Serge Bazin

Serge supervises our expeditions in Central Asia and the Himalayas on high- and very high-altitude peaks. He also runs a number of refresher and mountaineering courses on 4000-meter peaks in the Alps. He speaks French and English

Serge has extensive experience of expeditions to 7000 and 8000 meters. He has supervised climbs of Cho Oyu, Manaslu and Makalu.

He regularly guides Peak Lenin, and it was with Serge that we launched the demanding Snow Leopard challenge, which aims to climb the five highest peaks in the former USSR.

Originally from Toulon, Serge Bazin did his military service with the Alpine hunters in Bourg-Saint-Maurice. Trained as a topographer and surveyor, he moved to Chamonix in 1985. Together with a team of surveyors, they regularly measure the summit of Mont Blanc, which they climb on foot or skis. In 2021, they will celebrate their twentieth measurement!

For more than 20 years, he has been concentrating on his job as a mountain guide, and has travelled the whole planet, tackling rare or more famous summits, with participants he guides or with friends. He gives training courses, and prefers self-guided alpine-style expeditions in snow, ice, rock or mixed terrain. He has climbed several Big Walls (El Capitan eight times in Yosemite, USA).

He has been passionate about the Himalayas, and Nepal in particular, for 30 years, and returns there every year, either alone or with participants. Treks, traverses, ascents to 6000, 7000, 8000... His experience makes him one of France's most experienced high-altitude guides.

• Serge has guided participants to the summits of three eight-thousanders: Makalu (8475 m), Manaslu (8163 m) and Cho Oyu (8201 m).

In addition to numerous treks and passes approaching 6,000 meters, his list of Asian climbs includes the following peaks, most often with participants he guided, and sometimes several times:

• Summits over 7000 meters: Himlung Himal (7127 m), Lhakpa Ri (7040 m), Korzhenevskoi Peak (Tajikistan, 7105 m) and  Lenin Peak (Kyrgyzstan, 7134 m), which he has climbed four or five times. He has also attempted the rare Nepalese peaks of Makalu 2 (7650 m - stop at 7500), Langtang Lirung (7200 m - stop at 7000), Ratna Chuli (7127 m - stop at 7000) and Gyanjing Kang (7200 m - stop at 6600 m) with other participants;

• Summits over 6,000 meters: Ama Dablan (6856 m), Mera Peak (6470 m), Island Peak (6 187 m), Lobuche Peak (6100 m), Pacharmo (6273 m), central Kongde Ri (6187 m), Kyajo Ri (6186 m), Daulhagiri VI - Ongde (6500 m), Chulu West (6419 m), Chulu East (6584 m), Thorung Peak (6100 m), Dhampus Peak (6012 m).

Since 1993, Serge has been offering children special "child walkers" trekking tours, which have seen some forty 8-18 year-olds trekking Nepal with him over the years. Some of them have since become guides...

Finally, he is a guide-trainer for ANENA - Association Nationale Etude Neige et Avalanches, a Grenoble-based training and information institute founded in 1971 by Louis Néel, winner of the Nobel Prize for physics.

In short, Serge has the experience and pedagogical know-how to optimize your expedition's chances of success, both in terms of technical aspects and group management, both in terms of the pace at which the group builds up its strength and in terms of its progress - key elements in this type of expedition.