Mountaineering | Definition, History, Equipment, & Facts | Britannica (original) (raw)

Also called:

mountain climbing

mountaineering, the sport of attaining, or attempting to attain, high points in mountainous regions, mainly for the pleasure of the climb. Although the term is often loosely applied to walking up low mountains that offer only moderate difficulties, it is more properly restricted to climbing in localities where the terrain and weather conditions present such hazards that, for safety, a certain amount of previous experience will be found necessary. For the untrained, mountaineering is a dangerous pastime.

Mountaineering differs from other outdoor sports in that nature alone provides the field of action—and just about all of the challenges—for the participant. Climbing mountains embodies the thrills produced by testing one’s courage, resourcefulness, cunning, strength, ability, and stamina to the utmost in a situation of inherent risk. Mountaineering, to a greater degree than other sports, is a group activity, with each member both supporting and supported by the group’s achievement at every stage. For most climbers, the pleasures of mountaineering lie not only in the “conquest” of a peak but also in the physical and spiritual satisfactions brought about through intense personal effort, ever-increasing proficiency, and contact with natural grandeur.

Early attempts to ascend mountain peaks were inspired by other than sporting motives: to build altars or to see if spirits actually haunted once-forbidden heights, to get an overview of one’s own or a neighbouring countryside, or to make meteorological or geological observations. Before the modern era, history recorded few attempts to ascend mountain peaks for the mere sake of the accomplishment. During the 18th century a growing number of natural philosophers—the scientists of their day—began making field trips into the Alps of Europe to make scientific observations. The area around Chamonix, France, became a special attraction to those investigators because of the great glaciers on the Mont Blanc chain.

Mountaineering in a contemporary sporting sense was born when a young Genevese scientist, Horace-Bénédict de Saussure, on a first visit to Chamonix in 1760, viewed Mont Blanc (at 15,771 feet [4,807 metres] the tallest peak in Europe) and determined that he would climb to the top of it or be responsible for its being climbed. He offered prize money for the first ascent of Mont Blanc, but it was not until 1786, more than 25 years later, that his money was claimed—by a Chamonix doctor, Michel-Gabriel Paccard, and his porter, Jacques Balmat. A year later de Saussure himself climbed to the summit of Mont Blanc. After 1850 groups of British climbers with Swiss, Italian, or French guides scaled one after another of the high peaks of Switzerland. A landmark climb in the growth of the sport was the spectacular first ascent of the Matterhorn (14,692 feet [4,478 metres]) on July 14, 1865, by a party led by an English artist, Edward Whymper. In the mid-19th century the Swiss developed a coterie of guides whose leadership helped make mountaineering a distinguished sport as they led the way to peak after peak throughout central Europe.

By 1870 all of the principal Alpine summits had been scaled, and climbers began to seek new and more-difficult routes on peaks that had already been ascended. As the few remaining minor peaks of the Alps were overcome, by the end of the 19th century climbers turned their attention to the Andes Mountains of South America, the North American Rocky Mountains, the Caucasus at the western edge of Asia, Africa’s peaks, and finally the vastness of the Himalayas. Mount Aconcagua (22,831 feet [6,959 metres]), the highest peak of the Andes, was first climbed in 1897, and Grand Teton (13,770 feet [4,197 metres]) in North America’s Rocky Mountains was ascended in 1898. The Italian duke d’Abruzzi in 1897 made the first ascent of Mount St. Elias (18,008 feet [5,489 metres]), which stands athwart the international boundary of the U.S. state of Alaska and Yukon territory, Canada, and in 1906 successfully climbed Margherita Peak in the Ruwenzori Range (16,795 feet [5,119 metres]) in East Africa. In 1913 an American, Hudson Stuck, ascended Denali (Mount McKinley) in Alaska, which, at 20,310 feet (6,190 metres), is the highest peak in North America. The way was opening for greater conquests, but it would be mid-century before the final bastion, Mount Everest in the Himalayas, was ascended.

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As the 20th century wore on, the truly international character of mountaineering began to reveal itself. Increasingly, Austrians, Chinese, English, French, Germans, Indians, Italians, Japanese, and Russians turned their attention to opportunities inherent in the largest mountain landmass of the planet, the Himalayas and neighbouring ranges. After World War I the British made Everest their particular goal. Meanwhile, climbers from other countries were making spectacularly successful climbs of other great Himalayan peaks. A Soviet team climbed Stalin Peak (24,590 feet [7,495 metres])—later renamed Communism Peak and then Imeni Ismail Samani Peak—in the Pamirs in 1933, a German party succeeded on Siniolchu (22,600 feet [6,888 metres]) in 1936, and the English climbed Nanda Devi (25,646 feet [7,817 metres]) the same year. In 1940–47_The Alpine Journal_ of London, a reliable chronicler of ascents, listed for the first time no peaks ascended—a reflection, of course, of the imperatives of World War II.

In the 1950s came a series of successful ascents of mountains in the Himalayas: a first climb by the French of Annapurna I (26,545 feet [8,091 metres]) in June 1950, Nanga Parbat (26,660 feet [8,126 metres]) by the Germans and Austrians in 1953, Kanchenjunga (28,169 feet [8,586 metres]) by the British in May 1955, and Lhotse I (27,940 feet [8,516 metres]) by the Swiss in 1956. In addition, K2 in the Karakoram Range, at 28,251 feet (8,611 metres) the world’s second highest mountain, was first scaled by two Italian climbers in July 1954. Beyond all those, however, the success of the British on Mount Everest (29,035 feet [8,850 metres]; see Researcher’s Note: Height of Mount Everest)—when a New Zealand beekeeper, Edmund (later Sir Edmund) Hillary, and the Tibetan guide Tenzing Norgay stood on the top of the world on May 29, 1953—was a culminating moment. That expedition, which was led by Colonel John Hunt, was the eighth team in 30 years to attempt Everest, and there had also been three reconnaissance expeditions.

An Austrian party reached the summit of Cho Oyu (26,906 feet [8,201 metres]), just to the west of Everest, in October 1954. In May 1955 a French party succeeded in getting all its members and a Sherpa guide to the summit of Makalu 1 (27,766 feet [8,463 metres]), another neighbour of Everest. The British expedition that in May 1955 climbed Kanchenjunga, often considered one of the world’s most-difficult mountaineering challenges, was led by Charles Evans, who had been deputy leader of the first successful climb of Everest.

Beginning in the 1960s, mountaineering underwent several transformations. Once peaks were climbed, the emphasis moved to a search for increasingly difficult routes up the mountain face to the summit, as in the golden age of the Alpine ascents. A notable example was the 1963 ascent of the West Face of Everest by two members of the first American team to climb the mountain. Moreover, vertical or other so-called impossible rock faces were being scaled through the use of newly developed artificial aids and advanced climbing techniques. Smooth vertical faces of granite were overcome in climbs lasting days or even weeks at a time—for example, the 27-day conquest by American climbers in 1970 of the sheer 3,600-foot (1,100-metre) southeast face of the granite monolith El Capitan in Yosemite National Park in the North American Sierra Nevada range. Other notable developments included an increase in the “Alpine” style of climbing the highest peaks, where mountaineers carried a minimal amount of equipment and supplies and did not rely on porters and other outside support, and a rise in the number of people climbing at high elevations without the use of supplemental oxygen.