The most impressive monuments close to Biviers are the mountains that surround it such as Dent de Crolles in the Chartreuse range, or Grand Pic de Belledonne in the Belledonne range.
Early systems of ascending ropes were developed by Pierre Chevalier in the Dent de Crolles cave system in France in the late 1930s, Chevalier also being the first to use nylon rope in a cave as opposed to natural fibre rope.
It has a characteristic "tooth-like" profile which is well-known sight of the Isère Valley (Grésivaudan) seen from the Grenoble area.
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Its first detailed exploration was during WWII by a small team of French cavers composed of Pierre Chevalier, Fernand Petzl, Charles Petit-Didier and others.
Subsequent explorations there with Pierre Chevalier, Charles Petit-Didier and others culminated in connections to other caves in the massif, forming the Réseau de la Dent de Crolles which, in 1947, became the deepest cave in the world.
Its name comes from the town Crolles where Petzl's company headquarters are located but might also be a reference to the nearby cave system of the Dent de Crolles, the exploration of which triggered a lot of technical effort leading to innovation in caving equipment.
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The scaling-pole (1940), nylon ropes (1942), use of explosives in caves (1947) and mechanical rope-ascenders (Henri Brenot's "monkeys", first used by Chevalier and Brenot in a cave in 1934) can be traced historically to the exploration of the Dent de Crolles cave system.
During World War II, such a team composed of Pierre Chevalier, Fernand Petzl, Charles Petit-Didier and others explored the Dent de Crolles cave system near Grenoble, France, which became the deepest explored cave in the world (-658m) at that time.