An Obituary by Jean Pierre Jacquier, guardian of the Ubine Chalet, taken from the spring edition of Les Amis de la Nature

To Olivier

Your disappearance turned out to be so brutal and unfair that it hit us like a bolt from the blue with its implacable logic.  Hour after hour and then over the two days required by the rescue services to find your lifeless body at the bottom of the Hauts-Forts in Avoriaz.

The mounting concern turned into an immense sorrow that squeezes at our heart as soon as your face appears to us.  Your life left at the heart of that austere mountain which you loved so much and in which you invested all you force.

Your smile remains as does your long gait, your amazing rhythm, your memory like an elephant and many other memories we guard from having known you.  Everything disappears with time but memories resist.

To such an extent that sometimes, when we are happy and by ourselves in the mountains, in the midst of nature under the rain at the bottom of a fir tree, on a precarious ridge surrounded by fog, or pushing on our poles on an endless glacier we can sometimes feel like there is a presence next to us; the presence of a loved one whom we miss.

Oliver will still be there next to us who have sometimes walked along his side on his childhood and later followed him on the routes to the sky.