Mont Blanc massif The descriptions of their exploits were published across Europe, bringing the mountains of the Mont Blanc range to the attention of a wide audience for the first time. In 1760, Horace-Bénédict de Saussure offered a large financial prize to the first people who successfully ascended Mont Blanc. The summit was finally attained on 8 August 1786 by two Chamonix men, the guide Jacques Balmat and Dr. Michel Paccard. The decades that followed saw the gradual opening up of Chamonix to the world, as well as the rest of the Mont Blanc massif. The many published accounts of climbs and impressive
Climbers (novel) Climbers (novel) Climbers is a literary novel by the British author M. John Harrison. First published in 1989 and apparently set several years earlier, the book had been out of print for several years but was reissued in paperback by Phoenix in 2004. It has attracted considerable critical acclaim and won the Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature in 1989. It was not, however, universally popular with the British climbing public and received at least one negative review in the popular magazine Climber. The novel concerns the adventures of “Mike”, who, recovering from a failed marriage, falls in with a