Mountaineering

The sport of mountaineering originated on June 26, 1492 when an expedition set out to climb Mont Aiguille, in the Vercors near Grenoble, led by Antoine De Ville, Lord of Domjulien and Beaupré. De Ville and his team scaled the near-vertical Alpine peak Moguille on King Charles VIII orders, reaching the summit by means of ropes and siege ladders. Their achievement was not repeated until 1834. It was the first ever recorded climb of any technical difficulty.

The first recorded mention of altitude sickness was in 37 BC, when a Chinese official noted that a trade route to Afghanistan passed a mountain that caused sickness as travelers ascended it - in the report, this place was named “Big Headache Mountain”.

The first recorded ascent of Mont Blanc on the French – Italian border was made by physician Dr Michel-Gabriel Paccard and mountain guide Jacques Balmat on August 8, 1786. This ascent is considered to be the birth of modern mountaineering, as it was the first time that a mountain of such great height had been climbed without the use of artificial aids.

Paccard and Balmat began their ascent from Chamonix, France, and climbed the mountain via the Grand Mulets route. They reached the summit at 6:23 pm, and they were greeted by a crowd of onlookers who had gathered at the Grands Mulets to watch their ascent.

In 1787, a group of scientists led by Horace-Bénédict de Saussure, a Swiss physicist and geologist, removed a piece of rock from the summit of Mont Blanc. The rock is now on display at the Teylers Museum in Haarlem, Netherlands.

Picture of a mountaineer by Josef Feid Anastasius Grün

A climbing team led by two German brothers, Johann Rudolf and Hieronymus Meyer, became the first to reach the summit of the Jungfrau on August 3, 1811. The Jungfrau is the third highest summit in the Bernese Alps.

The beginning of mountaineering as a systematic sport is generally dated to the ascent of the Wetterhorn in 1854 by Sir Alfred Wills who made mountaineering fashionable, especially in Britain. This inaugurated what became known as the Golden age of alpinism, with the first mountaineering club - the Alpine Club - being founded three years later.

A seven-man team by led by the English illustrator, Edward Whymper made the first ascent of the Matterhorn on July 14, 1865. Four of the party members fell to their deaths and this ascent is generally regarded as marking the end of the golden age of alpinism.

The first ascent of the Matterhorn, by Gustave Doré

The Hakkōda Mountains incident happened on January 23, 1902, when a group of Imperial Japanese Army soldiers became lost in a blizzard on the Hakkōda Mountains in Aomori Prefecture in northern Honshu, Japan, en route to Tashiro Hot Spring. The 199 deaths during a single ascent make it the most lethal disaster in the modern history of mountain climbing. From the 11 survivors, 8 needed amputations.

The first successful ascent of Mount McKinley, the highest point on the American continent, took place on June 7, 1913. The expedition was led by Hudson Stuck, an Episcopal priest, and accomplished climber, but he did not reach the summit himself. The climbers who successfully reached the summit were Harry Karstens, Robert Tatum, Walter Harper (a Native Alaskan), and Alfred Harper.

Yevgeniy Abalakov became in 1933 the first man to reach the highest point in the Soviet Union, Communism Peak (now called Ismoil Somoni Peak and situated in Tajikistan) .

Maurice Herzog and Louis Lachenal, successfully reached the summit of Annapurna I at 8,091 metres (26,545 ft), the highest peak in the Annapurna Massif in Nepal on June 3, 1950. Annapurna became the highest mountain to have been ascended to its summit, exceeding that achieved by the 1936 expedition to Nanda Devi, and the mountaineers were the first to reach the summit of an 8,000-metre peak.

An all-female Japanese team reached the summit of Manaslu on May 4, 1974, becoming the first women to climb a peak higher than 8,000 meters above sea level. The team consisted of Junko Tabei, Yasuko Namba, and five other climbers, as well as several sherpas. Junko Tabei was the first woman to reach the summit, followed by Yasuko Namba a few hours later. The team encountered challenges along the way, including an avalanche that killed one of their sherpas.

Italian mountaineer Reinhold Messner made his ascent of Lhotse in 1986, making him the first person to climb all fourteen "eight-thousanders".

English mountain climber Julie Tullis became the first British woman to reach the peak of K2, the world’s second highest mountain in 1986, but died after being injured during a storm on the descent. She only took to serious mountain climbing in middle age and was also a black belt in aikido and karate.

Alison Hargreaves was a British mountaineer who made history on May 13, 1995 when she became the first woman to climb Mount Everest without the aid of oxygen or Sherpas. She was 33 years old at the time and a mother of two young children.

Hargreaves was born in 1962 in Chorley, Lancashire, England. She began climbing at a young age and quickly became one of the most accomplished mountaineers in the world. In 1993, she became the first woman to climb all six of the great north faces of the Alps in a single season.

Hargreaves's death in an avalanche on K2 on August 13, 1995 was a tragedy. She was a pioneer in mountaineering and her death was a huge loss to the climbing community.

K2, is much deadlier to climb that Mount Everest. Approximately one person dies on the mountain for every four who reach the summit.

The cast of the three Lord of the Rings movies often had to fly to remote shoot locations in New Zealand by helicopter. But actor Sean Bean was afraid of flying. So, when the crew shot the scenes of the Fellowship crossing the snowy mountains, Bean would spend two hours every morning climbing from the base of the mountain to the set near the top, already dressed as Boromir. The other cast and crew would pass him as they flew up.

Source Daily Mail