It's been 234 years. It is not an anniversary that ends with the number zero but an important anniversary to remember. And that perhaps it is not as well known as one might think. Yet let's talk about the Mont Blanc, of its 4808 meters of altitude, the mount higher than the Alps, Italy, France and even Europe according to the most accepted convention, that is, excluding the Caucasus and its Mount Elbrus.
It was theAugust 8, 1786 when two young men from Chamonix reached the summit, the first two men to set foot on the hitherto untouched snows of Mont Blanc and to leave a pole with a red handkerchief as evidence of their extraordinary feat. They were called Michel Gabriel Paccard and Jacques Balmat, born in the mountains and lovers of those snowy peaks they have always known. Paccard, 29, was a medical practitioner. Balmat, 24, a crystal hunter.
Three guineas to win the mountain: the challenge of a scientist from Geneva
Unclimbed and mysterious peak, Mont Blanc, feared in those years because cloaked in stories and legends who wanted him to be the refuge of evil creatures. It took scientific rationality to think of challenging it. In fact, the idea of climbing it did not first come to the two young people from Chamonix but to a scientist from Geneva, Horace-Bénédict De Saussure. A great mountain lover who, a year after the first expedition, will personally ascend the Bianco accompanied by Jacques Balmat, on July 5, 1787. The story tells that already in 1760 De Saussure had promised a prize of three guineas to those who managed to climb first the snow-capped peaks he saw from the windows of his home in Geneva. An undertaking considered, at the time, difficult and adventurous, almost impossible. Indeed, it took twenty-six years before the two climbers from Chamonix predicted this challenge.
On the summit of Mont Blanc on 8 August 1786
The chronicle of the event. Before that 8 August 1786 some reconnaissance climbs had been carried out. One in particular, very dramatic, two months earlier. Balmat, he was the protagonist of the reconnaissance, during the descent he found himself alone at night, facing very low temperatures. He had saved himself by digging a hole in the snow where he remained until the following morning. The great mountain claimed its strength and its right to remain untouched. Not for long. At 15 pm on Monday 7 August 1786, Michel Gabriel Paccard and Jacques Balmat left for the historic enterprise.
They reached the summit of Mont Blanc at 18.23 pm on 8 August, passing through the Rochers Rouges. Their rise was followed by the telescope of the Prussian Baron Adolf Von Gersdorff who observed them from a knoll above Chamonix. The two climbers stayed on the summit for 34 minutes, just long enough to savor the conquest and make some surveys. Then the descent and return home around 8 am on 9 August. As the journalist Théodore Bourrit notes in his report.
Marie du Mont Blanc, the first woman to reach the top
Mont Blanc had been won. This was the first ever ascent by Balmat and Paccard. It was carried out during the summer season, therefore in better weather conditions. It will take almost a century for the first winter ascent, on January 31, 1876. The British mountaineer Mary Isabella Charlet-Straton with her future husband, the French Jean-Estéril Charlet-Straton, conquered the summit in that month of January. with Sylvain Couttet.
But another woman had already reached the summit of Mont Blanc on July 14, 1808, accompanied by her XNUMX-year-old son and Jacques Balmat as a guide. It was Marie Paradis, later known as Marie du Mont Blanc thanks to that extraordinary feat. The first ascent on the Italian side instead it took place on August 13, 1863 and was completed by three guides from Courmayeur: Julien Grange, Adolphe Orset and Jean-Marie Perrod.
