Top Of The World

If the ultimate goal of haute horlogerie is to ascend its summit, then Montblanc has made it to the very top.

- Celine Yap

The story behind the world's first ascent of Mont Blanc - Europe's highest peak and arguably its most famous mountain - reads like the perfect script for a Hollywood blockbuster movie. The kind with opening credits that read based on a true story.

COURAGE AND CURIOSITY

Like many great adventures of our time, whether fact or fiction, the expedition to scale Mont Blanc began with the prospect of cash. In the late 18th century, a distinguished nobleman from Geneva named Horace Bénédict de Saussure had offered a large sum of money to anyone who could find a way up to the top of the mountain.

From Chamonix Valley, which the Swiss botanist, geologist, and meteorologist frequented in order to collect plant specimens for research and cataloguing, he would observe the snow-capped peaks of the Mont Blanc massif and wonder what secrets lay hidden among its craggy cliffs. Repeated attempts to reach the summit were thwarted by bad luck and miserable weather, thus prompting de Saussure to make his public appeal.

News of his cash offer echoed throughout the valley and before long, avid adventurers and eager bounty hunters alike signed up for the challenge. But Mont Blanc wasn't known as Europe's deadliest mountain without reason, and slowly but surely, contenders began giving up the climb. Ultimately, it all came down to the last two-man team made up of an ambitious young mountaineer and mountain guide, as well as a collector of crystals, Jacques Balmat, and Michel-Gabriel Paccard, a doctor with a passion for botany and minerals.

Together the two Chamonix natives made their way up about 4,810m on 8 August 1786, carving out a path known today as Grands Mulets.