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
South Summit (Mount Everest) ... none of us had been prepared for any spectacle quite so sharp, quite so beautiful as this. To me it seemed that a new and unsuspected peak of alpine stature stood above the South Col." A geologist with a 1965 Indian Everest expedition discovered a deposit of fossils of seashells in limestone about 100 feet above the South Summit. This expedition put nine climbers on the main summit. Describing his first ascent of Mount Everest without supplemental oxygen in 1978, Reinhold Messner described the South Summit as "quite a milestone for me". During the 1996 Mount Everest disaster, mountain