The first ascent of Mont Blanc

Michel-Gabriel Paccard and Jacques Balmat · 1786 CE · Earth

The first ascent of Mont Blanc — Michel-Gabriel Paccard and Jacques Balmat · 1786 CE · Earth — Recorded expedition route · schematic map

Reach the summit of the highest mountain in the Alps, carry a barometer to the top and take a reading there.

Historical context

In 1760 the Geneva naturalist Horace-Bénédict de Saussure offered a reward to the first man to reach the top of Mont Blanc, and for a quarter of a century nobody collected it; the glaciers were thought impassable and the night on the snow fatal. A Chamonix doctor, Michel-Gabriel Paccard, studied the routes for years, and a crystal hunter, Jacques Balmat, proved in the summer of 1786 that a man could survive a night out on the ice. On 7 and 8 August 1786 the two went up together, without rope or ice axe, and modern mountaineering is usually dated from their evening on the summit.

The voyage, step by step

  1. Leaving Chamonix

    7 August 1786

    On the afternoon of 7 August 1786, in the last full moon of summer, the doctor Michel-Gabriel Paccard and the crystal hunter Jacques Balmat leave the village with blankets, food and Paccard's instruments. They carry no rope and no ice axe, only long iron-tipped poles.

  2. A night under the rock

    7 August 1786

    They climb the Montagne de la Côte, the rocky spur between the Bossons and Taconnaz glaciers, and sleep under a large boulder near its top, the rock later called Balmat's shelter. They are away again at a quarter past four in the morning.

  3. The Jonction and the Grands Mulets

    8 August 1786

    At dawn they cross the Jonction, where the Bossons and Taconnaz glaciers meet in a chaos of crevasses, using a single pair of crude three-metre poles to bridge the gaps. Above it the rocks of the Grands Mulets stand out of the snow.

  4. The Grand Plateau

    8 August 1786

    By the middle of the day they are on the Grand Plateau, the wide snow basin under the summit at nearly four thousand metres, with another nine hundred metres still to climb. From here they take the direct line up the Rochers Rouges rather than the Bosses ridge.

  5. The summit at 6:23

    8 August 1786

    At 6:23 in the evening of 8 August 1786, by Paccard's watch, the two men set foot on the summit of Mont Blanc, the highest point of the Alps. Paccard quickly reads his barometer and thermometer while there is still light.

  6. Down blind by moonlight

    8 August 1786

    They start down at once and descend through the night to their rock on the Montagne de la Côte. Paccard, struck by snow blindness, makes the whole descent with his eyes red and shut, guided by his companion.

  7. Saussure's reward

    9 August 1786

    Balmat collects the reward Saussure had offered twenty-five years before. Barely a year later, on 3 August 1787, he guides Saussure himself to the summit with a party of about seventeen.

  8. The quarrel begins

    1786 CE

    Within weeks Marc-Théodore Bourrit, who had failed on the mountain himself, publishes an account that makes Balmat the hero and the doctor a passenger hauled to the top. Paccard's own narrative is never printed, and the argument over who led outlives them both.

Outcome

The summit at 6:23 in the evening of 8 August 1786 after a bivouac on the Montagne de la Côte; the prize collected, Paccard snow-blind, and a quarrel over the leadership that lasted two centuries.

Michel-Gabriel Paccard and Jacques Balmat

A village doctor and a crystal hunter from Chamonix who walked up Mont Blanc together on 8 August 1786, without rope or ice axe, and spent the rest of their lives arguing about which of them had led.

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Sources

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