Mont Blanc and snowboarding. The three towns and their communes which surround Mont Blanc are Courmayeur in Aosta Valley, Italy; and Saint-Gervais-les-Bains and Chamonix in Haute-Savoie, France. The latter town was the site of the first Winter Olympics. A cable car ascends and crosses the mountain range from Courmayeur to Chamonix, through the Col du Géant. The 11 km (7¼-mile) Mont Blanc Tunnel, constructed between 1957 and 1965, runs beneath the mountain and is a major trans-Alpine transport route. The first recorded ascent of Mont Blanc was on 8 August 1786 by Jacques Balmat and the doctor Michel Paccard. This climb, initiated
The Mountain Calls The Mountain Calls The Mountain Calls (German: "Der Berg ruft") is a film directed by Luis Trenker which recreates the struggle between Edward Whymper and Jean-Antoine Carrel for the first successful ascent of the Matterhorn in 1865. The film is a remake of "Der Kampf ums Matterhorn" ("Struggle for the Matterhorn") in which Trenker acted in 1928. The Italian mountaineer Jean-Antoine Carrel wants to be the first man to reach the summit of the Matterhorn. He meets the British mountaineer Whymper and they decide to climb together. But due to an intrigue this agreement is dropped and the two men