Mont Blanc Lines wins Banff Mountain Book Mountain Image Award

Mont Blanc Lines by Alex Buisse has scooped the $3000 Mountain Image prize in the 2023 Banff Mountain Book Competition.

The book is now eligible for the competition’s $5,000 Grand Prize which will be announced on 2 November.

Buisse said, ‘I am deeply honoured to receive the prestigious 2023 Mountain Image Award for the English edition of Mont Blanc Lines. The book, born out of the covid lockdowns, was a labour of love for the unique climbing and skiing of the Mont Blanc range. It wouldn’t have been possible without the help of so many: publishers Glénat, Corbaccio and Vertebrate; guidebook authors, first among which François Damilano, Michel Piola, Charles Vallot and Lucien Devies; and of course the twenty-three climbers who were kind enough to contribute a text about their experience with a particular face or peak.

I will be delighted to accept the award in person in Banff, on 2 November. Earlier in the day, I will be sharing a stage with Jeff Smoot to speak about the book.’

A key part of the Banff Centre Mountain Film and Book Festival, the Book Competition celebrates mountain literature in all its forms with $29,000 awarded annually across eight categories selected by an international jury of writers, adventurers and editors.

Vertebrate has scooped Banff category awards on several prior occasions. In 2021 Victor Saunders’ mountaineering narrative Structured Chaos won the Mountain Literature (Non-Fiction) The Jon Whyte Award and Chis Kalman’s outdoor fiction Dammed if You Don’t scooped the Mountain Fiction and Poetry prize. Crack Climbing by Pete Whittaker took the Guidebook award in 2020, and One Day as a Tiger by John Porter won in the Mountaineering History category and went on to claim the Grand Prize in 2014.