The Everest,
600 people reached the summit of this mountain.
Last year, 679 licenses were issued for this season.
At the moment, they are climbing, there have been quite a lot this week.
It has become an industry, as some of you know.
Why ? Because it has become relatively easy to climb the Everest.
Just about everyone here in this room
should be able to do this after one to two years of training.
Today is always an adventure to climb the Everest,
there are always risks.
But what is adventure today?
What are the limits that man has always pushed back
and will continue to push back?
Today, on Everest,
there is logistics, security is increased,
and that’s why a lot of people are starting to turn to the deserts.
So in 2008, I left with a cart behind me.
I made the black journey that you can see on the map,
in the most arid desert of Australia, the Simpson.
It’s six times Belgium, it’s finally a small desert.
And in there, there is absolutely no human who lives there.
I wanted to make the full journey that you see on the map,
but I had to shorten it a bit,
avoiding a point that I could not reach,
because he was going to run out of water.
I was in danger of missing my plane,
and my boss would not have been very happy if I arrived late.
The yellow ride was made by the greatest Australian adventurer,
called John Muir.
Before leaving for the desert,
a month before, I came across this text.
I got scared,
because, if you do not know how to speak English, he says:
the polar treks are easier than the treks in the deserts,
and climbing the Everest is a child’s game.
He did all that, him.
But I still left,
with my cart, 215 kilos to shoot behind me,
and 35 days later, world premiere,
I managed what even the Australians did not think to realize.
For them, it was impossible.
I was lucky not to know that it was impossible.
And then two years ago, I thought:
“This cart is a burden,
I do not have so much freedom to be and to live in this desert,
this complete immersion in the landscape, with animals and nature.
And I decided to go to three rather small deserts,
and ask me a question.
I am an engineer,
I like solving problems.
The question was very simple:
“What is the maximum distance one can travel in a desert,
just leaving with his two feet and a backpack on his back? “
I started with Death Valley, United States, California:
more than 230 kilometers almost in a straight line,
as you can see.
So what does it look like?
First of all, obviously
to minimize the weight of the backpack,
I decided to leave without a stove.
Which means that I have never eaten hot.
As you see on the screen,
nuts, cereal bars,
salt, some treats and of course chocolate.
So, we start by going down the canyons,
for a few kilometers,
then I went along a dry river for a hundred kilometers,
before arriving at the dunes.
And before arriving at the dunes, I made a small syncope,
I was leaving,
and I was fortunate that there was a little shade in this part of the river,
I was able to take refuge.
I waited seven o’clock in the evening for the sun to go down so I could cool down.
I could not cool down anymore,
I will explain later why.
So obviously, I go in very beautiful landscapes.
The Valley of Death, there are several different terrains: there are dunes –
I’m not very smiling, but happy to be on the highest dune,
and to have a very nice view for the sunrise.
And some dunes later,
I came across a metaté.
A metaté is a stone,
here, indian stone,
that Indians use to grind grain.
This stone could be 500 years old,
but, from the nose, it must not be very old, maybe 20 years old.
The difficulties in these deserts, I had plenty.
I was looking for that:
difficulties, problems, new things to learn.
The wind, bringing its salt, and its sand also.
So, some small storms,
not very scary,
but it’s still impressive to have some.
Except for one evening when I had such an intense wind;
the ground was so hard that I could not fix my tent on the ground,
impossible to plant the stakes.
My tent almost flew away, and me with it.
And so I decided
to pick up the double roof and sleep like that, in my half cubic meter,
I was at least protected from the wind,
It went very well.
Then I arrived on the highway,
this crust of salt that is Badwater, in the Valley of Death.
It’s rather simple to cross except on this kind of terrain,
They are like stalagmites, like heaped cornflakes,
a heap of salt and solidified mud; when you walk on it, you go down.
We always have bad feet.
My backpack is rather heavy, so I have very bad feet.
A variant: when it’s a little bigger, there are holes.
You can put your foot in the holes, hurt your shin.
If you’re lucky, there is no scorpion sleeping.
I always have my mistress with me, I always plan my crossings
with at least a full moon to enlighten me at night,
since I usually walk –
in the Valley of Death,
I started once at 2 am, I finished at 10 pm
more than 20 hours of walking on the day.
It is very very long.
This fatigue accumulates throughout the expedition that lasts several days.
Second desert.
I returned to the desert last August, to make another crossing,
without the cart,
the journey in red,
the minimum I wanted to achieve – I even planned to do the black end.
I did not know how to do it, but I was already happy to make an east-west crossing,
without a cart, from the Simpson.
It was completely crazy.
How to really cross these deserts?
First thing: I put a lot of salt in my water.
In the Valley of Death, I was three times the lethal dose;
we still do not understand how I’m still here.
Now, I better control the dose that must be put in my water;
salt allows me to keep my moisture in me,
not to sweat, not to dehydrate me.
Very nice, not dehydrated.
But when you do not sweat, you do not drain the heat.
That’s why I was overheated in the Valley of Death,
that I almost made a faint, and that I put 3-4 hours without moving in the shade,
to cool me down.
But I learned.
That’s the weight of my bag,
from Sydney to Alice Springs:
18 kg 40,
it’s the weight of my bag
without the chocolate bars,
some figs, some vitamins C and especially my 40 liters of water.
I left with 61 kg on the back,
which is rather heavy.
What’s in it? Some water,
video camera,
tripod, satellite phone, cards obviously,
because if everything breaks, it remains the compass and the cards.
My food, still no stove, the minimum weight for my safety.
And we are loaded like a donkey.
When loaded like that, with 45 kg on the back, the rest in front,
and the kind of big burne at six kilograms is not easy to lift.
We’re like that, two km / h all day, the first day,
Obviously, the weight decreases according to the progression.
And we adapt.
At first, I walked like that the first hour,
it did not work, my shoulders hurt,
we’re looking for each other, we’re learning how to take that on our backs.
What is funny with such a weight on the back is very heavy,
but the weight is secondary,
because the first thing that happens is pain.
To have maximum weight on the hips,
the backpack is tight,
which means that if you drink a little too much water,
we start to feel nauseated, want to vomit what we just drank.
Second thing:
the weight of the bag becomes so overwhelming that after one hour,
the blood does not go well, I’m like that with my stick
and I find myself almost on the ground.
So every hour, I try to take a break.
Finally, it is a mental struggle against hunger, thirst, pain, loneliness.
I’m doing pretty well in solitude.
What types of land do we see in the Simpson?
It’s 1,100 parallel dunes,
with valleys and a lot of vegetation that looks like that.
One day, having exceeded 40 degrees, at noon, I stopped four hours,
because it was not possible to keep walking
with such heat.
It was possible, but my goal is to go as far as possible –
I work like a car: with X liters per 100 kilometers.
Me, it’s the same with water.
I have to maximize my kilometers per liter of water consumed.
If I eat too much when it’s too hot,
I may go ahead,
but as much do it later,
when I go to consume a lot less water per kilometer.
That’s my harem …
fly!
The flies, it’s very simple,
They are there from seven in the morning until seven in the evening,
they are walking on my face freely.
I had a net the first day,
and in the Simpson in 2008 too.
The problem is when there is a wind breeze,
it creates a screen,
and finally we have less fresh air, and so, we are heating up.
I made the decision, I still do not know why today:
I continued 12 days without the net
with these creatures that wander.
They accepted me, they sucked me everywhere,
and I accepted them too.
The terrain, still not easy to cross,
a little nougat, very beautiful flowers,
to get to the center of the Simpson Desert.
Strangely enough, I am the 1st person in the world to have reached it on foot twice.
It is already a challenge in 4×4, the first time in ’93.
The Everest was, I believe, in ’53.
It’s a bit of Australia’s Everest, the center of the Simpson.
Oddly, I had two days of rain.
Owl !
It will be colder, there will be water.
Yes, there was water! Good.
Except that in two days, it will evaporate.
And it’s better not to drink:
the depth is such that it is full of bacteria; I risk being sick.
The cold was good, because I was less hot;
on the other hand, as my feet were all wet,
I had to squeeze my socks every half hour,
to lose weight on the feet.
My average is down ten kilometers a day –
at that moment, I was aiming 35 km a day,
I was only 25 during these two days.
Last salt lake, and finally arrived
at the confluence point of the three Australian states
that I wanted to reach eight years ago.
Super happy ! Happy!
A little burned on the nose.
Third desert:
the two largest salt deserts in the world, in Bolivia.
I made a crossing attempt in 2013,
failed, it happens.
But failure allowed me to learn so many things
that I succeeded the two previous deserts, then this desert too,
on its length, so from north to south.
What does it look like ?
Again a heavy backpack, 41 kg at the start.
The concern is the altitude.
With the altitude – at this point, we are at about 4000 meters –
we breathe a lot, especially with the bag.
We are like this:
(Breathes hard and loudly)
And to breathe like that – well yes –
we end up swallowing an air that is very salty,
who burns the trachea, the nose,
It’s okay ! (Coughing) It’s not easy!
I had a nosebleed – that’s okay –
but some people, after one or two days,
begin to spit blood from their bronchi.
It’s not great, but it’s fine.
The Uyuni desert is composed of a convex flat land,
the largest salt crust in the world.
The difficulty is mental.
The island you see in the middle, it is 40 km.
But the closer we get, the more we feel that it is far away.
40 km, it takes a day to get there;
mentally, it’s very difficult to accept.
The shadow, there is none,
we do with what we have.
Surprisingly, I came across water.
This water is saturated with salt –
to drink a liter taken to the hospital within one hour.
On the other hand,
as I was amazed to see that there was water,
I put my stick,
I hit the bottom, but at one point I was able to put it to my hand,
I did not want to let go.
I could stir, and under me, there was a cavity.
I heard later that some vehicles,
from time to time, pierced the salt crust and had an accident.
It’s not very well known to tourists, it would be scary,
we prefer not to say it over there.
By cons, I would be interested that NASA gives me the plans of the cavities.
If there is a big one, I’m interested in diving there,
pardon, under-salt,
in the Uyuni desert.
I will not explain to you why I am doing all this.
I did not find better than that.
There are plenty of reasons why I make these expeditions,
(English) You’ll have that tonight, (French) finally, this afternoon.
On the other hand,
what I meant was that,
finally, adventure today is taking risks,
but I did not define it.
Adventure is a business at risk.
What is a risk?
A risk,
it is the probability that what we do will fail.
The more likely it is to fail, the greater the risk.
In the deserts, I was at risk.
If I fell unconscious, I was not found.
I do not know how to call for help by being unconscious.
That’s Olympus Mons.
I want to say –
I’m already thinking about it, actually –
to those who want to go to Mars:
“It’s good to get ready to go,
but one would have to be more ambitious and risk much more than that. “
I think we must be able to say to ourselves:
we want to climb Mount Olympus,
which is the biggest peak of the solar system –
he is on Mars.
Compared to Everest, which is – we are going to simplify – nine kilometers high,
Olympus Mons is 25 km high.
The cliff that you see in the shadow, on the edge of Olympus Mons,
it’s ten kilometers high.
And the nice little plateau is twice Belgium on the surface.
That’s the easy part; I think we can do it by bike.
It will be necessary to find solutions, but the interest is these problems.
Let’s find out how to do Olympus Mons.
When we have found that, going to Mars will be gnognot.
Well I think.
I want to end with this slide, “ugly”,
with a reach.
If you want to go on an adventure,
it will take risks.
It will be necessary to aim further than your goal.
If your goal is A, aim for B.
Pass the gray clouds.
You see these big problems? Go much further.
Take risks
and have a very good adventure!
Thank you.
(Applause)
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