In 1785, after a failed attempt to climb the Mont Blanc, Swiss geologist Horace Benedict de Saussure -founder of alpinism- describes his experience on the mountains as follows: "the silence and deep calm that dominated that immense space, even enlarged by imagination, brought with them -so to speak- horror. It seemed to me that I endured in the Whole, a Whole whose corpse I saw, beneath my feet. In that situation, rather than the Mont Blanc, I directed my gaze to solitude. There, the bright, fluorescent snow gave an impression of movement and life."