Mont Blanc - Exploits

Exploits

• 1786 (1786) – Mont Blanc first climbed by Michel-Gabriel Paccard and Jacques Balmat; see Exploration of the High Alps.
• 1787 (1787) – The fourth ascent, by Englishman Mark Beaufoy, with at least six guides and a servant.
• July 1808 (1808-07) – The first woman to climb the mountain, Maria Paradis, with Balmat as her guide.
• July 1838 (1838-07) – Henriette d'Angeville became the second woman on the summit.
• 1886 (1886) – Future U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt led an expedition to the peak.
• 1890 (1890) – Giovenni Bonin, Luigi Grasselli and Fr. Achille Ratti (later Pope Pius XI) discovered the normal Italian route (West Face Direct) on descent.
• 1960 (1960) – The airplane pilot Henri Giraud landed on the summit, which is only 30 m (98 ft) long.
• 1990 (1990) – The Swiss Pierre-André Gobet, leaving from Chamonix, completed the ascent and descent in 5 hours, 10 minutes and 14 seconds.
• 30 May 2003 (2003-05-30) – Stéphane Brosse and Pierre Gignoux tried to beat the record by ski-walking. They went up in 4 hours and 7 minutes, and came back down in 1 hour and 8 minutes. In total they did the ascent and descent in 5 hours and 15 minutes.
• 13 August 2003 (2003-08-13) – Seven French paraglider pilots landed on the summit. They reached a peak altitude of 5,200 m (17,100 ft), thanks to the hot weather conditions, which provided strong hot air currents. Five had left from Planpraz, one from Rochebrune at Megève and the last one from Samoëns.
• 8 June 2007 (2007-06-08) – Danish artist Marco Evaristti draped the peak of Mont Blanc with red fabric, along with a 20-foot (6.1 m) pole with a flag reading "Pink State". He was arrested and detained earlier on June 6 for attempting to paint a pass leading up to the summit red. His aim was to raise awareness of environmental degradation.
• 13 September 2007 (2007-09-13) – A group of 20 people set up a hot tub at the summit.
• 29 May 2009 (2009-05-29) – Olympic snowboarding gold medallist Karine Ruby and a companion were killed; she and some members of her group fell into a deep crack in the glacier on the way down the mountain. Ruby was training to become a mountain guide.
• 19 August 2012 (2012-08-19) – Fifty paraglider pilots landed on the summit, beating the previous record of 7 top landing pilots, set in 2003. This included the second ever tandem landing on the summit.