MOUNTAIN CLIMBING

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 September 1938, Page 7

MOUNTAIN CLIMBING

ENGLISHMEN’S ACHIEVEMENTS. If Mont Blanc, Europe's highest mountain, was first climbed by a guide of Chamonix, it was Englishmen who discovered Chamonix in 1741, and after being the third to scale the height, in 1787, when Colonel Beaufoy was beaten by only a week for second place, it was Englishmen who made mountain climbing one of the great sports of the world. Between 1786, the date of the first ascent of Mont Blanc, and 1836, out of 19 people who had climbed the great peak 11 were English. From 1786 to 1878, of 781 ascents 448 had been made by English, Scots or Irish climbers. An English woman, Mrs Hamilton, in 1854, was the third woman to climb Mont Blanc. Shortly afterwards James Forbes drew the first maps and made the first sketches of the glacier system of the mountain, included in a work published in 1843, “Travels Through the Alps of Savoy.” Of all English climbers, however, Edward Whymper comes first. His grave at Chamonix is tended and kept constantly covered with flowers by the famous Company of Guides of Chamonix. The tomb bears the simple inscription, “Edward Whymper, author, explorer, mountaineer.” He was the 0.11-conquering giant among climbers of the French Alps, the first to climb he Cervin, the first to overcome the Grandes Jorasses, the Aiguille Verte, : he Pelvoux, and the Barre des iScrins. A summit of the French Alps bears he name of the Rev. Coolidge, famous for many ascents in the Dauphine, and the first to climb the Droites. Swann, •mother English climber, gave his name ilso to a mountain peak of the Oisans. Dent, in 1878. was the first to climb the Grand Dru, and part of a rope ladder he used was discovered as recently as 1928. James Eccles, in 1871, was the first to climb Mont Blanc by the Brouillard Glacier, the Ruitors, the Aiguille du Plan, and the crests of Rochefort. And so the list of English names continues, with Mummery, first to climb the Grepon, in 1881, to G. W. Young, Ryan, and Mallory and Evans, the two heroes who after many exoloits in the French Alps disappeared in the attempt to conquer Mount Everest and sleep their last sleep near the crest of the giant of the Himalayas higher than man has ever reached before.