Word: blance
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Adapted from Andre Soubiran's, Les Hommes en Blanc, The Doctors begins as an absorbing look into the characters of men whom the public usually sees only as more or less well-trained machines. The electric atmosphere in an operating room during a delicate heart operation contrasts violently with the staff party, where the same, methodical men and women release their tensions with orgiastic enthusiasm...
...blinding white grandeur of Mont Blanc, soaring above the blue lake at Chamonix, has drawn alpinists to France for centuries. Since men first scaled Western Europe's highest peak in 1786, some 20,000 people have successfully climbed to the top (15,781 ft.), and 65 have died on the way. But in all those years, mountaineers mastered only four routes to the peak itself. Attempted but never conquered was a possible fifth way, the Grand Pilastre, a 5,000-ft. perpendicular wall of gripless, smooth rock and slithery green ice that looms over empty space toward the summit...
...toughest. A Lombard laborer's son, he quit his steel mill job at 19 to become an Alpine guide and ski instructor. In 1954 he was the youngest member of the triumphant Himalayan expedition up K2. The next year he performed a fine one-man climb up Mont Blanc's Aiguille du Dru, survived six days and five nights while clawing alone up sheer rock and ice. Widely hailed by the Italian press, he replied: "I was no conqueror. I was alone, and the mountain awed me too much. I was full of worries and fear...
...push, and the easiest, as they chipped ice steps and worked their way up, 400 ft. an hour. They had topped Grand Pilastre's crest by 10 a.m., climbed another eight hours over easier ground. At 6 p.m. they scrambled at last atop the great peak of Mont Blanc. They descended by an easier route. Next day, as European newspapers front-paged their feat, Walter Bonatti went skiing for exercise...
Last month a 23-year-old Parisian climbed to the summit of Mont Blanc all alone. Inspired by his success, two other ambitious young mountaineers, Parisian Jean Vincendon, 23, and Belgian François Henry, 22, decided to have a try at its challenging heights. They set out early in the morning of Dec. 22. The sky was blue and the air was warm, the kind of weather when skiers down below wish for snow. Four days later the skiers had their snow. Up above, the Alpine peaks were shrouded with ominous evidence of storm and fury. Torn between heartache...