Founding Hexatrek - the 3034km mega-trail through France

#2 - You were born and raised in France, what gave you the desire to go on an adventure around the world?

I wasn't really born with the desire to be an explorer! I started to work from the relatively young age of 16, and by the time I got to 24 I felt a deep sense of dissatisfaction. I had never done anything crazy! I didn't want to waste my early years. 

I started to discover a love for nature, I would always try to take my bike instead of my car. I started hiking in the forests of Fontainebleau, one of the only truly natural places close by where I lived in Paris. Then I started to travel. My first road trip was a 5-week adventure in the USA, in the West. I fell head over heels in love with this place, and that would become hugely significant to me.

Later I traveled to beautiful Iceland and I started to feel more of a desire to keep exploring more of the natural world. I decided to quit my job with the idea to rebuild my own van and go on a road trip to New Zealand.

After 6 months of adventure, I came back home to Paris and for the first time in my life, I felt really depressed about it! So I told myself that it was not the time to finish traveling and I continued on, hitch-hiking through Nordic countries which finally brought me on this crossing of America and the Pacific Crest Trail.

#6 - How was the HexaTrek project born?

To tell you the truth, this project was in my head since the Pacific Crest Trail. In September 2020, when I came back to France, I started to develop the project. In March I launched it and told myself that there must be some people interested in an adventure like this and even if it didn't work, at least it would be a great experience to create my own trail and to have tried! 

After several approaches, I said to myself, why not set up a crowdfunding campaign? I had never done this before but it could be a good indicator to see if people were interested in the project or if I was the only crazy one who wanted to do this! It was a great success, people were so generous and that's when it really started moving! I was then able to create an association, a website, and a dedicated mobile application.

#8 - Many more people will be trekking through the protected areas on the official Hexatrek route. Have you taken any action to ensure your participants are respecting the environment?

I am in close contact with all the nature reserves as well as the national & regional nature parks for the HexaTrek project. We work together to help ensure participants respect the rules of protected areas.

We decided to create our own Hexatrek mobile application, to achieve two main goals:

1) Make the entire route available with GPX files and an offline mode.  Rather than physically marking the trails, which would have been an almost impossible task. Many of the nature reserves and parks would not have allowed this.

2) To clearly reference where bivouacking is forbidden and where there are protected areas with rules to follow.

We wanted to create a beautiful experience for people, but make sure that our participants know and understand the importance of protecting nature, and respecting the environment. 

Within our mobile application, we have made it straightforward for our participants by clearly marking the route with green and red sections. Green outlines where you are in a Regional Natural Park or National Natural Park in which bivouacking is permitted, this makes up for 71% of the route. Red outlines where you are in a sensitive area or private land, and it is forbidden to bivouac.

Yes, Hexatrek will bring more people on the trails but it is not a family hike (e.g. a couple with 3 kids and a labrador). We are not talking about millions of people. This year 400 people want to walk the entire HexaTrek, which is more than I imagined but it is far from the 6,000 people who tackle the Pacific Crest Trail each year. 

In my experience, the type of people who take on HexaTrek are people who are already aware of the rules and are careful to respect nature.  Often keeping their food in small jars that they reuse. They don't throw waste into nature, everything they take with them stays with them on the trail. In short, it's a philosophy, a culture, a way of traveling in its own right.

Besides that, we also created 'L'Hexatrek Association' in order to make people aware of and respect the rules and to act appropriately when on the trails. For the moment, we are only at the beginning of creating this, and we still have a feedback and rebuilding process to undertake to achieve what we want. But the more the 'HexaTrek Association' grows the more we will seek out the important work of further informing our participants of the rules and regulations. We have already created a 'charter of good conduct' that we try to communicate as much as possible. We have also set up an online information exchange group where we talk about these subjects (authorization of bivouac, authorization of dogs, good conduct, advice, etc).

#10 - Taking your time and enjoying the ride seems to be fitting for most who take on Hexatrek, is this how you see it?

I think so, yes. You don't really run, you hike, you take your time! For example, at the end, I was walking 50 km a day and people thought that was completely crazy, but not at all! Many do the same. 

After 3-4 weeks of walking, your body changes and adapts. You start walking at 5 am with the sunrise, you are in your thoughts connected to nature. Before you know it, it's 10 am and you have already done about 20 km. Then you say to yourself 'well maybe I'll have breakfast', your day is just starting!

And yet, I adopted the philosophy of taking my time,  taking lots of breaks, stopping as soon as I saw something pretty, meditating, listening to music, and meeting and chatting with other walkers.

#12 - If you had to do just one part of the HexaTrek, which one would you choose?

In my life, I have been asked some questions! But this one is much too hard! My chauvinistic side would push me to say: the Chamonix - Mont Blanc crossing of course! I live there and it is my temple. The South Balcony with the Bossons lakes up to Les Houches, it's an incredible experience of 70 km with a view on all the needles but frankly, it's too hard to choose, there are so many!

I just spent 3 days in the Ballon des Vosges and in the Vosges du Nord, it's just exceptional! There are sublime viewpoints, with so many truly wild places! The crests of the Jura are also magnificent. I spent my teenage years in the gorges of the Tarn, the Ardèche and the Aveyron, especially the Dourbie, it's just too beautiful, there are plateaus with canyons more than 500m deep, the water is completely transparent.

In the Pyrenees, I only know the Catalan Pyrenees but I can't wait to discover the rest and I think I'm going to be really amazed because it seems to be everything I love: wild and with a lot of mountains!

We are so lucky to have a country where it is so beautiful all the time and super varied! From the Vosges to the Pyrenees, the landscapes change drastically but also accents, cuisines and wines, architecture etc. The diversity of the cultural and natural heritage is simply sublime!