Henri Agresti

Henri Agresti is a French mountain guide, linguist, filmmaker and teacher at ENSA. With his wife, Isabelle, professor of classics, they formed a high-level mountaineering team to conquer the peaks of the Alps but also around the world and achieved many firsts in the 1970s. They have four children including Blaise Agresti, also a mountaineer and mountain advisor to the General Directorate of the Gendarmerie.

Henri Agresti and his wife Isabelle went to Afghanistan twice, in 1966 with Poles, and in 1968 (first entirely French expedition) where they spent more than two months. Two months there, but three and a half months of expedition in total since they went there in 4L, crossing Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Syria, Turkey, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and Italy! They carried out several firsts, some of which will never be repeated and which gave rise to a film and a 41-page booklet, “Arid Mountains of Wakhan”.

In the 1970s, they developed a passion for the mountains of the Hoggar massif in Algeria and opened several routes including the Agresti dihedral, a daring route from the 1970s, opened in around ten days by artificial means. The couple published numerous books and mountain guides and gave numerous conferences throughout their lives.