Aconcagua and Mervyn Ryan

Aconcagua is the highest mountain in the world outside the Himalayas. It was climbed on the 5^th of February 1925 by a party that included Mervyn Frederick Ryan.

Aconcagua.  Wikipedia CC A. Backer.  

The surname Ryan is closely linked with Tipperary and is unlikely to be thought of as being associated with Alpine climbing achievements. However, Valentine Ryan was an outstanding Alpinist in the early years of the twentieth century, making numerous first ascents and is remembered by the 'Ryan-Lochmatter' route on the Aiguille du Plan. His brother, Lionel, had the first winter ascent of the Weisshorn.

Almost totally forgotten is their cousin, Mervyn, of the same family, the Ryans of Inch (near Thurles). Mervyn was born in Malta in December 1883. This came about because his parents, Thomasine (Shaw) and Major Charles Ryan, British Army, were traveling home - from a posting in India, or the Anglo/Egyptian War - when the pregnancy intervened. Some time was spent in India – his mother was the daughter of the CO of the Royal Irish Regiment there. He was educated, as was his father, at Stonyhurst College, the Jesuit school in

Lancashire, from 1898 to 1902, where he excelled academically, captained the college football eleven and was involved in cricket and athletics.

Stonyhurst football

After that he qualified as an engineer at University College Nottingham, gained experience with railways in the USA and had a varied career in railways and munitions until 1919 when he was elected as president of the Institution of Locomotive Engineers and was appointed as Chief Mechanical Engineer to the Central Argentine Railway.

 

It may have been this appointment, or possibly the accounts of his cousins' Alpine exploits, that brought the mountains to his attention, for their followed five consecutive seasons of climbing in the Andes. In 1922, after a solo climb of Cerre Penitentes (4,440m) in Argentina, he made his only visit to the Alps, went on the Gorner Glacier and climbed Monte Rosa, the Rothorn, Gabelhorn and Wellenkuppe with Pollinger as guide.

The Alpine experience may have fired his enthusiasm, for the following

Aconcagua Party

 few years saw him make unsuccessful and guideless attempts of Almacenes (4,926m), Tolosa (5,432m), and Aconcagua (6,961m). The experience gained was beneficial for in 1925, along with climbing partners, Clayton, Cochrane and Mc Donald, he reached the summits of all three, culminating on 5^th February with the ascent of Aconcagua. This is considered the fourth ascent of the mountain and the second 'completely British' ascent.

He joined the Alpine Club in 1926, proposed by Sidney Young, an English businessman in Argentina. As linguistic qualifications he listed Hindustani with Spanish and school French, an indication of time spent in India. There seems to have been no climbing afterwards but he went on in his career to survey railways in India and Thailand.

Puenta del Inca

The experience of climbing in the Andes was likely to have been significant, for at his own request, he was to be buried at Puenta del Inca, the starting point of his summit attempt on Aconcagua. For his retirement he had intended to settle down in Ireland, had bought an estate here, but his final illness prevented this and he died in Argentina in 1952.

Acknowledgements: Thanks to Desmond Ryan of Edinburgh for use of the photographs; Institution of Mechanical Engineers for the portrait; Stonyhurst College; Emma Mc Donald of the Alpine Club, London, and its archive that is so easily accessible on its website (http://www.alpine-club.org.uk);

 

Early 20th Century

 A number of Irish people were very active in Alpine regions in the early years of the 20th Century.

Valentine Ryan and William Trench Kirkpatrick  were being recognised as leading figures among Alpinists of the era.  In Ireland members of the Dublin Arts Club such as Page Dickinson were exploring the Irish hills and mountains for their mountaineering possibilities. Such figures were the ones who were making notable achievements in the sport and remain the ones that are remembered. 

Did such an activity influence the 'ordinary man in the street' ?  Were others indulging in such a leisure-time pursuit, even if at a lower level?

Since the 1880s in a repurposed gate lodge on the Powerscourt estate the McGuirk family ran a tea-shop.  This was located in the heart of the Wicklow Hills, close to Lower Lough Bray but actually in Co Dublin.  A visitor's book was kept by the McGuirks which many of their guests signed and entered comments.  Michael Fewer has analysed this in Tales from a Wicklow Tea Room and provides evidence that the facility was being used by a great many cyclists and hikers from the end of the 19th Century, into the 20th Century up to about 1960.

Hill walkers were..frequent callers at McGuirk's.  Country walking then was a pastime mainly enjoyed by middle- and upper-class people, and ramblers' clubs such as the Sléibhteágaigh and the Brotherhood of the Lug were established in the early twentieth century. (Fewer).

The 'great and the Good' of the Arts and professional classes visited Mc Guirk's on their visits to the Wicklow Hills.  As time went on the addresses listed became more and more from working-class areaas of Dublin.  According to The Irish Times (Sep 1902), ascents of Mangerton and Carrauntoohill in Kerry were common and 'great mountain and open-air tramps were a feature of Dublin life' in the first decade of the century.

The following is a list of some of the people who visited or wrote in the guest book:

J.B Malone; Fr. Willie Doyle, SJ; J Swift Joly; Fr F.M Brown SJ; Standish O'Grady; Oliver Gogarty; J.M Synge; Hugh Lane; John Healy;  William P. Hackett, SJ; Ben Kiely; Samuel Beckett.