On January 31, 1990, in Aosta, Italy, François entered a world where mountains weren’t just landscape they were legacy. Growing up in Cervinia, in the Valtournenche valley, he lived at the foot of the Matterhorn, one of the most iconic peaks in mountaineering history.
His surname, Cazzanelli, and his mother’s maiden name, Maquignaz, had been linked to alpine guiding for over a century. Five generations of his family had walked these mountains before him.
“In the mountains I feel totally at ease with myself,” François says. “The vastness of the peaks makes me feel free and carefree and it is when I reach this level of well-being that I can express myself at my best.”
Where It All Began
François first climbed the Matterhorn on June 27, 2003, when he was just 13 years old. His father took him up the mountain that would become his greatest teacher.
That first climb planted something deep inside him. Since then, he has climbed the Matterhorn 77 times, including five winter ascents across 14 different routes.
“The relationship I have with this mountain is very intimate,” he explains. “I consider the Matterhorn a master who has been able to train and inspire me continuously. What I have learned on the Matterhorn I used it in all my mountain adventures.”
In 2012, at age 22, François became an aspiring Mountain Guide and joined the prestigious Società Guide Del Cervino. The path his family had walked for generations was now his own.
Learning to Breathe Thin Air
François’s early expeditions to the Himalayas were humbling. In 2012, together with Marco Camandona and Emeric Favre, he opened a new route on Churen Himal in Nepal, a 7,371-meter peak in the Dhaulagiri massif. He struggled badly with the altitude.
“At the time, my connection with the Himalayas wasn’t great,” he remembers. “I struggled a lot, and in those years I had difficulty adapting to the altitude; honestly, I didn’t feel comfortable.” His body was not ready for that kind of physical effort, and he was always behind the others.
Two years later, he tried Kangchenjunga with a team of experienced climbers. At 24, he reached 7,800 meters but had to turn back. It was a disaster. “When I got back, I never wanted to hear about 8,000-meter peaks again,” he admits.
But something about those mountains kept calling him back. “What really captivated me about these mountains was their beauty, and the high altitude adds so much difficulty even to the simplest things,” he says. “I was certainly drawn to their beauty, their wildness, and their immense scale.”
François Cazzanelli
François didn’t give up. He went to Patagonia instead and climbed Cerro Torre, where the technical climbing suited him better. More importantly, he started understanding his body differently.
“I totally changed my acclimatization approach,” he explains. “I am an athlete, my body needs to move all the time, and the moment I understood this, my performance at altitude improved a great deal.”
François had spent years as an elite athlete on Italy’s ski mountaineering team, competing and winning at European and World Championships. He realized his body didn’t respond well to the traditional approach of sitting in camps for weeks. He needed to keep moving, to train with quality rather than just accumulate hours at altitude.
Finding His Way Fast and Light
In 2018, everything changed. François guided a client up Everest using supplemental oxygen. Six days later, he climbed Lhotse, the world’s fourth-highest peak, without oxygen. That’s when it clicked he could climb these giants quickly.
The following year, on Manaslu, the eighth-highest mountain at 8,163 meters, François put it all together. He climbed from base camp to summit and back in 17 hours and 43 minutes, covering 44 kilometers with all his gear.
“I climb fast and light not to make the fastest time,” he says. “I use speed as a tool to increase safety by spending less time at extreme altitude.”
For François, this approach made sense. He hates sleeping in tents and carrying heavy packs. Speed climbing was natural for him he’d done it for years in the Mont Blanc massif and on the Matterhorn.
“I have never spoken of records,” he insists. “You can achieve a faster or slower time for a climb, and registering it is a good way to compare with other alpinists, but the word ‘record’ makes no sense because conditions are different every time.”
The Perfect Summer, and Its Price
The summer of 2022 was supposed to be François’s dream expedition—climb Nanga Parbat, Broad Peak, and K2, all fast and light.
Nanga Parbat was perfect. The mountain was nearly empty on summit day, with fixed ropes only up to 6,200 meters. François summited in 20 hours without supplemental oxygen. “It was a pristine mountain, completely deserted,” he recalls. “It’s my best memory of that summer.”
A week later, he and teammate Pietro Picco opened a new route variation on Nanga Parbat between Base Camp and Camp 2.
Then came Broad Peak. François set off with French mountaineer Benjamin Védrines. After 12 hours of climbing, François reached Rocky Peak at 8,035 meters, just 12 meters below the true summit. But then he witnessed something that would shake him deeply.
A climber fell right in front of him, tumbling down a 1,000-meter face. François immediately knew the man was dead. As a mountain guide and rescuer, his instinct was to search. He descended 100 meters down the face with his ice axe before reality hit him.
“I thought, ‘Hey Franz, what are you doing? Do you want to die?'” He climbed back to the ridge and descended, spending an hour searching before his team urged him down via radio.
“I’m a mountain guide, a rescuer, and the only conceivable solution in my mind at that moment was to find out what had happened to him… and then go back down.”
Ten days later, François summited K2 with Pietro Picco and Jerome Perruquet. “A dream come true,” he said.
Understanding the Mountains
François doesn’t seek mountains to summit them. He seeks them to understand himself within them.
“Experience is the most fundamental,” he says about knowing when to push forward or turn back. “You also have to listen to your instincts. And stay clear-headed. Never push too hard to exceed your limits, or you’ll lose your focus.”
He remembers climbing with Kilian Jornet near his home in the Aosta Valley. At the end, Jornet told him “Today we did all those big ridges unroped, but we were always clear-headed, we never pushed beyond our limits.” For François, this is the real challenge maintaining clarity even when moving fast.
His approach to climbing is refreshingly honest. He doesn’t particularly enjoy soloing. On Ama Dablam, which he climbed in 5 hours and 32 minutes, he encountered other climbers throughout the ascent. On Nanga Parbat, where he spent more time alone, he admits “The worst thing for me is setting off alone in the pitch black. Mentally, it’s tough.”
François prefers climbing with partners. With Andreas Steindl from Zermatt, he’s linked the four ridges of the Matterhorn and other major routes. “I love being in the mountains and meeting people, having different climbing partners,” he says. “Back home, we’ve created a strong group with a young, motivated team.”
More Than a Climber
François wears many hats. He’s a mountain guide, working year-round to help others realize their dreams. “When I see happiness in the eyes of those I accompany on the mountains, the satisfaction is immense whether it is an easy trip or one of the great classics of the Alps.”
He’s also a mountain rescuer in the Aosta Valley, working two or three days a month. “I do rescue work to give something back to the mountaineering community,” he explains. “I hope that if I ever need help in my life, there will be someone as motivated and prepared as I hope to be.”
He teaches aspiring guides, finding inspiration in their enthusiasm. And he serves as an organizer for the Mezzalama Trophy, a major ski mountaineering race on Monte Rosa, giving back to the sport that gave him his athletic foundation.
François is also an ambassador for Sanonani, a small nonprofit from the Aosta Valley that runs an orphanage on the outskirts of Kathmandu and organizes solidarity projects for Nepalese children.
His connection to Nepal runs deeper than just climbing. “The Nepalese are an amazing community; they have given me so much and helped me immensely in achieving my dreams,” he says. “I have truly built many friendships in Nepal, I have many dear friends there, and returning is always a pleasure.”
Mountains and Tourism
François has strong views about what’s happening in the Himalayas. He’s been climbing there regularly since 2012, and he’s watched things change dramatically.
“I have to say that things have changed a lot,” he observes. “First of all, the number of people has increased more and more climbers are going to the Himalayas.
Most of them are involved in commercial expeditions on the standard routes of the 8,000-meter peaks, or on iconic mountains like Ama Dablam or Mera Peak. Only a very small percentage climb the more remote and unknown mountains.”
But the most concerning change isn’t human it’s environmental. “What has changed drastically is the climate. The weather has completely shifted it is much warmer in the Himalayas now, and there is less snowfall, just as here in the Alps. The climate change we are experiencing is the same, only at different altitudes.”
“I’m not against the crowds, because it’s the same for us in the Alps,” he says. “People have the right to come and climb the same mountains if they want to, and the people who live in the highest mountains on earth therefore have the right to make a living from tourism, just as we have.”
But something bothers him deeply about the terminology and culture.
“We can no longer make a real distinction between mountaineering and high-altitude tourism. People who summit with oxygen, the 8,000 tour operators… It’s no longer mountaineering, it’s tourism. Should we be highlighting every person who climbs Mont Blanc with a guide?”
He’s even more direct about the problem “Nowadays, there is a lot of confusion: just by summiting an 8,000-meter peak with an oxygen mask and the help of ten Sherpas, taking a nice photo, you can immediately become a social media star. But that is not alpinism, it’s tourism. By that logic, you would need to make an article or a film for every client I take up the Matterhorn.”
As someone who has worked as a mountain guide in the Alps for over 250 years of tradition, François understands tourism. But he believes distinctions matter. “If you hire a Sherpa, it’s the same thing as hiring a guide in the Alps. That is tourism. The same with using supplementary O2.”
For François, the future is clear but requires honesty: “In the future, it will be necessary to make a clearer distinction between high-altitude tourism and true alpinism.”
A Decade of Persistence
In October 2025, François achieved something that meant more to him than any single-day speed climb. After attempting the 6,781-meter Kimshung peak three times over a decade in spring 2015, fall 2016, and again in 2024 he finally summited.
Along with Giuseppe Vidoni, Benjamin Zoerer, and Lukas Waldner, François climbed the northeast face in a single day from 5,450 meters. They summited at 12:30 pm on October 20 and were back in the valley by 7 pm. The route was 1,300 meters long and 60 degrees steep.
Ten years. Three attempts. One mountain. This is the side of François that doesn’t always make headlines the persistence, the willingness to return again and again to an unfinished dream.
“Over these ten years I have matured deeply as an alpinist,” he reflects. “Not only has my technical preparation changed, but above all the way I read the mountain and relate to it. We had the time to get to know it, to observe it, and to understand how to approach it. Today I am a very different climber compared to ten years ago, with far more experience and a level of maturity that allows me to face certain situations with greater clarity and respect.”
Philosophy of the Mountains
François’s mountaineering philosophy is simple but profound. “A project has to inspire me, first and foremost,” he says. “Whether it’s rock climbing, mixed climbing, speed climbing, or link-ups, it has to inspire me. I follow my imagination; in my eyes, a mountaineer must maintain that sense of wonder, creativity, and imagination.”
He’s not interested in collecting all 14 eight-thousanders. He prefers flexible objectives and doesn’t enjoy waiting out bad weather for weeks. “It is good to have several options in mind, and to change goals if conditions are not right.”
His advice to clients reflects his core belief “You have to go to the mountains to have fun. It’s not the doctor who prescribes going to the mountains. You have to come home with wonderful memories.”
But he also emphasizes preparation: “For people to enjoy the mountains, you have to be prepared too. There needs to be respect between the mountain, the guide who takes you there, and yourself.”
Looking Ahead
François remains curious about the mountains, with dreams still to chase and the list goes on.
“Certainly, unless for work reasons or perhaps to satisfy some personal whims, the standard routes on the 8,000-meter peaks don’t interest me,” he says. “What attracts me is seeking new challenges, looking for new adventures on little-known mountains or on wild walls, perhaps even on 8,000-meter peaks, but also on more unknown and untamed mountains where there is still much to do.”
He’s drawn to exploration and adventure in areas he hasn’t been to yet. “I don’t rule out some new speed projects, but they would have to be very special and very meaningful.”
When asked about the future of Himalayan alpinism, his vision is clear “Surely, the future of high-level Himalayan alpinism is linked to speed.
Some objectives simply cannot be achieved without being fast. I think, for example, of the great walls of the 8,000-meter peaks walls where there is still so much to do and so much to write. I’m referring, for instance, to the south face of Cho Oyu, the south face of Lhotse, and the south face of Annapurna, just to name a few.”
“I never announce my plans before I’ve actually done them,” he says. “For good luck I never say my goals in advance. I like to reach the result first and then communicate it.”
In 30 years, François hopes to still be active, maintaining his passion for mountaineering while passing on his experience to young guides. “I’d like to become a coordinator of guide training courses in the Aosta Valley, to pass on the experience I’ve gained to young people.”
A Life in Balance
What stands out most about François Cazzanelli isn’t just his impressive list of ascents 77 times up the Matterhorn, speed climbs on multiple eight-thousanders, new routes across the Alps and Himalayas. It’s how he lives his entire life in the mountains.
He climbs for himself, fast and light. He guides others, helping them realize their dreams. He rescues those in trouble. He teaches the next generation. He gives back through charity work in Nepal. And through it all, he maintains his wonder, his creativity, his imagination.
The mountains shaped François from birth, but he has shaped his own path through them. Not by summiting peaks, but by understanding them. Not by setting records, but by finding freedom. Not by doing what others expect, but by following what inspires him.
“In the mountains I feel totally at ease with myself,” he says.
And in those mountains, François Cazzanelli is exactly where he belongs.
