98 Fun Facts About Mountaineering

Who ordered the 1492 ascent of Mont Aiguille, often called the birth of mountaineering?

The King of France, Charles VIII, ordered the climb, and Antoine de Ville led a party up the cliffs with ladders and ropes.

Which Chamonix doctor made the 1786 first ascent of Mont Blanc with Jacques Balmat?

Michel-Gabriel Paccard and Balmat, his porter, claimed the prize money that the scientist Saussure had put up more than 25 years earlier; Saussure climbed the peak himself a year later.

Marie Paradis, a maidservant, became the first woman to climb which Alpine peak in 1808?

Mont Blanc: Paradis went up with the guide Jacques Balmat and had to be helped by her guides on the final slopes; the second woman, Henriette d'Angeville, did not follow for thirty years.

The Alpine Club, the world's first mountaineering club, was founded in 1857 in which city?

London: British climbers with Swiss, French and Italian guides led the great Alpine first ascents of the 1850s and 1860s, so the sport's first club met far from any Alp; Austrian, Swiss and Italian clubs followed by 1863.

Sir Alfred Wills' 1854 ascent of which peak started the Golden Age of Alpinism?

The Wetterhorn had in fact been climbed a decade earlier by local guides, but Wills believed he was first, and his ascent made mountaineering fashionable in Britain.

The first ascent of the Matterhorn in 1865 was led by which English illustrator?

Edward Whymper's triumph turned to tragedy on the descent: one climber slipped and dragged three others to their deaths, and only a breaking rope saved Whymper and two guides.

Which Swiss resort village lies at the foot of the Matterhorn?

Zermatt bans petrol and diesel cars to keep the air clear around the Matterhorn, so most visitors park in Täsch and finish the journey by shuttle train.

Which flower became the symbol of alpinists and mountaineers in the 19th century?

Edelweiss grows in remote mountain places, and an 1861 novel claimed that owning one was 'proof of unusual daring'; alpine clubs and mountain troops later took it as their badge.

Hans Meyer and Ludwig Purtscheller made the first ascent of which African peak in 1889?

Kilimanjaro fell at Meyer's third attempt: deep snow and ice stopped him in 1887, and in 1888 he was taken hostage during the Abushiri revolt and freed only for a ransom.

Which occultist co-led the first attempt on K2 in 1902?

Aleister Crowley, later branded 'the wickedest man in the world', was a serious climber: in 1905 he led another Himalayan attempt, which ended after four of the party died in an avalanche.

Oscar Eckenstein's 1908 design modernised which piece of climbing equipment?

Crampons with ten points were Eckenstein's idea, made for sale by the blacksmith Henry Grivel; Grivel's son later added two front points, which let climbers go straight up steep ice.

Which eight-thousander, the world's sixth-highest, is generally considered the easiest and safest of the fourteen to climb?

Cho Oyu's north-west face is a gentle slope with few technical sections and little avalanche risk, and an old trade pass, the Nangpa La, runs just beside it, so it has become a favourite of guided parties.

Which was the first eight-thousander to be climbed, in 1950?

Annapurna is the only eight-thousander climbed at the first attempt, but the descent cost Maurice Herzog and Louis Lachenal all their toes to frostbite, with Herzog losing fingers as well.

Which eight-thousander, lying wholly inside Tibet, was the last to be climbed, in 1964?

Shishapangma is the lowest of the fourteen, but Tibet was closed to foreign climbers, so the last first ascent went to a Chinese expedition led by Xu Jing in May 1964.

Which 1920s climber purportedly explained wanting to climb Everest with the words "Because it's there"?

George Mallory was quoted giving the reply in The New York Times in March 1923, during an American lecture tour; he vanished high on Everest the next year, and his body was not found until 1999.

News of the 1953 first ascent of Everest was published in Britain on the morning of which event?

Elizabeth II's coronation fell on 2 June 1953, four days after the summit: Times reporter Jan Morris, afraid of being scooped, sent the news in a code that read 'Snow conditions bad'.

Edmund Hillary flew to the North Pole in 1985 in a small ski plane alongside which astronaut?

Neil Armstrong shared the flight, which made Hillary the first person to stand at both poles and on Everest's summit; he had reached the South Pole by tractor in 1958.

By what name do Tibetans and Sherpas know Mount Everest?

Chomolungma, variously translated as 'Holy Mother' or 'Goddess Mother of the World', was already in use when the British claimed they could find no commonly used local name for the peak.

Andrew Waugh named Peak XV after Sir George Everest, who had held what post?

The Surveyor General of India until 1843, Everest never saw the peak and objected to the honour, telling the Royal Geographical Society that his name could not be written or pronounced by locals.

China's 2005 figure put Everest about four metres below Nepal's by excluding what?

The snow cap was the sticking point: China measured bare rock at 8,844.43 m while Nepal kept the snow height of 8,848 m, until the two countries jointly announced 8,848.86 m in 2020.

The rock wall just below Everest's summit on the southeast ridge is known as what?

The Hillary Step was the last real obstacle before the top: in 1953 Hillary jammed himself into a crack beside the rock, levered his way up, then held the rope while his partner followed.

What is the treacherous glacier section on Everest's Nepal side called?

The Khumbu Icefall is a jumble of huge ice blocks that shifts as the glacier flows, so climbers try to cross before sunrise while it is frozen; an avalanche there in April 2014 killed 16 Nepalese guides.

Who made the first ascent of Nanga Parbat in 1953, walking the final 1,300 metres alone?

Hermann Buhl reached the top at about 7 pm without bottled oxygen, then survived the night standing on a narrow ledge with no bivouac gear, getting down with two frostbitten toes.

Nanga Parbat has earned what grim nickname for its climber fatalities?

Killer Mountain was a name earned early: 31 people had died on Nanga Parbat before anyone reached its summit in 1953, most of them on German-led expeditions in the 1930s.

K2, the world's second-highest mountain, lies in which range?

The Karakoram gave K2 its name: surveyor Thomas Montgomerie labelled the range's peaks K1, K2 and so on in 1856, and as no local name was found for this one, the label stuck.

On K2 in 1953, Pete Schoening stopped his falling teammates with a rope and one ice axe, a feat known as what?

The Belay saved the whole American expedition: one slip had dragged the roped climbers off the slope until Schoening, his ice axe jammed behind a boulder, held them all.

The couloir just below K2's summit, overhung by a wall of seracs, is known as what?

The Bottleneck forces climbers to pass directly beneath unstable ice: in August 2008 a serac fall there swept away the fixed ropes, and 11 climbers died over two days.

Who was the first woman to summit K2, on 23 June 1986?

Wanda Rutkiewicz, a Polish computer engineer, reached the top without bottled oxygen, but her teammates Liliane and Maurice Barrard died on the descent, two of 13 climbers lost on K2 that summer.

On K2's first winter ascent in 2021, how did the ten climbers from rival teams settle who reached the top first?

They summited together: the ten Nepalis, drawn from separate expeditions, joined forces and reached the top as one group, so the achievement belonged to their country rather than to one climber.

Who partnered Reinhold Messner on the first ascent of Everest without bottled oxygen, in 1978?

Peter Habeler, an Austrian mountaineer, raced down from the summit to the South Col in a single hour; until then, climbing Everest without extra oxygen had been thought impossible.

Reinhold Messner comes from which mountainous region of northern Italy?

South Tyrol is largely German-speaking; Messner's father introduced him to climbing there, by 13 he was making hard ascents with his brother, and from 1999 to 2004 he sat in the European Parliament for the Greens.

Which annual award, first presented in France in 1992, honours the year's most outstanding mountaineering ascents?

Piolet d'Or is French for golden ice axe, the trophy each winning team receives; the 2008 awards were cancelled after a past winner publicly questioned whether climbs could be ranked at all.

In mountaineering, what does the term death zone refer to?

Altitudes too high to sustain life for long, usually put above 8,000 metres: there is too little oxygen for the body to recover, so even the strongest climbers can survive only a few days there.

Who in 1975 became the first woman to reach the summit of Everest?

Junko Tabei was buried by an avalanche at 6,300 metres and dug out unconscious by Sherpa guides, yet twelve days later she stood on the summit; in 1992 she also completed the Seven Summits.

Which Texan businessman became the first person to climb the Seven Summits, on 30 April 1985?

Richard Bass, owner of the Snowbird ski resort, dreamed up the challenge with Frank Wells, later president of Disney, and finished on Everest at 55, then the oldest person to have climbed it.

On the original Seven Summits list, which peak represents the Australian mainland?

Mount Kosciuszko is an easy walk of 2,228 metres, so Reinhold Messner proposed a rival list that swaps it for a far harder rock peak in New Guinea.

The 1996 Everest disaster was chronicled by Jon Krakauer in which book?

Into Thin Air grew out of a magazine assignment: Krakauer went to report for Outside on the commercialisation of Everest and found himself inside the storm that killed eight climbers.

Which two expedition leaders died in the 1996 Everest disaster?

Rob Hall and Scott Fischer led rival commercial teams; Hall, stranded near the summit, was patched through by radio to his pregnant wife, and the two chose a name for their unborn child.

Ueli Steck cut his own solo speed record on which mountain to 2 hours 47 minutes in 2008?

The Eiger was Steck's speed wall: he soloed its 1,800-metre north face in 3 hours 54 minutes in 2007 and got that down to 2 hours 22 minutes by 2015, before a fatal fall on Nuptse in 2017.

Which Sherpa reached Everest's summit for a record 30th time in May 2024?

Kami Rita made the climb just ten days after his 29th; guiding is the family trade, as his father was among the first professional Sherpa guides once Nepal opened to foreign climbers in 1950.

In how long did Nirmal Purja's Project Possible climb all fourteen eight-thousanders?

Six months and six days, in 2019, against a previous record of nearly eight years; the Netflix film 14 Peaks tells the story, and the mark fell in 2023 to Kristin Harila and Tenjen Sherpa, who took 92 days.

Before mountaineering, Nirmal Purja was a Gurkha and then joined which elite British unit?

The Special Boat Service took him as its first Gurkha; he left it to climb full-time and remortgaged his house to help pay for his record attempt on the eight-thousanders.

Ötzi, the 5,300-year-old iceman found high in the Alps in 1991, turned out to have died from what?

An arrow wound: in 2001 an X-ray found a flint arrowhead in his left shoulder, ten years after hikers spotted him at 3,210 metres; he had first been taken for the victim of a mountain accident.

Which poet described his 26 April 1336 ascent of Mont Ventoux in a famous letter?

Petrarch wrote that on the summit he opened Augustine's Confessions and at once read a rebuke to men who marvel at mountains but neglect themselves, and that he came down in silence.

Three frozen Inca child mummies found in 1999 lay near the summit of which Andean volcano?

Llullaillaco's summit shrine is the world's highest archaeological site: the Incas climbed there around 1500, centuries before European mountaineers reached such heights, and the children now rest in a museum in Salta.

Which explorer, namesake of K2's standard ridge route, led the 1897 first ascent of Mount Saint Elias?

The Duke of the Abruzzi, a royal prince, tried K2 in 1909: his team was turned back above 6,000 metres but then set a world altitude record of about 7,500 metres on nearby Chogolisa.

Which climber, namesake of a lightweight tent, died attempting Nanga Parbat in 1895?

Albert F. Mummery championed climbing without guides; on the mountain he vanished with two Gurkha soldiers, probably swept away by an avalanche while scouting another face.

Which British geographer made the first ascent of Mount Kenya in 1899?

Halford Mackinder, later famous for his 'Heartland' theory of geopolitics, reached the highest summit, Batian, with two guides; nobody stood there again until Eric Shipton's party in 1929.

Hudson Stuck's party made the first verified ascent of which peak in 1913?

Denali's summit was first reached by Walter Harper, a 20-year-old of Koyukon descent whom archdeacon Hudson Stuck had hired as his guide and interpreter; the rest of the party followed him to the top.

Swiss guide Matthias Zurbriggen made the first recorded ascent of which peak in 1897?

Aconcagua, the highest peak outside Asia, fell to Zurbriggen climbing alone on a British expedition led by Edward FitzGerald; its normal route needs no ropes, so it is often called the highest non-technical mountain.

Which dormant volcano is the highest mountain in both Russia and Europe?

Mount Elbrus tops Europe only if the continent's border is drawn along the Caucasus watershed, as most lists assume; draw it farther north and the title passes to a peak in the Alps.

Vinson Massif, named after a US congressman, is the highest peak on which continent?

Antarctica's highest peak honours Carl Vinson of Georgia, a key supporter of funding for Antarctic research; it was not even seen until 1958 and was first climbed in 1966 by an American team under Nicholas Clinch.

Heinrich Harrer led the 1962 first ascent of which Seven Summits peak?

Puncak Jaya is also called Carstensz Pyramid, after the Dutch explorer who sighted its glaciers in 1623; his report of snow so near the equator went unverified for more than two centuries.

Joe Brown and George Band stopped just short of which summit in 1955 to keep a promise?

Kangchenjunga is sacred in Sikkim, so the British team had promised its ruler that the very top would stay untrodden; Brown and Band stopped a few yards short, in deference to that belief.

Lionel Terray and Jean Couzy made the 1955 first ascent of which eight-thousander, the world's fifth-highest peak?

Makalu was climbed by almost the whole French team: after Terray and Couzy, the others followed over the next two days, at a time when expeditions rarely put more than two men on a summit.

Which eight-thousander is also known as Hidden Peak?

Gasherbrum I was dubbed Hidden Peak by Martin Conway in 1892 because other mountains screen it from view for most of the approach up the Baltoro Glacier; it is the only eight-thousander first climbed by Americans.

The Eiger's north face was first climbed in 1938 by a team from which two countries?

Germany and Austria each supplied a pair, and the two teams joined forces on the wall; that same year the Alpine Journal's editor had dismissed the face as 'an obsession for the mentally deranged'.

The Eiger's deadly north face earned which grim German nickname?

Mordwand, 'murder wall', is a pun on Nordwand, German for north face; in 1936 Toni Kurz died there hanging on his rope, after rescuers had come within shouting distance of him.

In Touching the Void, Joe Simpson and Simon Yates descend which Peruvian peak?

Siula Grande's west face was unclimbed until their ascent; on the way down Simpson broke his leg, Yates had to cut the rope between them, and Simpson crawled back to camp over three days.

In the 1960s the CIA tried to place a nuclear-powered listening device on which peak?

Nanda Devi kept the device: the 1965 team was driven off by a blizzard and left the plutonium-powered generator anchored on the mountain, and when searchers returned the next spring it had vanished for good.

Gangkhar Puensum, the world's highest unclimbed mountain, is in which country?

Bhutan banned climbs above 6,000 metres in 1994 out of respect for local spiritual beliefs, and all mountaineering in 2003, so the 7,570-metre peak is likely to stay untouched.

Which Nepalese peak, named for its fish-tail shape, has never officially been climbed?

Machapuchare is held sacred to the god Shiva; in 1957 a British party stopped about 45 metres below the top, the king having forbidden them to set foot on the summit, and Nepal has issued no permits since.

Reinhold Messner reportedly turned down a Chinese offer in the 1980s to climb which sacred peak?

Mount Kailash is sacred in Bon, Buddhism, Hinduism and Jainism, and pilgrims walk around it rather than up it; China refused a Spanish team in 2001 and now prohibits all climbing there.

Walter Bonatti's famous 1955 solo climbed a new route on which Chamonix peak?

Aiguille du Dru's south-west pillar took Bonatti six days alone, with five nights hanging on the wall; the Bonatti Pillar, as it became known, was destroyed by a rockfall in 2005.

Riccardo Cassin's 1938 Walker Spur climbs which peak, one of the Alps' three great north faces?

Grandes Jorasses was unknown ground to Cassin: his party had never been to that part of the Alps and had to ask a hut keeper where the face was, then climbed the spur in three days.

Which British climber reached Everest's summit without bottled oxygen or Sherpa support in 1995, then died on K2 three months later?

Alison Hargreaves summited K2 on 13 August 1995 and died in a violent storm on the way down; two years earlier she had been the first person to solo the six great north faces of the Alps in one summer.

Who in 2011 became the first woman to climb all 14 eight-thousanders without bottled oxygen?

Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner, an Austrian former nurse, finished on K2 at her seventh expedition to the mountain, a year after she had watched a climbing partner fall to his death there.

Who in 2005 became the first American to climb all 14 eight-thousanders?

Ed Viesturs, a qualified veterinarian, was drawn to climbing in high school by a mountaineering book, and the peak it describes turned out to be the last of his 14, in 2005.

Yuichiro Miura won fame on Everest in 1970 by doing what?

Skiing down it from the South Col, Miura used a parachute as a brake, fell some 400 metres and stopped just short of a crevasse; the film of the run won an Oscar, and in 2013 he reached the summit aged 80.

After Jordan Romero, 13, climbed Everest in 2010, China did what?

Set age limits: Nepal already barred under-16s, which is why Romero's family took the Tibetan route, as the previous record-holder, 15-year-old Ming Kipa, had done in 2003.

Chris Bonington's successful 1975 Everest expedition took which route?

Southwest Face climbers Doug Scott and Dougal Haston topped out so late that they spent the night at the South Summit, then the highest bivouac ever made; Mick Burke vanished near the top two days later.

Cesare Maestri's disputed 1959 first-ascent claim and later Compressor Route concern which Patagonian peak?

Cerro Torre's doubters note that the camera said to hold the summit photos was lost with Maestri's partner, Toni Egger; in 1970 he came back and drilled bolts up another face with a petrol-driven compressor.

Annie Smith Peck is credited with the 1908 first ascent of the north peak of which mountain, Peru's highest?

Huascarán's north peak was later named Cumbre Aña Peck in her honour; three years on, aged 61, she planted a 'Votes for Women' banner on the summit of Coropuna.

Which Ecuadorian volcano's summit is the farthest point on Earth's surface from its core?

Chimborazo sits one degree south of the equator, where the Earth bulges most, so its summit is farther from the planet's centre than Everest's, though it stands more than 2,500 metres lower above sea level.

Friedrich Parrot and Khachatur Abovian made the first recorded ascent of which mountain in 1829?

Mount Ararat was thought out of bounds: local tradition held that Noah's Ark still lay on the summit and that God had decreed no one should see it.

Scottish mountains over 3,000 feet are known by what name, after the man who first listed them in 1891?

Munros take their name from Sir Hugh Munro, who never finished climbing his own list: he died in 1919 with one of its summits, which he was saving for last, still unclimbed.

The Vibram rubber lug sole was invented by a mountaineer from which country?

Italy's Vitale Bramani, whose name gives the brand its Vi-Bram, developed the sole after six of his climbing friends died in the Alps in 1935, deaths blamed partly on inadequate footwear.

George Finch, oxygen pioneer of the 1922 Everest expedition, is credited with wearing the first version of which garment there?

The down jacket began as Finch's coat of balloon fabric stuffed with eiderdown; with Geoffrey Bruce and his own oxygen sets he then climbed higher than anyone before, to about 8,320 metres.

Mount Logan, first climbed in 1925, is the highest peak in which country?

Canada's highest peak is so remote that the 1925 first-ascent party had to walk some 200 km after leaving the railway just to reach its foot; it is named after William Logan, founder of the Geological Survey of Canada.

On which date in 1894 was the first ascent of Aoraki / Mount Cook made?

25 December 1894 was no accident: New Zealanders Tom Fyfe, George Graham and Jack Clarke hurried up on Christmas Day so that locals, and not the visiting climber Edward FitzGerald, would be first.

Who became the first woman to climb the Matterhorn, in 1871?

Lucy Walker heard through her guide that the American climber Meta Brevoort was planning the same ascent, so her party hastily changed its plans and reached the top first.

Alex Honnold's ropeless 2017 climb of El Capitan followed which route?

Freerider took Honnold 3 hours 56 minutes, after more than a year of rehearsing it on a rope; he had backed off a first ropeless attempt the autumn before.

Which country's climbers made most of the fourteen first winter ascents of eight-thousanders, beginning with Everest in 1980?

Poland's winter push was led by Andrzej Zawada, who tried the idea out in 1973 on Noshaq, a 7,000-metre peak in the Hindu Kush, before taking a team to Everest, where two of his climbers reached the top in February 1980.

What do mountaineers call an overhanging ledge of wind-blown snow on the crest of a ridge?

A cornice forms where wind piles snow out beyond the solid crest, and it can give way under a climber: one of Austria's greatest mountaineers died in 1957 when he walked onto one in a storm on Chogolisa.

The Everest landmark body Green Boots was identified in 2026 as a member of which force?

Indo-Tibetan Border Police recovery documents named the body as Dorje Morup, lost near the summit in 1996, and not his teammate Tsewang Paljor, as climbers had assumed for decades.

Who became the first American to summit Everest, on 1 May 1963?

Jim Whittaker, the first full-time employee of outdoor retailer REI, reached the top with Sherpa Nawang Gombu after both ran out of oxygen; three weeks later two teammates traversed the mountain by the West Ridge.

In 2024 a National Geographic team found a boot and foot on Everest belonging to which climber, lost in 1924?

Andrew Irvine's boot, with a sock labelled A.C. Irvine, emerged from the Central Rongbuk Glacier a century after he vanished; his partner's body was found in 1999, but their camera has never turned up.

Jerzy Kukuczka, second man to climb all 14 eight-thousanders, died in 1989 on which peak?

Lhotse's unclimbed south face killed him when a second-hand rope he had bought in a Kathmandu market broke at about 8,200 metres; Messner's tribute to him had been 'You are not second, you are great.'

On an ice axe, the flat blade opposite the pick, used to cut steps, is called what?

The adze also scoops out snow so that the axe can be buried as an anchor; the tool descends from the long-handled alpenstock, which is why Victorian ice axes were still 120 to 130 cm long.

Mount Whitney, the highest point in the contiguous United States, is in which range?

Sierra Nevada's highest summit was first climbed in 1873 by three men from nearby Lone Pine on a fishing trip; they called it Fisherman's Peak, but the name of geologist Josiah Whitney prevailed.

The first modern ascent of Greece's Mount Olympus, in 1913, relied on a local hunter of what?

Wild goats had taught Christos Kakkalos of Litochoro the mountain: he guided two Swiss climbers and was the first of the three onto the highest peak, a year after the region was freed from Ottoman rule.

Lionel Terray's classic climbing memoir is titled Conquistadors of the what?

Useless was Terray's word, but the memoir was long rumoured to be ghost-written until the writer David Roberts found the manuscript in Terray's own hand; he died in a fall in the Vercors in 1965.

Lukla's airport, the gateway to Everest Base Camp, is officially named after which pair?

Tenzing and Hillary were honoured in 2008; Hillary had the airstrip built in 1964 and, it is said, bought local liquor so that Sherpas would flatten the dirt runway with a foot-stomping dance.

The deadliest single disaster on Everest, in April 2015, was triggered by what?

An earthquake of magnitude 7.8 shook an avalanche loose from Pumori into Base Camp; nobody climbed Everest that spring, for the first time in 41 years.

In 2005 French pilot Didier Delsalle was the first to do what on Everest's summit?

Land a helicopter he did, on 14 May 2005, keeping his Eurocopter on the summit snow for nearly four minutes, then repeating the feat the next day to prove it had not been luck.

Which creature, found on Everest at 6,700 m, may be Earth's highest permanent resident?

A jumping spider, Euophrys omnisuperstes, was found living at that height by the naturalist of the 1924 Everest expedition; its name means 'standing above everything', and it hunts tiny springtails and flies.

The word serac, for a block of glacial ice, comes from the name of what?

A Swiss cheese called sérac, a white cheese made from whey, lent its name to the ice: the jumbled blocks of a broken glacier were thought to look like its curds.

Mount Rainier is the highest mountain in which US state?

Washington's Mount Rainier is the most heavily glaciated peak in the lower 48 states, and that ice is the danger: an eruption could send lahars, volcanic mudflows, down its valleys towards the Puget Sound lowlands.