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unusual facts about first ascent



Aiguille du Dru

The first ascent of the Grand Dru was by British alpinists Clinton Thomas Dent and James Walker Hartley, with guides Alexander Burgener and K. Maurer, who climbed it via the south-east face on 12 September 1878.

Alphubel

The first ascent of the mountain was by Leslie Stephen and T. W. Hinchliff with guides Melchior Anderegg and Peter Perren on 9 August 1860, starting at Täsch and via the south-east ridge and the Alphubeljoch.

Josune Bereziartu

Bain de Sang in St Loup, Switzerland, had its first ascent (FA) by Fred Nicole and was the third 9a route in the world.

Mercedario

It was first ascended in 1934 by Adam Karpiński and Wiktor Ostrowski, members of a Polish andinist expedition led by Konstanty Jodko-Narkiewicz.

Mont Blanc du Tacul

The official first ascent of Mont Blanc du Tacul was by a guideless party comprising Charles Hudson, Edward John Stevenson, Christopher and James Grenville Smith, E. S. Kennedy, Charles Ainslie and G. C. Joad on 8 August 1855.

Owen-Spalding route

It was pioneered by William O. Owen, Franklin Spalding, Frank Peterson, and John Shive on August 11, 1898, during the mountain's first ascent.

Robert Parry Nisbet

Nisbet's grandson Douglas Robert Hadow (1846–1865) was killed in a mountaineering accident a few hours after taking part in the first ascent of the Matterhorn.


see also

Albert R. Ellingwood

Many mountain features are named for him, on peaks such as Middle Teton, on which Ellingwood made the first ascent, the Ellingwood Ridge of La Plata Peak, and the Ellingwood Arete ascent of Crestone Needle; the fourteener Ellingwood Point, near Blanca Peak in southern Colorado, is named for him as well.

Alistair Mackay

In March 1908 along with Mawson and David, Mackay made up the party who undertook the first ascent of Mount Erebus.

Archibald Douglas, 8th Marquess of Queensberry

Lord Francis William Bouverie Douglas (1847–1865), beaten by A. W. Moore and party by a day to first ascent of the Ober Gabelhorn, killed a week later in the first successful ascent of the Matterhorn.

August Kautz

On July 16, 1857, Kautz made what is sometimes credited as the first ascent of Mount Rainier.

Bamford Edge

The first ascent of "Smoked Salmon", which is graded as E8 7b was made by British climber Johnny Dawes.

Bestor Robinson

From October 9 to 12, 1939 a Sierra Club climbing team including Robinson, David Brower, Raffi Bedayn, and John Dyer, completed the first ascent of Shiprock, the erosional remnant of the throat of a volcano with nearly vertical walls on the Navajo reservation in northwestern New Mexico.

Caradog Jones

On 25 January 2001 Jones made the first ascent, solo, of the highest of the Three Brothers peaks (2008m) at the north west end of the Allardyce Range range on South Georgia.

Daniel Woods

On 19 June 2007, when he was traveling in the Rocky Mountain National Park in the area of Chaos Canyon, he made the first ascent of Jade, formerly named Green Project 45, a project he worked for several years with Dave Graham.

Dee Molenaar

Along with "Big Jim" Jim Whittaker and Robert Kennedy, he was a member of the 1965 climb and first ascent of Mount Kennedy in the Yukon, named after John F. Kennedy.

Frederick Whymper

His younger brother Edward Whymper was a renowned alpinist who made the first ascent of the Matterhorn in 1865.

Fritz Wiessner

No one came as close to the top of the mountain again until July 31, 1954 when the first ascent was achieved by Lino Lacedelli and Achille Compagnoni.

Galen Rowell

First ascent of Cholatse, the final major peak climbed in the Everest region

Gary Hemming

Together with Royal Robbins he made the first ascent of the American Direct route on the Aiguille du Dru in Chamonix in 1962, and was widely known in France for his role as a rescuer of a party on the same mountain in 1966, earning him the moniker "le Beatnik".

Grand Pilier d'Angle

The first ascent from the valley was by James Eccles with guides Michel Payot and Alphonse Payot on 30 July 1877 during an ascent of the Peuterey ridge, although the summit had been visited on 20 August 1822 by F. Clissold with guides J. M. Couttet, M. Bossonney, D. Couttet, P. Favret and J. B. Simond on the descent from their first ascent of Mont Blanc de Courmayeur.

Große Sandspitze

The first ascent of the Große Sandspitze was made by Franz Mitterhofer, a farmer from Tristach, known as Kreitmeier, on 2 July 1886.

Günter Dyhrenfurth

This expedition made the first ascent of Sia Kangri and some of its sub-peaks and provided detailed information about the accessibility of the 8000ers Gasherbrum I and II.

Houghton, Cambridgeshire

He was a relative of Edward Whymper who led the first ascent of the Matterhorn, in which members of the team (including schoolboy Douglas Hadow died during the descent under what some consider controversial circumstances.

Humphrey Owen Jones

Together with Karl Blodig, Geoffrey Winthrop Young and the guide Joseph Knubel of St Niklaus he made the first ascent of the Brouillard ridge to the summit of Mont Blanc on 9 August 1911.

John Birkbeck

He was a member of the party which made the first ascent of Monte Rosa in 1855 and, in 1857, a founder member of the Alpine Club, having been a friend of its first president, John Ball, at Cambridge.

Jubilee Peak

The team that carried out the first ascent was composed of Commander John Highton, Royal Navy (Leader), Captain Chris Hurran, Royal Engineers, and Lieutenant Mike Wimpenny, Royal Marines.

Lino Lacedelli

In 1951, he achieved international recognition by completing, in the Mont Blanc area, the second ascent of the Bonatti-Ghigo on the east face of the Grand Capucin with Bibi Ghendina in 18-hours, just weeks after the four-day first ascent.

Mark Wellman

Mark Wellman is an author, filmmaker, paralympian, and motivational speaker, who is best known for his 1989 ascent of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park, which was the first ascent of the cliff by a paraplegic.

Meije

The first ascent was eventually made from the southwest on 16 August 1877 by father and son Pierre Gaspard and their client Emmanuel Boileau de Castelnau.

Meta Brevoort

In 1876, she had her final opportunity for a first ascent, but, instead, stayed in the Oberland in order to give more money to her nephew, to support his efforts in the range.

Middle Teton

The first ascent of the Glacier Route was completed on August 4, 1944, by Paul Bradt and Sterling Hendricks.

Middle Triple Peak

The first ascent of the peak was in 1976 by Russell McLean and Charlie Porter (fresh from the first solo of the Cassin Ridge on Mount McKinley).

Mont Dolent

The first ascent of the mountain was made on 9 July 1864 by A. Reilly and Edward Whymper with guides Michel Croz, H. Charlet and M. Payot.

Mount Blackburn

The first ascent of this summit was made in 1912 by Dora Keen and George Handy via the Kennicott Glacier (on the south side of the mountain) and East Face.

Mount Thor

Donald Morton and Lyman Spitzer made the first ascent of Mount Thor in 1965 during the Alpine Club of Canada expedition led by Pat Baird.

Neacola Mountains

Noted climber Fred Beckey visited the range in the early 1970s; in 1991, when he was "spiritual leader" of the expedition which made the first ascent of Mount Neacola; and again in 2004.

Peter Boardman

Boardman led a British-Nepalese expedition to make the first ascent of the southern summit of Gauri Sankar, a twin-peaked mountain in Nepal.

Peter Graham

Peter Graham (New Zealand Mountaineer) who together with Henrik Sillem made the first ascent of the West Ridge of Mount Cook

Picco Luigi Amedeo

The first ascent of the entire Brouillard ridge including Picco Luigi Amedeo was by Karl Blodig, Humphrey Owen Jones, Geoffrey Winthrop Young with the guide Josef Knubel of St. Niklaus in the canton Valais on 9 August 1911.

Pierre Jean Édouard Desor

He was in a guided party on the first ascent of the Lauteraarhorn on 8 August 1842 and of the Rosenhorn summit of the Wetterhorn on 28 August 1844.

Piz Scerscen

The first ascent of Piz Scerscen was by Paul Güssfeldt, Hans Grass and Caspar Capat on 13 September 1877 via the north-west spur, descending the same way.

Samuel Brawand

As a mountaineer, he made a name for himself with the first ascent of the Mittellegigrat (the northeast ridge of the Eiger) on 10 September 1921, serving as guide for Maki Yūkō along with fellow guides Fritz Amatter and Fritz Steuri.

Sargent's Purchase, New Hampshire

The first known explorer to have stepped foot in what is now known as Sargent’s Purchase was Darby Field, who claimed to have made the first ascent of Mount Washington in 1642.

Schoening Peak

The peak was named by US-ACAN in 2006 after Peter K. Schoening (1936-2004), member of the 1966–67 American Antarctic Mountaineering Expedition that made the first ascent of Mount Vinson, the summit of Antarctica, and other high mountains in the Sentinel Range.

Schreckhorn

The first ascent was on 16 August 1861 by Leslie Stephen, Ulrich Kaufmann, Christian Michel and Peter Michel.

Store Venjetinden

The first ascent was via the northeast ridge in 1881 by William Cecil Slingsby and Johannes Vigdal.

Taboche

The first ascent was made in 1974 by a French expedition led by Yannick Seigneur and the clarinettist and composer Jean-Christian Michel.

The Ascent of Rum Doodle

It is a parody of the non-fictional chronicles of mountaineering expeditions (notably H. W. Tilman's account of the ascent of Nanda Devi and Maurice Herzog's book Annapurna chronicling the first ascent of Annapurna in Nepal) that were popular during the 1950s, as many of the world's highest peaks were climbed for the first time.

The Lairig Club

It is interesting to note that other than the first ascent of Raven’s Gully in Glencoe by Hamish MacInnes and Chris Bonington in 1953 all the grade V routes in Scotland were confined to the Lairig’s stomping ground of the Eastern Cairngorms in the early 1950s and it is ironic that it was Lairig members Patey and Nicol who teamed up with Hamish MacInnes to climb the first grade V on Ben Nevis, this came in the form of the much prized first ascent of Zero Gully.

Tom Patey

He climbed extensively in Scotland, (making the first winter traverse of the Cuillin ridge with Hamish MacInnes, David Crabbe and Brian Robertson in 1965), as well as achieving notable ascents in the Alps and the Karakoram including the first ascent of the Muztagh Tower (7273m) with John Hartog, Joe Brown and Ian McNaught-Davis in 1956 and Rakaposhi (7788m) in 1958 with Mike Banks.

Winthrop E. Stone

On July 17, 1921, Stone fell to his death from the summit of Eon Mountain shortly after completing the peak's first ascent.

Zinalrothorn

The first ascent was made on 22 August 1864 via the north ridge by Leslie Stephen and Florence Crauford Grove with guides Jakob Anderegg and Melchior Anderegg (AD).