Courmayeur · Italy
Facing Mont Blanc
On 8 August 1786 two men from Chamonix, Jacques Balmat and Michel-Gabriel Paccard, reached the summit of Mont Blanc. They were not mountaineers: the word did not yet exist. One was a crystal hunter accustomed to crossing the glaciers alone to sell quartz, the other a village doctor with a scientific curiosity and a barometer. They climbed without rope or crampons, with iron-shod poles and woollen clothes, slept a night in the open on the snow, and remained up there half an hour taking pressure readings with hands that had ceased to respond. From that day the mountain ceased to be only a danger to avoid, a place one went out of necessity or hunger, and became a summit one could climb by choice. All you see around you, the guides, the hotels, the huts, this valley that lives off people who came to look, begins on that August afternoon.
Go deeper
Who was Balmat?
A crystal hunter from Chamonix, at home on glaciers and used to moving alone at altitude. He found the route and talked Paccard into trying.
What's a crystal hunter?
Someone who climbed onto the glaciers looking for quartz crystals to sell. It was poor, dangerous work, and it produced the first men who knew the high mountains metre by metre.
How long does the climb take now?
Two days by the normal route, with a night in a hut, if you are fit and the weather holds. It is still a serious climb: there are accidents every year, and altitude does not forgive improvisation.
Where it is
More stories in Courmayeur
- The Aiguille Blanche
- The Aiguille Noire
- Duke of the Abruzzi Alpine Museum
- The Brenva Spur
- The Guides' House
- Church of Saint Pantaléon
- The quiet col
- The Col de la Seigne