Marie Paradis Marie Paradis Marie Paradis (1778 – 1839) was the first woman to climb Mont Blanc. Paradis was a poor maidservant who lived in Chamonix at that time part of the Kingdom of Sardinia. On 14 July 1808, in the company of renowned mountain guide Jacques Balmat, she became the first woman to climb Mont Blanc, Europe's highest mountain. The party camped on the Grands Mulets, and during the final ascent Paradis became fatigued and was assisted by her guides. On the summit, Paradis was in such poor condition that she had difficulty breathing, was unable to speak, and could not
First ascent of the Matterhorn of this and they were acquitted. The ascent followed a long series of usually separate attempts by Edward Whymper and Jean-Antoine Carrel to reach the summit. Carrel's group had been 200 m below the summit on the Italian site when Croz and Whymper summited. The climbers from Valtournenche withdrew deflated, but three days later Carrel and Jean-Baptiste Bich reached the summit without incident. The Matterhorn was the last great Alpine peak to be climbed and its first ascent marked the end of the golden age of alpinism. In the summer of 1860, Edward Whymper, an athletic, twenty-year-old English artist, visited