with tradition by focusing on rock climbs. Often guided by Alexander Burgener, who came from the Saas valley rather than the traditional and more complacent climbing centres of Zermatt or Chamonix, Dent made the first ascent of the Lenzspitz (PD, 4,294m/14,088ft) in 1870 and the Zinal Rothorn from Zermatt (AD) in 1872, but it is for his ascent of the Grand Dru (AD, 3,754m/12,316ft) in 1878, after 18 attempts over six seasons, that he is chiefly remembered. The Dru, which towers over the town of Chamonix, exemplifies the challenge posed by the slightly lower, but far steeper and rockier subsidiary peaks of the Mont Blanc massif. Its first ascent prompted major celebrations in Chamonix: ‘I believe there were fireworks; I rather think some cannon were let off. I am under the impression that a good many bottles were uncorked. Perhaps this last may be connected with a hazy recollection of all that actually took place.’6 One year earlier Lord Wentworth, the grandson of Lord Byron, succeeded in climbing the Aiguille Noire de Peuterey (AD, 3,772m/12,375ft), another imposing and rocky peak, with the Italian guide Emile Rey. Rey went on to climb the Aiguille Blanche de Peuterey (D, 4,112m/13,491ft), the last and hardest of the major peaks of the Mont Blanc massif to be climbed, with Sir Henry Seymour King, a respected banker and member of parliament, in 1885.
The new generation of climbers also explored the steep and sometimes narrow snow and ice couloirs that had previously been dismissed because of the risk of rock and icefall. The unclimbed ridges of the higher peaks presented an obvious challenge as well. Although relatively free from the objective risk of stone and icefall, they were often technically more difficult and far more exposed than the broad glaciers and snow fields that provided the traditional routes to most summits. As the Silver Age progressed, climbing without guides and winter mountaineering also gained a following, as climbers sought out new ways to maintain the novelty and challenge of the sport.
The end of the Silver Age is usually taken to be the ascent of the twin summits of the Dent du Géant (AD, 4,013m/13,166ft) in 1882. The first summit was ascended by the Sella brothers and their guides, the Macquignaz brothers, of Italy. The second, slightly higher summit was climbed two days later by William Graham, who went on to be the first person to climb in the Himalaya for sport rather than for science. The significance of the ascent of the Dent du Géant lay in the fact that it was the last peak to be climbed that was named and famous before it was climbed and the first to be climbed by ‘artificial’ means, using pitons and fixed ropes. For the British climbing establishment, committed to a ‘pure’ climbing ethic, the use of pitons signalled the end of the Silver Age and the start of the ‘Iron Age’.7 It was an avowedly romantic view of climbing history. While their contemporaries divided Mankind’s progress and development into the Stone Age, the Bronze Age and the Iron Age, British mountain historians saw a regression from the Golden Age, to the Silver Age to the Iron Age. The prevailing mountaineering ethos was a rejection of modernity and a celebration of the primitive, the mysterious and the unknown. But while British views on ‘artificial aid’ were strongly held, they were never entirely logical or consistent. Cutting a step in ice was acceptable. Cutting a step in rock was unforgiveable. A ladder might be used to cross a crevasse, but to use one on rock was immoral. As Clinton Dent observed in 1878: ‘Grapnels, chains, and crampons are the invention of the fiend. Why this should be so is hard to see. Perhaps we should not consider too curiously.’8 It took a further 90 years before a widely accepted and reasonably consistent framework of climbing ethics was to emerge.
When the sport of climbing started in the Alps only the most prominent peaks had names and these tended to be monotonously descriptive (Mont Blanc, Weisshorn, Schwarzhorn, Aiguille Noire), geographic (Dent d’Hérens) or fearful (Mont Maudit, Schreckhorn). As the lesser peaks were climbed, it became necessary to name them too, and in the years before the First World War ‘personal’ nomenclature was adopted with a vengeance, including numerous Younggrats and Voies Ryan-Lochmatter, but there were also some humorous names. When Stafford Anderson and his companions reached the summit of the Dent Blanche by a new route along a crumbling ridge, their guide Ulrich Almer summed up the situation by saying, ‘Wir sind vier Esel!’ (‘We are four asses!’). The ridge became known as the Viereselsgrat. Martin Conway, later Lord Conway, was particularly active in naming peaks: ‘The secret of getting a name accepted is to put it about among the guides...as long as no one knows where a name originated no one will object.’9
With the trend towards harder routes and guideless climbing, the death toll inevitably began to rise, and the more senior members of the Alpine Club became increasingly concerned about what they regarded as the ‘unjustifiable risks’ taken by the younger generation. After three serious accidents in 1882, Queen Victoria’s private secretary wrote to Gladstone, the prime minister: ‘The Queen commands me to ask you if you think she can say anything to mark her disapproval of the dangerous Alpine excursions which this year have occasioned so much loss of life.’10 Gladstone wisely counselled against it. Swiss Alpine Club records show that during the period 1859–85 there were on average just five fatalities from climbing accidents each year, whereas during the six years from 1886 to 1891 there were 214 deaths.11 Partly this reflected the increasing numbers of people climbing, but even by the end of the century, there were probably only a thousand or so active climbers. Apart from the British, German students were the other large group that were active in the Alps in the last decades of the nineteenth century, although they tended to confine their activities to the Eastern Alps, which most British climbers regarded as too small to be of interest. In 1887 the Alpine Club had 475 members, not all of whom were active, whereas the Austrian and German Alpine Club (which merged into one in 1874) had 18,020, the French 5,321, the Italian 3,669 and the Swiss 2,607. However the continental clubs were organised along very different lines from the Alpine Club. Deliberately set up as inclusive national clubs, they provided cheap accommodation and their membership included large numbers of mountain walkers. The number of members actively involved in true alpinism remained very small until after the Second World War.
The British climbing establishment was also concerned that in their quest for ever harder technical difficulties the aesthetic aspects of the sport were being ignored. Walter Larden criticised the heroic instincts of rock climbers: ‘There are those amongst them who climb for the excitement only; who would sooner spend their day climbing in a gully that affords exciting “pitches”, but makes no demand on endurance or mountaineering knowledge...than in gaining the sublime heights of Monte Rosa or in traversing the magnificent Col d’Argentière. Let such recognise frankly that they don’t care for the mountains.’12 The conflict between ‘gymnasts’ and ‘mountaineers’, with the latter doubting the ability of the former to appreciate the beauty and spiritual aspects of the mountain landscape, continued until well into the 1930s. Writing in 1904, Cecil Slingsby noted that ‘all who are worthy of being termed mountaineers, in contradistinction to climbing acrobats, find that year by year their love of mountains increases, and so too does their respect and veneration’,13 and even in 1935 R. L. G. Irving, the romantic and reactionary mountain historian, still felt obliged to note that rock climbers are ‘good cragsmen and indifferent mountaineers, with a somewhat limited and unimaginative way of regarding mountains’.14 The younger climbers suspected, probably correctly, that their elders used their increasing veneration of the landscape to disguise their declining physical powers.
The Pendlebury brothers, Richard and William, were typical of the second generation of alpinists that began to emerge at the end of the Golden Age. In 1870 they traversed the Wildspitze (3,768m/12,362ft) via the Mittelberg Joch, creating what is now one of the most popular climbs in the Eastern Alps. In 1872 they shocked the climbing world by making the first ascent of the huge East Face of the Monte Rosa from Macugnaga (D+) with the Rev. Charles Taylor and their guide Ferdinand Imseng. The East Face is a steep wall with rocky ribs and couloirs filled with snow and ice. As the sun rises and melts the ice, the couloirs form a natural funnel for rock and icefall. The climb therefore involves a far greater degree of ‘objective risk’ (risk that is beyond the control of the climber) than would have been acceptable in the early years of alpinism, and both the climbers and their guide were thought by many to have displayed courage bordering on recklessness. The climb was also Imseng’s first as chief guide, though he had previously been employed as a porter, an illustration of a recurring theme
