The First Ascent of Mont Blanc: And the First Alpine Controversy

By Éric Vola

:32 p.m., August 8, 1786, the peasant Jacques Balmat and doctor Michel-Gabriel Paccard reached the summit of Mont Blanc. The combination of these two men should have worked perfectly. Their motivations were different and they were not competitors because Paccard paid Balmat for his task as porter and left him the entire reward promised by de Saussure which he had no need of. So what turned sour and why for two centuries and still today, IS THE TRUTH SO HARD TO GET? Eric Shipton: "Their ascent was a stunning achievement of courage and determination, one of the greatest in the annals of mountaineering. It was accomplished by men who were not only in unfamiliar terrain, but on a route considered impossible by the guides. » T . Graham Brown and Sir Gavin de Beer who so masterfully analysed Balmat's lies, never "condemned" the man, honouring his prowess and ending their book by quoting Lord Minto who wrote in his diary during Balmat's lifetime , but before the legend was reborn with the help of Dumas: "Whatever the precise part of each in the discovery of the path, both have, without possible dispute, the right to claim the honor of having carried out one of the most daring enterprises ever carried out, and of having had the audacity to face the danger of a night spent in the snow at an altitude where the established opinion was that it was impossible to survive the cold. »

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0D98RYDR7
• ISBN13: 9798323648269
• Release Date: June 2024
• Publisher: Independently published
• Length: 176 Pages
• Weight: 0.69 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.4" x 6.0"