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    Mountaineering in Switzerland
    Mountaineering in Switzerland
    Mountaineering in Switzerland
    Ebook64 pages30 minutes

    Mountaineering in Switzerland

    By Anon Anon

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    About this ebook

    In the middle of the main square of Chamonix stands the memorial erected to the Geneva naturalist Horace-Benedict de Saussure and to his guide. Although de Saussure was not actually the first person to reach the top of Mont Blanc, he and Balmat together gave the initial impetus to mountaineering and awoke a new passion in mankind.
    The Swiss have made a substantial contribution to the conquest of the Alps. In addition to those of de Saussure, many other valuable explorations have been undertaken.
    During the classic period of alpine mountaineering, the XIXth century, one peak after another in the cantons of Valais and Berne was scaled with the help of Swiss mountain guides who, again and again, earned hearty praise from the explorers by whom they had been engaged.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRead Books Ltd.
    Release dateApr 4, 2013
    ISBN9781447492115
    Mountaineering in Switzerland

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      Book preview

      Mountaineering in Switzerland - Anon Anon

      Oberland

      The Birth of Mountaineering

      In the middle of the main square of Chamonix stands the memorial erected to the Geneva naturalist Horace-Benedict de Saussure and to his guide, the crystal hunter Jacques Balmat. Although de Saussure was not actually the first person to reach the top of Mont Blanc, he and Balmat together gave the initial impetus to mountaineering and awoke a new passion in mankind.

      Before that time, mountains had inspired nothing but terror. They were surrounded by tales of danger and supernatural threats, so that the first step in conquering the Alps was to overcome this unbelievably persistent fear of the mountains.

      In the sixteenth century, Vadianus of St. Gall and Gessner of Zurich ventured up Mount Pilatus which had always been surrounded by a thick web of terrifying legends, and Gessner wrote an impressive description of his ascent. Josias Simmler, a Zurich scholar, undertook to collect all that was known about the Alps in his time and with great care succeeded in making a kind of alpine encyclopedia. By the end of the seventeenth century another Zurich scholar, Dr. Johann Jakob Scheuchzer, made an unprejudiced attempt to understand the mountains, describing them in his Natural History of the Country. It is an astonishing fact, considering the period he lived in, that he collected his information by means of questionnaires sent to shepherds, hunters, peasants, clergymen, scholars, and other persons living in the mountains. Then Albrecht von Haller obtained recognition as the poet of the Alps. His poem Die Alpen was enthusiastically received, translated into French and English, and its author accepted as a leading pioneer.

      It was not until after this very prolonged intellectual and spiritual preparation that the actual conquest of the Alps in a mountaineering sense got under way. This activity began with de Saussure’s ascent of Mont Blanc in 1787, which he undertook with one servant and eighteen guides. In a sensational report, de Saussure published the results of his hazardous experience together with his scientific conclusions.

      Another chapter in the history of the discovery of the Alps was the oft repeated attempt to climb the Matterhorn, which everyone considered impregnable until Edward Whymper with Peter Taugwalder, the latter’s son, and four further associates, finally reached the summit on 14th July 1865.

      Despite the accident which occured on Whymper’s descent and in defiance of the violent outcry in the British press, English mountain lovers who eight years previously had founded the world’s first Alpine Club in London, went on obeying their powerful mountaineering traditions, conquering one summit after another.

      Many mountaineering Britons have written excellent books about Switzerland’s Alps, their publications having had the effect of popularising

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