Alpinist Magazine Alpinist 69 | Spring 2020 Back Issue

Featuring a Mountain Profile of Mont Blanc. As late as the early eighteenth century, some maps of the Chamonix areastill contained large blank spaces where thehigh peaks stood. Within afew decades, however, Mont Blanc would become the focal point for thedreams of philosophers, poets and mountaineers alike. By 1776 Genevatravel writer Marc-Théodore Bourrit had declared of the peak: “The imageof upheaval and chaos, ideas of eternity and nothingness, of revolutionsand order, appear all together at once; the imagination remains silent.” In this 28-page feature, John Hessler and Paula Wright recount scenes from the history of thehighest mountain in Western Europe, from the controversies surroundingthe first ascent in1786 to the proliferation of famous routes to theimpacts of today’s climate crisis. David Smart, Claude Gardien and BenTibbetts contribute glimpses of individual quests on a mountain that hascome to symbolize a universe of wonder and a world in peril.