Jacques Balmat for gold in the Sixt valley in 1834. Jacques Balmat Jacques Balmat, called "le Mont Blanc" (1762–1834) was a mountaineer, a Savoyard mountain guide, born in the Chamonix valley in Savoy, at this time part of the Kingdom of Sardinia. A chamois hunter and collector of crystals, Balmat completed the first ascent of Mont Blanc with physician Michel-Gabriel Paccard on 8 August 1786. For this feat, King Victor Amadeus III gave him the honorary title "le Mont Blanc". Balmat and Paccard's ascent of Mont Blanc was a major accomplishment in the early history of mountaineering. C. Douglas Milner wrote "The
1986 K2 disaster an avalanche on 21 June. Pennington's body was pulled out by climbers who had witnessed the incident, but Smolich's body has yet to be found. The rest of the team left the mountain shortly after the accident. On 23 June, French climbers Liliane and Maurice Barrard reached the summit, just 30 minutes after their teammate Wanda Rutkiewicz became the first woman to summit K2. Both Liliane Barrard and Rutkiewicz were climbing without bottled oxygen. As darkness fell, all three, along with team member Michel Parmentier and two Spanish climbers, Mari Abrego and Josema Casimiro, had to make an emergency bivouac