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
Gabriel Perelle Gabriel Perelle Gabriel Perelle (born 1604 in Vernon, Eure, died 1677 in Paris) was a French draftsman and printmaker of topographic views and landscapes. A pupil of Simon Vouet, Perelle specialized in classical landscapes not dissimilar to those of Francisque Millet, although more obviously decorative. He founded an etching workshop, and his sons Nicolas and Adam assisted him. Perelle was also a pupil of Daniel Rabel and produced several hundred engravings both from his own drawings and from those of his competitors Israël Silvestre, Paul Bril, Jacques Callot, Michel Corneille the Elder, Jan Asselijn, Jacques Fouquières, Cornelis Poelenburg, and Sébastien