Mountaineering Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
98 free Mountaineering trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Mountaineering has no rulebook, no referees and no world championship, which is exactly why its history is so full of arguments, obsessions and legends. This quiz starts with the 1492 ascent of Mont Aiguille and the first climb of Mont Blanc in 1786, moves through the Golden Age of Alpinism, the founding of the Alpine Club and the Matterhorn tragedy of 1865, and then heads for the Himalaya: Mallory and Irvine, Annapurna in 1950, Hillary and Tenzing on Everest, Hermann Buhl alone on Nanga Parbat, and the Italians on K2. Modern climbing gets its share too: Reinhold Messner's fourteen eight-thousanders without oxygen, Junko Tabei, Wanda Rutkiewicz, the Seven Summits, the 1996 Everest disaster and Into Thin Air, Ueli Steck's speed records, Kami Rita's Everest count and Nirmal Purja's six-month sweep of the 8,000-metre peaks. There are also questions on technique and jargon: the death zone, crevasse rescue, crampons, the Piolet d'Or and the Bottleneck on K2. If you are looking for climbing walls and bouldering, try our rock climbing quiz instead. About a third of the questions are easy for anyone who has read a mountain book or two, a third are medium and the rest are for people who know their Hörnli from their Hillary Step. Every answer is verified against reference pages and every question carries its source.
30 of 98 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who ordered the 1492 ascent of Mont Aiguille, often called the birth of mountaineering?
King of France
The King of France, Charles VIII, ordered the climb, and Antoine de Ville led a party up the cliffs with ladders and ropes.
Q 02Which Chamonix doctor made the 1786 first ascent of Mont Blanc with Jacques Balmat?
Michel-Gabriel Paccard
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.
Q 03Marie Paradis, a maidservant, became the first woman to climb which Alpine peak in 1808?
Mont Blanc
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.
Q 04The Alpine Club, the world's first mountaineering club, was founded in 1857 in which city?
London
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.
Q 05Sir Alfred Wills' 1854 ascent of which peak started the Golden Age of Alpinism?
The Wetterhorn
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.
Q 06The first ascent of the Matterhorn in 1865 was led by which English illustrator?
Edward Whymper
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.
Q 07Which Swiss resort village lies at the foot of the Matterhorn?
Zermatt
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.
Q 08Which flower became the symbol of alpinists and mountaineers in the 19th century?
Edelweiss
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.
Q 09Hans Meyer and Ludwig Purtscheller made the first ascent of which African peak in 1889?
Kilimanjaro
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.
Q 10Which occultist co-led the first attempt on K2 in 1902?
Aleister Crowley
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.
Q 11Oscar Eckenstein's 1908 design modernised which piece of climbing equipment?
Crampons
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.
Q 12Which eight-thousander, the world's sixth-highest, is generally considered the easiest and safest of the fourteen to climb?
Cho Oyu
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.
Q 13Which was the first eight-thousander to be climbed, in 1950?
Annapurna
Q 21The rock wall just below Everest's summit on the southeast ridge is known as what?
The Hillary Step
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.
Q 22What is the treacherous glacier section on Everest's Nepal side called?
The Khumbu Icefall
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.
Q 23Who made the first ascent of Nanga Parbat in 1953, walking the final 1,300 metres alone?
Hermann Buhl
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.
Q 14Which eight-thousander, lying wholly inside Tibet, was the last to be climbed, in 1964?
Shishapangma
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.
Q 15Which 1920s climber purportedly explained wanting to climb Everest with the words "Because it's there"?
George Mallory
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.
Q 16News of the 1953 first ascent of Everest was published in Britain on the morning of which event?
Elizabeth II's coronation
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'.
Q 17Edmund Hillary flew to the North Pole in 1985 in a small ski plane alongside which astronaut?
Neil Armstrong
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.
Q 18By what name do Tibetans and Sherpas know Mount Everest?
Chomolungma
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.
Q 19Andrew Waugh named Peak XV after Sir George Everest, who had held what post?
Surveyor General of India
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.
Q 20China's 2005 figure put Everest about four metres below Nepal's by excluding what?
The snow cap
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.
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.
Q 24Nanga Parbat has earned what grim nickname for its climber fatalities?
Killer Mountain
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.
Q 25K2, the world's second-highest mountain, lies in which range?
The Karakoram
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.
Q 26On K2 in 1953, Pete Schoening stopped his falling teammates with a rope and one ice axe, a feat known as what?
The Belay
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.
Q 27The couloir just below K2's summit, overhung by a wall of seracs, is known as what?
The Bottleneck
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.
Q 28Who was the first woman to summit K2, on 23 June 1986?
Wanda Rutkiewicz
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.
Q 29On K2's first winter ascent in 2021, how did the ten climbers from rival teams settle who reached the top first?
They summited together
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.
Q 30Who partnered Reinhold Messner on the first ascent of Everest without bottled oxygen, in 1978?
Peter Habeler
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.