French mountain climbers

Patrick Gabarrou a.k.a. "Le Gab" (born 19 July 1951 in Évreux), is a French mountaineer and mountain guide who is credited with more than 300 first ascents, most of them in the Mont Blanc massif.
He has been the president of the international environmental NGO Mountain Wilderness from 2006 to 2010. He is mostly an ice climber, and is considered to be a pioneer of the modern wave of ice climbing.He also opened routes in several other regions like Canada, Bolivia and Patagonia.

Catherine Destivelle (born 24 July 1960) is a French rock climber and mountaineer who is considered one of the greatest and most important female climbers in the history of the sport. She came to prominence in the mid-1980s for sport climbing by winning the first major female climbing competitions, and by being the first-ever female to redpoint a 7c+/8a sport climbing route with Fleur de Rocaille in 1985, and an 8a+ (5.13c) route with Choucas in 1988. During this period, she was considered the strongest female sport climber in the world along with Lynn Hill, however, in 1990 she retired to focus on alpine climbing.
In 1990, she made the first-ever female alpine ascent of the Bonatti Pillar on the Petit Dru, which she followed up in 1991, by becoming the first-ever female to create a new extreme alpine route, also on the Petit Dru, which was named Voie Destivelle in her honor. From 1992 to 1994, Destivelle became the first female to complete the winter alpine free solo of the "north face trilogy" of the Eiger, the Grandes Jorasses, and the Matterhorn. She made Himalayan and high-altitude ascents such as Nameless Tower in 1990, the southwest face of Shishapangma in 1995, and the south face of Peak 4111, in Antarctica, in 1996.
As well as her Alpine free solos, she made other notable free solos, such as the Devils Tower in 1992, and the Old Man of Hoy in 1997. She is the subject of several documentaries, including Rémy Tezier's, Beyond the Summits, which won the best feature-length film award at the 2009 Banff Film Festival. In 2007, she was made a Knight of the Legion of Honour, and in 2020, became the first-ever female recipient of the Piolet d'Or Lifetime Achievement Award.

Marco Siffredi (22 May 1979 – 8 September 2002) was a French snowboarder and mountaineer who hailed from a climbing family; his father was a mountain guide, and his older brother Pierre had died in an avalanche in their hometown of Chamonix, France. Siffredi was the first to descend Mount Everest on a snowboard, completing this feat in 2001 via the Norton Couloir. In 2002, he disappeared after making his second Everest summit, while attempting to snowboard the Hornbein Couloir; his body has never been found.

René Desmaison (April 14, 1930, in Bourdeilles, Dordogne – September 28, 2007) was a veteran French mountaineer, climber and alpinist.Desmaison had climbed more than 1,000 mountains since the 1950s. He made the first ascent of 114 previously unclimbed mountains throughout the Andes, Alps and Himalayas in his 40-year climbing career. He is also credited with creating several new winter routes in the Alps.René Desmaison died on September 28, 2007, at La Timone Hospital in Marseille, France. He was 77 years old.

Jean-Christophe Lafaille (31 March 1965 – 27 January 2006 [presumed]) was a French climber noted for a number of difficult ascents in the Alps and Himalaya, and for what has been described as "perhaps the finest self-rescue ever performed in the Himalaya", when he was forced to descend the mile-high south face of Annapurna alone with a broken arm, after his climbing partner had been killed in a fall. He climbed eleven of the fourteen eight-thousanders, many of them alone or by previously unclimbed routes, but disappeared during a solo attempt to make the first winter ascent of Makalu, the world's fifth highest mountain.

Camille du Gast (Marie Marthe Camille Desinge du Gast, Camille Crespin du Gast, 30 May 1868 – 24 April 1942) was one of a trio of pioneering French female motoring celebrities of the Belle Epoque, together with Hélène de Rothschild (Baroness Hélène van Zuylen) and Anne de Rochechouart de Mortemart the (Duchess of Uzès).Du Gast was known as "one of the richest and most accomplished widows in France," and as an accomplished sportswoman—a balloonist, parachute jumper, fencer, tobogganist, skier, rifle and pistol shot, horse trainer—as well as a concert pianist and singer. She was the second woman to compete in an international motor race.In France, she later became renowned for her extensive charity work. She was president of the Société protectrice des animaux (Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, SPA) until her death, and her campaign against bullfighting included disruptive direct action protests. She provided health-care to disadvantaged women and children in Paris, and continued whilst under German occupation in World War II.She was the central figure in the Parisian scandal of La Femme au Masque where she was maliciously but mistakenly named as the nude model in a notorious painting by Henri Gervex. This salacious story involved three court cases, and was reported around the world.Her exuberant social and sporting lifestyle was changed by a traumatic experience around 1910, when her daughter attempted to have her murdered in order to inherit. In the middle of the night, in her own house, she challenged the gang and they fled. Afterwards she devoted herself to French government work in Morocco, and charitable works with animals, disadvantaged women and orphans.A pioneer feminist, she served as vice-president of the Ligue Française du Droit des Femmes (The French League for the Rights of Women) after World War I. In 1904 she became the only woman official of the Automobile Club de France (A.C.F.).
She was known in the press by the sobriquets l'Amazone and la Walkyrie de la Mécanique (Valkyrie of the motor car).

Marie Marvingt (20 February 1875 – 14 December 1963) was a French athlete, mountaineer, aviator, and journalist. She won numerous prizes for her sporting achievements including those of swimming, cycling, mountain climbing, winter sports, ballooning, flying, riding, gymnastics, athletics, rifle shooting, and fencing. She was the first woman to climb many of the peaks in the French and Swiss Alps. She was a record-breaking balloonist, an aviator, and during World War I she became the first female combat pilot. She was also a qualified surgical nurse, was the first trained and certified flight nurse in the world, and worked for the establishment of air ambulance services throughout the world. In 1903 M. Château de Thierry de Beaumanoir named her the fiancée of danger, which newspapers used to describe her for the rest of her life. It is also included on the commemorative plaque on the façade of the house where she lived at 8 Place de la Carrière, Nancy.

Pierre Mazeaud (French pronunciation: [pjɛʁ mazo]; born 24 August 1929) is a French jurist, politician and alpinist.
In February 2004, he was appointed president of the Constitutional Council of France by President of France Jacques Chirac, replacing Yves Guéna, until he was succeeded by Jean-Louis Debré in February 2007. He had been a member of the council since February 1998.Pierre Mazeaud has a doctorate in law from the University of Paris (on marriage and the condition of the married woman in ancient Rome).
From 1961 to 1964, he was a member of the judiciary. In 1976, he became a counsellor in the Council of State, a position from which he retired on 25 August 1995. During the 1970s, he held subordinate governmental positions regarding sports. As a university student, Mazeaud was an active member of the Anarchist Federation. In the 1960's he entered electoral politics as a Gaullist.
Pierre Mazeaud's main hobby is alpinism, which he practiced at high level. On 11 July 1961, Mazeaud and other fellow climbers almost died in the Mont Blanc massif due to an unexpected storm.On 15 October 1978 he became the first Frenchman to climb Mount Everest together with Jean Afanassieff, Nicolas Jaeger and Kurt Diemberger (from Austria).

Benoît Chamoux (19 February 1961 – 6 October 1995) was a French Alpinist, who claimed to have summited 13 of the Eight-thousanders in the Himalayas.
Three of these climbs are disputed and are not formally recorded (Makalu in 1995, Cho Oyu in 1990 and Shishapangma in 1990). His official recorded number of ascents is 10.

Chantal Mauduit (24 March 1964 – 13 May 1998) was a French alpinist.