«Sylvain Jouty, born in 1949 in Paris and raised there, began climbing in Fontainebleau at age six and stood at the top of Mont Blanc at 12. Today he is an author, alpine historian and publisher of mountain books. For 40 years, Sylvain Jouty has dealt intensively with all areas of the history of mountaineering and the mountains themselves, writing several fundamental works on the subject.

His oeuvre includes non-fiction, novels and a wide range of articles, such as the «Dictionnaire de la montagne», first published in 1999, «Montagne, les grandes premières» (2000) and «Les mots de la montagne» (2006), a splendid book full of explanations and quotations revealing the surprisingly varied vocabulary of the mountains. For the «Dictionnaire des Alpes» (2005), Jouty was both publisher and co-author. From 1983 to 1998 he headed the mountain magazine «Alpinisme et Randonnée». He is the publisher of the mountain book series «Retour à la montagne» and «Destins de montagne» (Éditions Hoëbeke).»

Albert Mountain Award 2012