Mark the Mountain Guide author, Mark Seaton, is a British mountain guide who lives with his wife and children in the Chamonix valley. He guides climbers and skiers in the French, Swiss and Italian Alps. Seaton's accomplishments as a professional mountain guide include the first complete unassisted British guided ascent of the Eiger Nordwand with his client Charles Sherwood in 2007. In 2008, Seaton & Sherwood teamed up again to complete a traverse of Mont Blanc via an ascent of Aiguille Blanche de Peuterey, the most difficult 4000-m summit in the Alps. In 1996, Mark led Don Planner, the first blind man to climb
Gabriel Loppé Gabriel Loppé Gabriel Loppé (July 2, 1825 - May 19, 1913) was a French painter, photographer and mountaineer. He became the first foreigner to be made a member of the Alpine Club in London. His father was a captain in the French Engineers and Loppé's childhood was spent in many different towns in south-eastern France. Aged twenty-one Loppé climbed a small mountain in the Languedoc and found a group of painters sketching on the summit. He had found his calling and subsequently went off to Geneva where he met the reputed leading Swiss landscapist, Alexandre Calame (1810 -1864). Loppé took