Roger Verdegen

Roger Verdegen, born May 3, 1935, in Nice, and died December 5, 2024, in Marseille, is considered "the historical guide of the Verdon Canyon," a specialist in the Verdon River. He wrote several reference guides on the subject.

Roger Verdegen, born in 1935, was estranged from his family. Taking his mother's name, he was placed in a wet nurse in the Nice hinterland. He learned the trade of goatherd in Villard-la-Croix. He spent the war years in Auvergne, where he became a messenger for the Resistance. At the end of the war, he was in an orphanage in the Toulouse region. Ill and sent to boarding school, he was neglected and mistreated. Regularly deprived of school, he tried to catch up and joined the army. He worked in various professions both in France and abroad.

He settled in the Grenoble region where he became a gymnastics and outdoor instructor, and a speleologist. He suffered a serious accident, narrowly escaping drowning. It took twenty-five minutes of cardiac massage to revive him. He discovered the Grand Canyon du Verdon in 1968. Based in La Palud-sur-Verdon, he explored it for years aboard a small canoe made of rubber tubes and photographed it in all seasons. He became a guide and, like Isidore Blanc half a century earlier, led generations of amateur adventurers in aquatic exploration, thus revealing all its wild beauty.