A small town in the French Alps on the border with Italy and Switzerland is a living shrine to all things Mountain.

“Crested Butte is for spectators; Chamonix is for participants” 

Marc Twight.

The Mont Blanc Massif, or mountain range, towers over the town of Chamonix in France.  Unlike other supposed mountain towns, one has only to crane one’s neck to see the perpetual white snow of the high mountains above them, gigantic blocks of ice jumbled on the glacier flowing down towards the town.  

However close to the mountains one is in Chamonix, this is no wild country.  Unlike climbing trips I have taken in the United States or the Himalaya you do not need to carry your food and water, or camp, on a long approach before seeing any mountains at all.  Here, cable cars reach out in all directions in what appears to be impossible engineering feats to spirit adventurers into the high country.

In fact, despite- or perhaps because- of its proximity to the highest peak in Western Europe, Mont Blanc, the town has all the comforts of French culture and civilization.  One can walk its cobblestone streets past well stocked wine bars, patisseries full of warm croissants, and grocery stores selling runny cheese. Tourists from all around the world jostle each other to capture the ambiance of the Alps.

The mountains have made Chamonix.  As a small poor village of alpine herders and hunters, it was discovered by early wealthy English adventurers who were interested in exploring Mont Blanc.  A Swiss naturalist Horace Bénédict de Saussure began visiting Chamonix in 1760 to observe the great mountain.  He offered a reward to the first who could reach its summit. Twenty years later in August of 1786, a local guide-Jacques Balmat and doctor Michel-Gabriel Paccard completed the first ascent of Mont Blanc.  The great British mountaineer Eric Shipton wrote many years later that it was “an astounding achievement of courage and determination, one of the greatest in the annals of mountaineering.”  It is considered the start of Mountaineering as we know it.

From that point, Chamonix’s destiny as the starting point for mountain adventures was made.  Although the summit of the great mountain is shared by France and Italy, it is known the world over by its French name, Mont Blanc (the White Mountain.)  In 1916, the town even lobbied to successfully change its official name to Chamonix-Mont Blanc to solidify the connection. In 1924, the very first winter Olympic games were held in Chamonix,

It is that storied history which imbues the town with its ethos.  Make no mistake, although tourists throng the streets of Chamonix, they are not its reason for existence.  Chamonix is “for participants” according to the punk climber and American iconoclast Marc Twight. Like no other place on earth, climbers, alpinists, trail runners, and skiers are the heroes.  Murals dot the walls of the town with images of great climbers from the past who dared all. Streets and schools are named after great climbing exploits, especially the first ascent of Annapurna.

Annapurna, in the Himalayas, was the first 8000 meter peak to be successfully summited.  The pioneering French team was led by the now controversial Maurice Herzog and made up of Chamonix mountain guides.  Their feat did not come without a cost. Herzog lost all of his fingers and most of his toes to frostbite. He later became the mayor of Chamonix.

We arrived in Chamonix after driving through the epic tunnel that bores through Mont Blanc and connects Italy to France. We stood in awe of the mountains above from the balcony of our small apartment near the center of the town.  This was not the first time I had visited Chamonix. While a high school student in Paris, I had visited the town with my family in both winter and summer and those visits, as much as anything else, solidified my life long love affair with the mountains.

It had taken twenty years to return, but I was back with a family of my own and we were determined to be “participants” in the great mountain arena.  We took our young girls on repeated hikes in the mountains that invariably ended with them being carried by us in backpacks and eating delicious crepes at secluded mountain lodges.

Sometimes we would be passed by noted trail runners, like Timothy Olson, preparing for the Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc (UTMB).  We yelled our encouragement and patted him on the back as he ran by. The 106 mile UTMB race gains over 32 thousand feet in elevation and crosses the borders of France, Switzerland, and Italy before ending in Chamonix.  The winner will take approximately twenty hours to finish it. In preparation for a much more modest upcoming triathlon, I would go for long bike rides and runs in the shadow of the peaks around us.

Not one of those peaks were without their own epics of triumph and tragedy.  While riding my bike just outside of the town, I looked up at the towering Aiguille du Dru above the “mer de glace” glacier.  Aiguille means needle in French, and it accurately captures the sharp jagged profile of the mountain. In 1962 two Americans, Royal Robbins and Gary Hemmings, pioneered the “American Direct” route straight up the pinnacle of the Dru.

Gary Hemings had been kicked out of the Air Force Academy and ended up in Europe climbing mountains and sometimes living under bridges in Paris.  In 1966, two German climbers were stuck on a ledge on the mountain. French military rescue teams were unable to reach them and one French soldier died in the attempt.  Hemings had offered his service and been refused, but he returned with a team and rescued the Germans. The French press crowned him a hero and dubbed him “Le Beatnik.” Tragically, before the end of the decade he would die of a self-inflicted gunshot among the Teton mountains in Wyoming.  The author James Salter tried to capture his haunted free spirit in the novel, Solo Faces.

No institution better represents Chamonix than the Compagnie des Guides.  Founded in 1821, it is the world’s oldest mountain guiding association. The poor herders and hunters who lived in Chamonix came together to lead those who wanted to go into the high country.  The cemetery and memorial in town are filled with members of the Compagnie des Guides who hold the same family names, like Simond and Charlet, and who had perished as guides in the mountains over multiple generations.

The Compagnie des Guides was truly a family affair and for many years limited to those born in Chamonix.  Then in 1930 an extraordinary man named Roger Frisson-Roche,who had been born in Paris, passed the grueling selection process to become the first “foreigner” accepted into its select company.  His was a storybook life; climber, entrepreneur, explorer, journalist, and writer. His novel Premier de cordee (First on the Rope) would define climbing in France for at least a generation.  During World War Two while a journalist with American Forces in North Africa he was captured by the Germans and later fought with the French resistance as a Mountain soldier.

We so happened to be visiting Chamonix during their annual Festival des Guides.  This tradition, first started by Frisson-Roche, was a time for the Guides to celebrate the camaraderie of their profession.  We joined them in a small village outside Chamonix called Argentieres, where we were treated to a helicopter demonstration by the elite Gendarmerie Mountain Rescue unit, as well as live music and prodigious amounts of melted cheese and red wine.

Early the next morning the guides assembled in the uniform of their fore-bearers, woolen jackets, knicker-bocker pants, long socks with ropes and ice axes slung across their backs.  They gathered at the cemetery in town to pay homage to their dead. Then both old and young guides marched together from the cemetery to the chapel. In a semicircle around the chapel, they remembered those guides who had died in the preceding year and welcomed the few who had made it through the selection process to become guides themselves.  A young woman poignantly told the crowd how proud she was to join this esteemed association and believed her father, who had perished in an avalanche years before, was looking down at her.

On the margins of the events, other guides helped children practice on a climbing wall and, this being a French event, served wine and beer to the audience.  In the brilliant sunshine, guides and guests alike slapped each other’s backs and told stories of climbs past and future sharing the aura of those who have witnessed that which is majestic.

We too felt the pull to test ourselves on the great faces that surrounded us.  After finding a babysitter, Lisa and I early one morning took a cable car up into the high country to climb among the rock faces of the Aiguille Rouges.  Belaying each other up the multi-pitch routes, feeling the rock in our hands, we looked across the valley to the stunning views of the Mont Blanc. At some other time, should fate allow it, we would return to climb the storied peak.  But right then, we were happy to be participants in this living shrine to man’s connection to mountains.

Roland Minez is a co-founder of Pushing Horizons.

Disclaimer: All views expressed are that of the author. As an REI Associate, Pushing Horizons earns from qualifying purchases.