Mount Blanc To Become Mount Rouge?

Yahoo News is reporting a very unusual story about an artist who intends to climb Mount Blanc, then paint the summit red.

Marco Evaristt, a Chilean artist, who now resides in Denmark, says that he wants to climb Mount Blanc to help raise awareness of for environmental issues, but once he tops out, he intends to paint the summit red with a biodegradable paint. The story gets stranger yet when he declares that he hopes to create a sovereign “pink state”. He hopes to get people to think about: Who owns nature? Who owns the water in the lakes, the snow on the ground, the flowers in the fields and the trees in the rain forests?” I can’t make this stuff up folks.

Mount Blanc is one of the more iconic mountains in Europe, standing 15,774 feet tall it’s one of the tallest mounains in Western Europe and rises out of the French Alps. The idea of painting it’s summit red, or any other color for that matter, doesn’t sit well with the French Climbing community. The mayor of Chamonix, Michel Charlet, has called the project “stupid and illegal”.

The article notes that Evaristt has a history of these stunts. Back in 2004 he painted an iceberg of the coast of Greenland red to protest the United States dumping nuclear waste in a northern Danish territory. He’s also already painted the Col des Flambeaux passage red at 11,150 feet as well.

Hopefully this guy gets altitude sickness. Not the really nasty, he might die kind, just the “Oh my god, I can’t go any higher kind”.

This story comes via The GoBlog.

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Kraig Becker

Kraig is an outdoor and adventure travel writer based in Nashville, TN. Over the course of his career, he has contributed to numerous online and print outlets, including Popular Mechanics, Gear Junkie, Outside Online, National Geographic, Digital Trends, Business Insider, TripSavvy, about.com, and of course The Adventure Blog.