Early Alpinists (20th C) W.T. Kirkpatrick.

 Other than from his mountaineering writing we know very little about William Trench Kirkpatrick. (See Paddy O'Leary's William Trench Kirkpatrick in Vol IV of the IMEHS  journal).  Family lore holds that his paternal ancestor came from Scotland and was on the ship the broke the boom to relieve the Siege of Derry.  Other ancestors  may have been settled in Larne at this time and William's father was the seventeenth child of Alexander of Drumcondra and he married K(C)atherine Trench who owned Donacomper House in Celbridge, on 29 August 1854.

William, born on first of August 1857 at Monkstown in Dublin, was their second child and had six siblings.   Katherine kept a diary for most of her married life and this gives some insight into the activities of such a family over a period of years, although seldom throwing any light on William's mountaineering career.  In August 1861, when there were four children, endearingly called 'the chicks', they all 'went up Killiney Hill'; an early start to a mountaineering career. 

In September of '67 'my darling Willie went to school'.  He had just turned ten.  Although his father accompanied him to Temple Grove School on the outskirts of London it must have been a wrench for the young lad and when the father returned a week later he reported that Willie 'was very wretched.' 

Katherine, his mother, sometimes combined his collection from school into something of a holiday and in July 1870 this was spent in North Wales where they walked in Llanberris Pass, visited Swallow Falls and swam in Ogwen Lake.

JMW Turner.   Rigi

The 'Grand Tour' was likely to have been 'de rigueur' for such a family.  Katherine and the children undertook such a tour late in 1872 after Willie had returned to school and it lasted for almost two years.  Part of the reason for the tour was that Mary, Willie's older sister had musical talent and she was visiting Belgium and Switzerland for voice training.  The schoolboys joined them for the Christmas and Easter vacations that year and in May they moved from Brussels to Spa and then through Germany towards Lucerne, where Alexander and the boys joined them on the fifth of August.  Two days later the father and boys left at 5am by boat to cross the lake and then walked up and down Mount Rigi (1,798m) – Willie's first Alpine summit.

Rigi (Summit Post)

 A week later the boys 'went to Mt Pilatus to sleep there ... saw a lovely sunrise...had wretched beds and living'.  A few days later he went with father and sister Mary, to Hospenthal where they spent two days, crossed the Furka Pass (2,429m) and visited the Rhone Glacier.  After this they went on to Interlaken from where they did a short, steep, climb to view the Jungfrau, then went on to Lauterbrunnen and Grindelwald and visited another glacier.  So ended his first Alpine season for the sixteen year old William and  the tenth of September was the boys' last day before heading back to school with the father. 

 He matriculated for Trinity College, Cambridge in Michaelmas term of 1876.  After taking exams in late 1882 he was called to the Bar in 1883. His visits home continued at every opportunity; at Christmas, Easter and summertime when he continued to pursue his outdoor interests of hunting, shooting and fishing.  As well as his work in the legal profession he seems to have been interested in writing and acted as a special correspondent for The Times, for which he went on a tour through Ireland, visiting Belfast, the Giant's Causeway, some of the midland counties and Mitchelstown in Cork. This tour took place between visits to Norway (1885) and Australia (1889), that may have been undertaken for journalistic reasons.  In later years he contributed at least seven articles on his mountaineering exploits to the prestigious Alpine Journal that were compiled into one volume, published as 'Alpine Days and Nights', in 1932.

Details of his mountaineering career have been outlined elsewhere

 (Journal IMEHS Vol. 4, Paddy O'Leary) but only get occasional

 mention in this diary where it records that he went to London on

 July 9th of 1895 but his Alpine Club application records that this 

was his first Alpine season when he climbed six summits in the

 Ortler region. It was during this season that he met up with the Scot,

 Robert Phillip Hope, at Sulden, with whom, along with another

 friend (W. Barnard) they climbed the Ortler summits without the

 help of local guides. 

They didn't climb from centres and in 1902, with Hope,  -

 we slept at no fewer than thirty different places among the

 mountains...our high water mark by traversing the Maije ...

 the first English traverse ...without guides - done by a Scotchman

Pic de la Maije (Wikipedia)

 and an Irishman.

The practice of not using guides was somewhat frowned upon

 by the Alpine Club but this was the beginning of a long partnership

that  resulted in first ascents and new routes. They were together on

 the Isle of Skye the following year, climbing Sgurr nan Gillean,

 Sgurr Dearg and Inaccessible Pinnacle among others.

  In 1915, with members of the United Arts  Club,

 he climbed Barravore Crag in Wicklow.

Thenceforth we climbed together every year till the war, except

Alpine Club (AJ 53, 1941)

 in 1904 (when I was in South Africa), and visited pretty well

 every district in the Alps. We climbed most of the well-known

 mountains, traversing them in a large proportion of cases, and also

 did a good many out-of-the- way peaks that are seldom climbed by

 Englishmen, ...After the war we climbed again, but in 1922 we gave

 up mountaineering, but continued to visit the Alps, walking up hill,

 and doing glacier expeditions. Our last visit together was in 1929 .

..(Hope's obituary. AJ.42. 1930) which would have been when

 William was seventy two.  He died in 1941.

His being very much involved in local matters in Kildare resulted

 in his name appearing on more than six hundred occasions in

 the Kildare Observer, the local newspaper.  During these same years

 he was also performing substantial feats of mountaineering on a

 regular basis in the Alps without arousing any local awareness in

 Ireland, which may be indicative of the general lack of interest in the

 Ireland of the day in such activity.

Early Alpinists (20th C) - - Valentine Ryan -- The first 'Celtic Tiger' -- and Lionel, his brother.

Courtesy:
 Rosemary Ryan-Testa

 Among climbers a ‘tiger’ seems to denote a young, dynamic, driven character who seems to be able to climb anything he’s pointed towards, showing scant regard for tradition or the reputation of others.

Valentine John Eustace Ryan seems to have burst upon the British climbing scene in the first decade of the 20th Century in just such a fashion.  As Winthrop Young said of him ‘he climbed with an almost feverish energy and daring’.  This was in an era well past the ‘Golden Age of Mountaineering’ when no new big climbs were being done in the Alps.  Some exploration was being done on the Aiguilles and in the eastern Alps but the major figures of British climbing –Slingsby, Collie and Conway – were in the distant greater ranges.  Into this scenario : ‘a young climber suddenly ranging up and down the whole length of the Alps for several seasons each year, making only the most difficult ascents, many of them new… a standard of rock technique altogether unprecedented,’..

He was 15 years old when he made his first mountain ascents – Pizzo Lucendro and Pizzo Fibbio in the St Gothard area, probably while on holiday with his family in the summer of 1898.  Two years later he climbed Aiguille de la Za, Pic d’Artzinal, Ulrichhorn and almost summited on the Nadelhorn.  In 1901 he climbed the Dom.

In the winter of 1901/02 the family was on holiday in Switzerland, possibly for health reasons.  Val was on leave from the army.  The father, writing to his brother in County Tipperary from the Grand Hotel, Locarno, states:

‘Bob (family name for Lionel) after a few days here found the place too dull for him so he went off alone – he crossed the Simplon in deep snow on a sleigh which upset two or three times on the journey – he then did some wonderful mountain attempts in winter …he has become quite notorious for his daring feats of climbing…’

Weisshorn

The London Daily Mail reported the details: 

‘The honour of the first important Alpine ascent of 1902 has been gained by Mr Ryan, an Englishman. (sic.)  Accompanied by three guides, he left Zermatt on Friday and climbed to the summit of the Weisshorn, 14,805 ft., and returned safely today (12th).  This is the first time the Weisshorn has been ascended in winter.’

Val, also, seems to have wanted some of the action.  He and his mother went to Lausanne, where they were joined by Lionel.  The two boys (19 and 17 years old) then went to Chamonix and ‘enjoyed a week in the snow there but the bad weather drove them back to Lausanne to their mother who was waiting anxiously’.  The week in the snow (as in Val’s Alpine Club candidate’s form) involved climbing the Aig. De l’M and Petit Charmoz; Aig. du Moine, and attempts on the Charmoz and the Aig. du Plan, which was stopped high up by bad weather.  Lionel’s regiment went to India soon after that and he died there in April 1903.  This was surely a climbing career cut short.

In 1904 Val began really to get going and must have spent his whole leave in the Alps’. (Young)  The list of climbs, with Joseph and Franz Lochmatter, is impressive: (see IMEHS Journal Vol 3 for details): Rimpfischhorn; Charmoz traverse; Aig. Verte; Grèpon and Blaitière in one day; and others.   See Frank Nugent's In search of Peak, Passes and Glaciers for further details.

Geoffrey Winthrop Young, who was a contemporary, likened him in many ways to the renowned Edward Whymper.  He says, in 1949, that Whymper and Ryan  ‘… were both for a few years in youth fired into something like heroism, inspired to pursue adventurous and almost romantic achievement, by the fascination of Alpine heights and by the physical satisfaction of climbing....Because of those years of enthusiasm in his youth, because of his exceptional prowess, and of the independent courage with which he attacked new spheres of difficulty and danger, Ryan’s name lives on among the Alps… We at least can realize, … what a novel mountaineering movement was launched during those few seasons at the start of the century, and what a leading role he himself played in the launching’

Valentine Ryan left little account of his climbs. He was not much given to writing and seems to have found it tedious. Some notes he was preparing for publication were mislaid by the person to whom they were given and he never rewrote them.  Some fragments of a possible book of climbs are quoted by Young in the Climbers’ Club Journal.  What is known of Ryan’s character is gleaned from Young’s account of dealings with him and observations of him as a fellow climber.  

During the second war he was active in London as an Air Raid Warden ; and he was planning to revisit Ireland once again when he died in 1947.