Dru Couloir Direct. That’s tomorrow’s alpinism.”