Mont Blanc massif led to calls to limit access to the most popular summits and for the mountains to be treated with greater respect. The Mont Blanc massif has provided numerous opportunities for academic research, dating back to the very first ascent of Mont Blanc in 1786 during which Michel Paccard carried scientific equipment to confirm it as the highest summit. In 1820, an ill-fated expedition led by Dr Hamel included pigeons intended for release at varying altitudes to measure the impact of reduced air density on their ability to fly. In 1890, Joseph Vallot built a small meteorological observatory at approximately between
Climbers (novel) Climbers (novel) Climbers is a literary novel by the British author M. John Harrison. First published in 1989 and apparently set several years earlier, the book had been out of print for several years but was reissued in paperback by Phoenix in 2004. It has attracted considerable critical acclaim and won the Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature in 1989. It was not, however, universally popular with the British climbing public and received at least one negative review in the popular magazine Climber. The novel concerns the adventures of “Mike”, who, recovering from a failed marriage, falls in with a