Henry Duhamel

[1][2] There, the young Parisian bourgeois developed a taste for the mountains, the practice of hiking, climbing, running and combined driving and strove to become an accomplished athlete.

[1][2] In 1875, in the company of Baron Emmanuel Boileau de Castelnau and the guide Alexandre Tournier, Duhamel tried to climb the western peak of the Meije without reaching the summit.

[3][4] Finally in 1877 Boileau de Castelnau and his guide Pierre Gaspard reached the top, taking the first path traced by Henry Duhamel.

In 1878, looking for Canadian snowshoes, he visited the Exposition Universelle in Paris,[1] where a Norwegian representative showed him the long, narrow boards that his fellow Scandinavians used in winter.

Duhamel imported fourteen pairs of skis, equipped with good bindings produced in Norway, and proceeded to distribute them to his friends over the years.

On 1 March 1896 the first joint meeting and celebration under the eye of Alpine journalists was held in the presence of a monitor officer of the Swedish army from Lans-en-Vercors to Autrans, with return by Croix-Perrin.

[citation needed] Photographic evidence exists that the first such ascent was conducted by Maurice Allotte of la Fuye on 23 February 1890.

[8] As a supporter of the mountain sports world, Duhamel sought to share his passion with others by publishing numerous articles for the CAF, a Guide du Haut-Dauphiné in 1887 (in collaboration with W. A.

Duhamel died on 7 February 1917 as the result of a fall on a patch of ice two months earlier in the courtyard of the barracks of Bonne, Haute-Savoie.