Henri Cordier (mountaineer)

Henri Cordier or Henry Cordier (1856 – 7 June 1877) was a French mountaineer. In his short two-year career, he became the first Frenchman to reach the level of the English members of the Alpine Club, in the silver age of alpinism in the second half of the 19th century, which was dominated by the development of mountaineering in the Alps. With some of the Alpine Club's mountain guides and mountaineers, he led significant first ascents in the Mont Blanc massif and in the Dauphiné Alps (the Massif des Ecrins).

A grandson of geologist Louis Cordier and a great-nephew of politician and scientist Louis Ramond de Carbonnières, Henri Cordier pursued studies at the École libre des sciences politiques, founded in 1872, where he received high honors. He was first attracted by the Pyrenees, to which he traveled in 1874, before visiting the Swiss Alps the following year. His brief Alpine career combined talent and audacity. In the 1876 season he succeeded in making eleven first ascents. He claimed to have climbed the western peak of the Meije that year, but was subsequently forced to retract the claim.

Descending from Le Plaret, the group left the glacier, successfully passed the crevasse zone, unroped and ate a meal. Afterwards, Cordier went ahead. In front of his horrified companions, he performed a standing glissade down a steep snow slope above the glacial torrent of La Clause below the surface. The snow surface broke suddenly and Cordier was carried away by the white water under the ice and drowned. Jakob Anderegg was lowered into the twelve-foot hole on a rope, but could find no trace of Cordier and nearly suffocated before being pulled up. According to Henri Béraldi, Cordier had very poor eyesight, but refused glasses due to vanity. As he amused himself by slipping on the snowy slope, he was alerted by his guides and replied, "Ne vous inquiétez pas, je vais m'arrêter sur ce rocher noir" ("Do not worry, I'll stop on the black rock"). Unfortunately for Cordier, the rock in reality was a hole.

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