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 Climbers (band) The Climbers (band) The Climbers is a British band, formed by Nick Hemming and Christian Hardy of The Leisure Society with their childhood friend, Tim West. West introduced Hemming and Hardy to one another and for a period the three lived together in South London. Though formation of The Climbers predates The Leisure Society, their debut album "The Good Ship" was not released until May 2010. The album took over six years to make, and was recorded predominantly in hired cottages in Wales and Devon with additional sessions in South London, Brighton, Burton-On-Trent and Northumberland. It received mostly positive reviews,