from the railhead it was necessary to travel by public stage coach and then walk long distances to reach the highest peaks. The early climbers slept out in all weathers and climbed well above the snowline in clothes designed for the English countryside. All of them joked about the fleas that they invariably picked up in their lodgings in the valleys. With no sun-block and inadequate sunglasses, severe sunburn and snow blindness were common. Many climbers wore veils to protect themselves, but when Ruskin wrote of climbers being ‘red with cutaneous eruptions’ he undoubtedly spoke the truth. Oscar Brown, a schoolmaster at Eton, confessed that ‘one became tired of living upon a knapsack, and never being absolutely clean, of seldom sleeping in a decent room or enjoying wholesome food, and when September arrived I began to long for the fleshpots of civilisation’.2 Offsetting these hardships, labour was cheap and porters carried blankets, fire wood and provisions up to bivouac sites at the foot of the highest peaks. As a consequence, climbs were often noisy, boisterous affairs with large quantities of food and wine consumed before, during and after the ascent.
The ascent of the Wetterhorn in 1854 by Alfred Wills and his four guides signalled the start of the ‘Golden Age’ of British alpine exploration. The Wetterhorn is clearly visible from Grindelwald, which had already become a popular tourist destination because of its marvellous views of the Bernese Alps and easy access to two glaciers. Although it was probably the fifth or sixth ascent, the decision by a young Englishman, on his honeymoon, to climb the 3,692m/12,137ft snow-covered mountain, wearing elastic-sided boots and cricket flannels, is traditionally taken to mark the beginning of the sport of mountaineering. His account of the climb in Wanderings Amongst the High Alps (1856) makes passing reference to botany and geology, but it is clear that Wills’ primary motive was physical exercise and self-improvement, and there is a strong suggestion that it is the duty of any self-respecting Englishman to undertake such endeavours. The choice of Wills’ 1854 ascent to mark the start of the Golden Age was in many ways quite arbitrary. Albert Smith’s ascent of Mont Blanc in 1851 has at least an equal claim, but the mid-Victorian historians of the Alpine Club gave Wills the honour, probably because Smith was never quite regarded as respectable.
Alfred Wills epitomised the urban, middle-class, professional background of the climbers who dominated the sport until the First World War. His father was a lawyer and he too went into the law, becoming a high court judge when his predecessor died of a heart attack in a brothel. In 1895 he presided over the trial of Oscar Wilde and sentenced him to two years’ imprisonment for gross indecency. Wills visited the Alps almost every year from 1846 to 1896. His son William was an active climber in the 1880s and 1890s, and his grandson Major Edward Norton was leader of the 1924 Everest expedition. A founding member of the Alpine Club when it was formed in 1857, Wills became president in 1864. After The Times described members of the Club as men who ‘seem to have a special fondness for regions which are suitable only as dwelling-places for eagles’, he named his chalet in Sixt ‘The Eagle’s Nest’.
Where There’s a Will There’s a Way by Charles Hudson and Edward Kennedy was published in the same year as Wanderings and describes the first guideless ascent of Mont Blanc in 1855. Kennedy inherited a fortune at the age of 16 but lost most of it during the course of his life as a result of a series of bad investments. He became something of an expert on the underworld of his day, living for a time with thieves and other low-life in Liverpool and London. For a mid-Victorian gentleman, a journey into the East End of London was probably as great an adventure, with a similar threat of physical harm, as a climb in the Alps, but Kennedy was also a deep thinker, famous for persistently asking the question ‘Is it right?’ and the author of Thoughts on Being, suggested by Meditation upon the Infinite, the Immaterial, and the Eternal (1850). In climbing, he found a purpose in life that satisfied both his thirst for adventure and his quest for meaning, and he set about persuading others to follow. He was a prime mover in the formation of the Alpine Club and its president from 1860–62.
Charles Hudson, the co-author of Where There’s a Will There’s a Way, was an Anglican chaplain during the Crimean War and subsequently became a vicar in Lincolnshire. For him, the mountains offered a reassuring reminder of the mystery and beauty of God’s creation. He was ‘as simple and noble a character as ever carried out the precepts of muscular Christianity without talking its cant’,3 according to Leslie Stephen. Relaxed, handsome and self-effacing, Hudson was a man of extraordinary stamina and almost reckless courage. At the age of 17, he averaged 43km/27 miles per day on a tour of the Lake District and once walked from Saint-Gervais, near Chamonix, to Geneva and back in a day (a distance of 138km/86 miles). His first ascents in 1855 included the Breithorn (grade F, 4,164m/13,661ft), without guides, and the Dufourspitze (PD, 4,634m/15,203ft), the highest point of the Monte Rosa, with James and Christopher Smyth, who were also parsons, John Birkbeck, a Yorkshire banker, and Edward Stevenson. A fortnight later he climbed Mont Blanc with Edward Kennedy and made the first ascent (solo) of Mont Blanc du Tacul (PD, 4,248m/13,937ft). Hudson continued to climb throughout the Golden Age, making the first ascent of the Moine Ridge on the Aiguille Verte (AD, 4,122m/13,524ft) with Thomas Kennedy (no relation to Edward) in 1865. Thomas Kennedy once rode the Nile cataracts on a log for fun and was also a noted polo player and huntsman: ‘No man has ever ridden straighter or harder’,4 Lord Harrington noted approvingly in his obituary.
Several of the pioneers were accomplished sportsmen in other fields, including Charles Barrington who won the Irish Grand National on his horse Sir Robert Peel. During his first and only holiday in the Alps in 1858, Barrington climbed the Jungfrau and then asked some members of the Alpine Club whom he happened to meet which peaks had yet to be climbed. They suggested either the Matterhorn or the Eiger. Barrington chose the Eiger (3,970m/13,025ft) because he could not be bothered to travel to Zermatt and duly completed the first ascent of the mountain, via the West Ridge (AD). As the party approached the summit, Barrington allegedly pulled a pistol from his jacket and informed his guides that if they attempted to reach the summit before him he would blow their brains out. His account of the climb simply noted that ‘the two guides kindly gave me the place of first man up’.5
Observing the growing popularity of the sport in 1857, the Rev. S. W. King wrote of ‘young Cantabs and Oxonians scampering over pass after pass, with often apparently no other object than trying who can venture in the most novel break-neck situations’.6 These young men were led in their scamperings by local mountain guides, a small minority of whom became outstanding climbers. Melchior Anderegg, born in 1828 near Meiringen in the Bernese Oberland, was one of the best. As a boy he tended cattle, hunted chamois and became an accomplished wood carver. A big, genial man, he made numerous climbs with the Walker family and was the favourite guide of Leslie Stephen and Charles Mathews. His first ascents included the Dent d’Hérens, Zinal Rothorn, the Grandes Jorasses and the Brenva Spur of Mont Blanc (where his cousin, Jakob, led the crucial ice arête). Despite this, it was Anderegg who confounded Leslie Stephen by finding the view of London finer than the view from Mont Blanc. Christian Almer, born two years earlier in 1826 near Grindelwald, had a similar background as a shepherd and cheese-maker and achieved a similar status as a guide. He climbed the Wetterhorn with Alfred Wills and went on to make many of the first ascents of the Golden Age, climbing with Adolphus Moore, Edward Whymper and others. Later he climbed with William Coolidge and lost several toes to frostbite after a winter ascent of the Jungfrau in 1884. He made a golden wedding anniversary ascent of the Wetterhorn with his wife in 1896 when he was 70 and she was 71.
The relationship between Herr and guide was a complex one. At the start of the Golden Age, both were equally inexperienced and incompetent. However, over time a small number of outstanding guides emerged, and they were in great demand with the leading climbers of the day. By the end of the Golden Age, the best guides were undoubtedly better climbers than the amateurs, not least because of their greater fitness and experience. ‘The guide’s skills cannot, in the nature of things, be attained by Englishmen living in England,’ pointed out Florence Grove in 1870, ‘any more than a Frenchman living in France can become a good cricketer.’7 The roles of the employer and of the guide were quite distinct. The employer selected the mountain to be climbed and played some role in deciding which route to follow. However, just as British explorers in the tropics used ‘natives’ to cut the trails and carry the stores, so in the Alps the guide generally cut all the steps on snow and ice and invariably led on rocks. At a slightly later date, Clinton