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Updated: June 28, 2025
The cabin at the Grands Mulets is furnished with rough bunks and cooking apparatus, and during the summer a woman, Adéle Balmat, assisted by the guides, acts as hostess for this high-perched "inn," ten thousand feet above sea level.
On reaching the Pierre-Pointue, about ten o'clock, we found there a Spanish tourist, M. N , accompanied by two guides and a porter. His principal guide, Paccard, a relative of the Doctor Paccard who made, with Jacques Balmat, the first ascent of Mont Blanc, had already been to the summit eighteen times. M. N was also getting himself ready for the ascent.
The life of one of the five was saved by a long barometer which was strapped to his back it bridged the crevice and suspended him until help came. The alpenstock or baton of another saved its owner in a similar way. Three men were lost Pierre Balmat, Pierre Carrier, and Auguste Tairraz. They had been hurled down into the fathomless great deeps of the crevice. Dr.
The Grands Mulets formed the stopping place in some of the earliest attempts to climb Mont Blanc, more than a hundred years ago. Here Jacques Balmat, the hero of the first ascent, passed an awful night alone, amid the cracking of glaciers and the shaking of avalanches, before his final victory over the peak in 1786.
Fitzjames visited him at the 'Eagle's Nest, in 1862, and there found him engaged in nursing Auguste Balmat, the famous guide, who was dying of typhoid fever. The natives were alarmed, and the whole labour of nursing fell upon Mr. and Mrs. Wills. Fitzjames, on his arrival, relieved them so far as he could, and enabled them to get some nights' sleep.
In the spirit which led the Romans to surname the conqueror of Hannibal "Scipio Africanus," the exultant Chamonniards called their hero "Balmat de Mont Blanc." He, too, finally perished by a fall from a precipice in 1834, and to-day there are those who whisper that his spirit can be seen flitting over the snowy wastes before every new catastrophe.
Pictet knows all the people, and wherever we stopped they all flocked round him with such cordial gratitude in their faces, from the little children to the gray-headed men and women; all seemed to love "Monsieur le Professeur." The guides, especially Pierre Balmat and his son, are some of the best-informed and most agreeable men I ever conversed with.
The life of one of the five was saved by a long barometer which was strapped to his back it bridged the crevice and suspended him until help came. The alpenstock or baton of another saved its owner in a similar way. Three men were lost Pierre Balmat, Pierre Carrier, and Auguste Tairraz. They had been hurled down into the fathomless great deeps of the crevice. Dr.
Despite this happy augury and a slight rise in the barometer, M. Balmat, chief guide of Chamonix, declared to me that I must not yet think of attempting the ascent. "If the barometer continues to rise," he added, "and the weather holds good, I promise you guides for the day after to-morrow perhaps for to-morrow. Meanwhile, have patience and stretch your legs; I will take you up the Brevent.
The morning of August 29th was cloudless, and with the same outfit as before, but with a scion of the house of Balmat for porter in place of the man who had filled that office on the first occasion, I started once more for the frosty topknot of Europe. At the Grands Mulets we found two Germans with their retinue of guides and porters, six persons in all, who were also bound for the summit.
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