Condensation almost 3 centuries of high-altitude feats in a brief history of mountaineering it is an undertaking as arduous as reaching the summit of a four-thousander or more, with the risk of doing an injustice to many. But after discussing whether mountaineering is a sport or something else (and it is, and certainly not) let’s try to tell how this inspiration for thin air was born and how it has evolved over time.
Brief history of mountaineering
Mountaineering, in the contemporary sporting sense, was born in the second half of the eighteenth century when a young scientist from Geneva, Horace-Bénédict de Saussure, on his first visit to Chamonix, saw Mont Blanc (4,807 metres, the highest peak in Europe) and decided that he would either climb its summit or be responsible for its climb. It was 1760 and De Saussure offered a sum of money as a prize for the first ascent of Mont Blanc, but it was only in 1786, more than 25 years later, that the sum was claimed – by a Chamonix doctor, Michel-Gabriel Paccard, and his bearer, Jacques Balmat. A year later, de Saussure himself climbed the summit of Mont Blanc.
The nineteenth century and the birth of modern mountaineering as a sport
After 1850 groups of British climbers, with Swiss, Italian or French guides, scaled one after the other the high peaks of Switzerland. One ascent that marked a milestone in the development of the sport was the spectacular first ascent of the Matterhorn (4,478 metres) from the Swiss side on 14 July 1865, by an expedition led by an English artist, Edward Whymper. From the mid-19th century, the Swiss began to form a group of mountain guides who contributed to making mountaineering a full-fledged sport, paving the way for the conquest of all the peaks throughout Europe.
From the Alps to the rest of the world
By 1870, all major peaks of the Alps had been climbed and climbers began to look for new and more difficult alternative routes on mountains already climbed. But with the conquest of the last minor peaks of the Alps at the end of the 19th century, mountaineers turned their attention to the South American Andes, the North American Rockies, the Caucasus, the African peaks and finally the immensity of the Himalayas.
Il Mount Aconcagua (6,959 metres), the highest peak in the Andes, was first climbed in 1897, while the Grand Teton (4,197 meters) in the Rocky Mountains of North America was achieved in 1898. In 1897, the Italian Duke of Abruzzi made the first ascent of Monte Sant’Elias (5,489 meters), which is located along the border between the US state of Alaska and the Yukon Territory, Canada, and in 1906 successfully scaled the summit of Margherita peak in the Ruwenzori range (5,119 meters) in East Africa. In 1913, an American named Hudson Stuck climbed the Denali (Monte McKinley) in Alaska, whose 6,190-meter peak is the highest in North America.
The road to ever higher peak conquests was opening, but it would be another half century before the last stronghold, Mount Everest in the Himalayas, was ascended.
The internationalization of mountaineering
As the 20th century progressed, mountaineering became more and more an international phenomenon. More and more Austrians, Chinese, British, French, Germans, Indians, Italians, Japanese and Russians turned their attention to the opportunities offered by the largest mountain range on the planet, the Himalayas, and neighboring mountain ranges. After the First World War, the British concentrated on Everest. Meanwhile, climbers from other countries were making spectacular ascents of other great Himalayan peaks. A Soviet team in 1933 climbed the Peak Stalin nel Pamir (7495 meters, later renamed Communism Peak and finally Imeni Ismail Samani Peak), a German expedition on Siniolchu (6,888 metres), and an English one the Nanda Devi (7,817 metres) in 1936. The Second World War obviously put a stop to this race for the highest peaks in the world, so much so that in 1940 The Alpine Journal of London did not record any summit climbed for the first time.
Contemporary mountaineering since the Second World War
Over 1950s saw several successful ascents of the Himalayan mountains: a first ascent ofAnnapurna I (8,091 metres) by the French in June 1950, the ascent of Nanga Parbat (8,126 meters) by the Germans and Austrians in 1953, del Kanchenjunga (8,586 metres) by the British in May 1955 and on Lhotse I (8,516 metres) by the Swiss in 1956.
Il K2 nella catena del Karakoram, the second highest mountain in the world with its 8,611 metres, was climbed for the first time by Achille Compagnoni and Lino Lacedelli on 31 July 1954. It was the expedition led by the geologist Ardito Desio in which the contribution of Walter Bonatti and Amir Mahdi, recognized only after more than 50 years of controversy, accusations and lawsuits. In any case, that enterprise gave forever to the K2 the nickname of “mountain of the Italians”.
However the highlight was the British success on the summit of Everest (8,850 metres), when a New Zealand beekeeper named Edmund (later Sir Edmund) Hillary and Tibetan guide Tenzing Norgay landed on the top of the world on May 29, 1953. That expedition, led by Colonel John Hunt, was the eighth attempt in 30 years of reaching the summit of Everest.
An Austrian group reached the summit of Cho Oyu (8,201 meters high), just west of Everest, in October 1954. In May 1955, a French team managed to get all its members and a Sherpa guide to the top of the Article 1 (8,463 metres), another peak close to Everest. The ascension of Kanchenjunga by the British expedition in May 1955, often regarded as one of the toughest mountaineering challenges in the world, was led by Charles Evans, who had been deputy leader of the first successful ascent of Everest. For further information: The history of the conquests of the 8000ers: all the firsts, absolute and winter.
Since the sixties, mountaineering underwent several transformations. Once all the eight-thousanders had been climbed, attention shifted to finding new routes, first winter ascents and the development of ever lighter expeditions, which did not involve the use of oxygen cylinders, fixed ropes or other man-made structures , according to so-called Alpine Style made internationally famous in the 1980s by Reinhold Messnerthe first man in history to have climbed the fourteen peaks of the eight-thousanders without the use of supplementary oxygen.
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