Hervé Barmasse: “The Matterhorn is my Paradise”

We all want to go to Heaven, already on this earth, and the new book of the Aosta Valley mountaineer Hervé Barmasse Matterhorn the legendary mountain (Rizzoli illustrati, pp. 336) leads through his words and breathtaking photos to a climb to Heaven that he found close to home, the Cervino. Because in the end what is Paradise if not an ever new encounter with what we love most?

«In the mountains I have been allowed to experience some of my most fulfilling moments. Sublime states of joy that have given meaning to my life “, writes Hervé in the illustrated book that tells the story of the perfect mountain through the feats of mountaineers since, between 1857 and 1865, Jean-Antoine Carrel and Edward Whymper joined contended for primacy. In these pages there is a lot of history, but there are also many voices, not only that of Hervé who becomes a narrator as a protagonist, but that of the other mountaineers who have written his history and myth. The Matterhorn speaks with a human voice, just as the great one said Walter Bonatti touching the cross on the top: «He had a soul, he seemed human to me».

A declaration of love for the mountains

In the year celebrating the 700th anniversary of Dante’s death, I wanted to ask Hervé why the Matterhorn is his paradise. He replied from his home, where he is organizing a new expedition, with a declaration of love for the mountains: «The Matterhorn is a mountain that seduces you as a woman, but is also capable of advising you like an older brother. I would like to tell him never to change with the hope that in 200 years it will always be the same and not consumed by the men who climb it. At the same time I know with certainty that it knows how to be a mountain that is always different, to which you never get used to ». This is precisely the power of the mountain: always having something to say, an emotion to convey, always being new, newer than a recent object that cannot touch the soul. “Each ascension is unique, emotions, mountain conditions, climbing partners come into play: all variables that make you a different person every time you return home”.

The perfect mountain

And if we associate Heaven with beauty, the Matterhorn is also the perfect mountain from an aesthetic point of view: its shapes and geometries arouse wonder in those who look at them “and we constantly need beauty”, confirms Hervé. The Matterhorn is so present in the mountaineering imagination that on the one hand it has almost become an archetype because it has also given its name to other mountains, as an example to the Ama Dablam, called the Matterhorn of Nepal; on the other a myth: «To celebrate it and to make it seductive was the man of Mont Blanc, Horace-Bénédict de Saussure, who defined the Matterhorn as the impossible mountain. The great mountaineers who conquered it, such as Bonatti, who chose it as the fulfillment of his career, and those who lost their lives from the first ascension took care of building the myth. For us the Matterhorn is a myth also because it is the mountain of great Italian companies ».

The Matterhorn of Barmasse

For him, a native of Valtournenche, the Matterhorn is his own mountain, that of home, climbed more than 150 times. A mountain that looks like a family album as grandfather Luigi, known as Gino, great-grandfather Michel and father Marco were also Matterhorn mountain guides. And it is with him the best memory, the opening of a new route in 2010, the Couloir Barmasse: «I remember our pat on the back at the top, I will be able to do other more difficult things in my life, but that emotion is worth everything “.

Where there is no heart, primates do not have the same meaning. Mountaineers are not madmen who defy death, but they are people in love with their dreams. “I am convinced that despite the strong sporting component that characterizes mountaineering, more than the primates and limits that there will always be to overcome, what counts is how you manage to tell the experience on that mountain, the climbs are the mirror of the soul”.

The words of Hervé Barmasse are an invitation to find one’s peak in life. Heaven can be seen from there.