Playground of Europe

 'How the English made the Alps'  is Jim Ring's book in which he explains how the English, during the 19th century, were gradually taking over the Alps, scaling their peaks, driving railways through them, and introducing both winter sports and their social institutions.

As we have seen,  this movement was driven by the influence of the Romantic poets, painters, writers and the impresario Albert Smith;  the effect of which was that an alpine visit - 'glacier tourism' - became an essential part of the Grand Tour that became an almost mandatory part of the education of a certain class.

As Jim Ring points out, from the point of view of  the locals, the tourists in question were 'English speaking' but were, in fact, English, Irish, Scots and Welsh. 

Of course there were people in the 'Alpine' countries who were exploring their mountains, e.g. -:

Gottlieb Studer (1804-1890) was Swiss and a prolific climber and topographer - '(his) descriptions of the less known parts of the Alpine chains, are appreciated by all Alpine travellers'' (John Ball, 1st President of the Alpine Club).

Placidus a Spescha, (1752-1833) also Swiss, a Benedictine monk and self taught mountaineer, spent fifty years exploring and climbing and was a pioneer of alpinism in the eastern Swiss Alps up to 1833.

Peter Carl Thurwieser (1789-1865) was a pioneer in the Austrian Alps, had many first ascents and was 'the first man who climbed for the sake of climbing... the first real "mountaineer"', according to WAB Coolidge.

John Ball

However, it was the surge in British, i.e. English speaking, tourists that led to  the designation of a ten year period, 1854 -1865, as the Golden Age of Alpinism.  During this period 36 summits higher than 4,000m were first climbed, 31 of them by British parties with their guides; hidden under this term, a significant number of the leading figures were from Ireland.

This 'Golden Age' saw the foundation of the Alpine Club (1857), a London gentlemen's club, the world's first mountaineering association, that was described  disparagingly as a club for 'walking steeply uphill'.

Its first president was John Ball, born in Dublin and an indefatigable Alpine traveller who explored the whole range of the Alps before and after the arrival  of the railways.

More on the Irish in the Golden Age of Alpinism to follow.

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Mountain men

Someone with only a passing interest in the American 'Wild West' will have heard of Jim Bridger or Kit Carson. These were two of the 'Mountain Men'.  Such men were trappers and buffalo hunters.  They also worked as guides to the army and to wagon trains traveling west.

Tom Fitzpatrick was such a man and a contemporary and friend of Bridger and Carson.  Born in Co Cavan in 1799, he had six siblings (two brothers, four sisters) and left for New Orleans by age 17, from where he went on to St Louis.  By 1823 he had joined the second Ashley Expedition.  Ashley appointed him second in command to Jedediah Smith on an overland expedition into Wyoming to find a pass through the Rockies later that year. Smith was attacked by a grizzly bear and badly injured during his group's move westward, and young  Fitzpatrick found himself the leader for a time. 

In March 1824, they discovered the South Pass through the Rockies in what is southwest Wyoming today.  (Possibly re-discovered  - it seems that  the first recorded crossing was made on 22 Oct. 1812 by Robert Stuart, and six companions from the Pacific Fur Company of John Jacob Astor; and had been used by native peoples for centuries).  It was an essential geographical feature in Western history and it was later a vital part of the Oregon Trail and the route of the transcontinental railroad.

South Pass

In the late spring of 1841, the first large immigrant wagon train left Missouri headed along  Oregon Trail,
but their destination was California - Bidwell-Bartleson party.  The man they hired to guide them on this dangerous venture was Thomas Fitzpatrick.

Details of the life of Tom Fitzpatrick:  here

Today, in the West he loved, you will find him commemorated in Wyoming, with both Fitzpatrick Peak in the Salt River Range and the Fitzpatrick Wilderness, and by Broken Hand Peak in Colorado.  He treated Native Americans with a respect and honesty that was very rare in the mid-19th century.

If his services had been used by the following group there might have been a different outcome!

A cohort of Irish people that had a traumatic interaction with North American mountains were the Breen and Reed families.  They were part of the ill-fated Donner Party that became snow-bound at Truckee Lake (later called Donner Lake) high in the Sierra Nevada in the winter of 1836/7 while trying to make their way to California.  The heads of the families were Irish born - Patrick Breen near Ballymurphy, under the Blackstairs Mountains, in Co Carlow and James Reed in Co Armagh, - as were some others. The full story makes harrowing reading.  Many members of the wagon train died before rescue arrived in early 1847. 

 The Breens  and Reeds were the only complete families to survive and

© liam murph cc-by-sa/2.

 some of the survivors resorted to cannibalism.  The Breens succeeded in making a good life in California and before 1869 there was a donation from Mrs Breen of a gift of £9 towards the erection of a belfry and bell and also a Cross for her native chapel at Ballymurphy.

View the full story Here

and a full account of the Breen family in:

Carloviana - Journal of the Old Carlow Society. 1991/92,  pp 4, 'The Breens of the Donner Party' by  Joseph A King.

By no stretch of imagination could it be claimed that such people were exploring and trekking in the mountains for recreational reasons.  The mountains were a barrier that had to be overcome.

 However, it was about this time (mid 1800s) that the attitude to mountains, particularly in Europe was undergoing a significant change.  Under the influence of philosophers, writers and artists of the Romantic Era the mountain regions became 'The Playground of Europe'. 

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John Palliser

 John Palliser was a landlord who lived at Comragh House, just south of the Comeragh Mountains a large swathe of which was part of his property and  where he was known to have hunted and hiked. 

Taken in Rome

He was an 'adventurer' and his large extended family lived, not only on their Irish estates, but also in Dublin, London and Rome and were widely travelled in Europe. 

In 1847/8 he undertook an 11 month long hunting trip to Missouri Country in the United Sates and overwintered there with the native peoples.

However, it is his later exploits in North America that are of interest here.  This became known as the Palliser Expedition, or more formally 'The British North American Exploring Expedition' that took place from 1857-60.  Palliser's plan for the expedition was put before the Royal Geographical Society (RGS).  The RGS was interested , extended the plan and laid it before the Colonial Office of the Westminster Parliament, with a request for funding.  

It was supported by the under-secretary of state for the colonies, John Ball ( mountaineer and friend of Palliser's - more about him later), and two members were recommended by Sir Edward Sabine (born in Dublin) and Dr Edward Purcell (of Royal Naval College Greenwich, born in Cork) - Thomas W Blakiston and John W Sullivan respectively.

Purcell Range

The expedition had a number of aims but that of greatest interest here is the investigation of possible passes through the Rocky Mountains in British territory.  In the three seasons of work, the explorers had,  along with much else, traversed six passes through the southern Rockies.  Although no attempts were made to climb summits many months were spent exploring and travelling through the mountains of western Canada.

(see Mountaineering Ireland. IMEHS Journal, Vol 1, 2002;  From Comeragh to Calgary)

Although not 'mountaineering' in a modern sense the expedition left its mark on the Rocky Mountains. The expedition members were among the first Europeans to venture into these regions of the Rockies and as such they provided many topographical features with the English names they still bear (e.g. Mounts Ball, Rundle, Bourgeau and Murchison; Cascade and Grotto Mountains; Palliser and  Fairholme Ranges, Purcell Range, Palliser River and Lake, along with many others).

To John Palliser, the expedition was not only a matter of serious exploration but also a journey 'in search of adventure and heavy game'.  A niece of his wrote, many years later, 'the months he spent in the wilds... were among the happiest of his life'.

This Irishman led an expedition that had long lasting effects on the region and a distant cousin of his (A.O Wheeler) greatly influenced mountaineering in that part of North America.

Furthermore, he was not the first, nor the earliest Irishman to explore the mountain regions of North America.  Some of these were the 'Mountain Men' of the American west.

More about all these to follow.

Map detail

Expedition Map

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Climbing for Pleasure in Ireland

 Poets such as Brian Merriman or Mary Tighe may have mentioned their enjoyment of Irish mountains in their writing but it seems that the earliest account of climbing or hiking in the Irish mountains was published in 1849. 

A Waterford man, a member of the prominent Mackesy family, wrote about 'The Comeragh Mountains, their lakes and legends'.   This was an account of a multi-day hike/climb in the Comeraghs in which he describes his route, the terrain and the various lakes and the coums (cwms) and the folklore and legends attached to them.

A brief extract gives a flavour of the account:

Coumshingaun - Winter

We have reached the foot of the mountain under Coumshingaun ; high above, you see a dark, circular, hollow - that is our goal - the Coum, in which lies the lake, and it seems to you much nearer now than you will find it to be in reality. 

Let us ascend. Aye, it is very steep, and the day is bright and hot ; but take it quietly—you have only a two-mile walk before you. For a part of the way the grass is pleasant, and we can go straight onwards. But ever as we climb, the heath and ling become tougher and taller, the grass thinner, the stones more numerous, the dried-up channels of the winter floods more deep and frequent ; so that we can no longer hold a direct course, but must deviate into many a zig-zag; and still, as we surmount each swelling knoll, the dark Coum above seems to recede, and the way to lengthen before us. 

Now the ground shelves downwards ; we descend amid coarse herbage, heath, and stones, and now we are in the actual Coum, this deep, stern, and solitary hollow! and there lies the lake, that dark, oval tarn, embosomed in cliffs; but such cliffs! so steep, so gigantic, so magnificent—could we ever attempt to describe them!.......

Mahon Falls

But though Crotty might have had his out-offices here for his live stock, yet for his own proper residence he honoured with his preference a cavern near a lake, called after him," Crotty's Lake," about a mile north from this place. ......

And now the summary of what we have seen is, that of all the lakes and hollows, Coumshingaun is the grandest, Coumfea the mildest, Stillogue More the loveliest, Coumgorra the most savage. The mountains are seen to most advantage when the heath is in full bloom, and after a continuance of dry weather: late in the year they look bare, sombre, and dreary; and after rain the deep moss is so soaked, that you feel as if treading on supersaturated sponges; besides, the frequent mists, the treacherous bogs, and suddenly-swelling torrents, render the excursion dangerous after the commencement of autumn.

 But if advantage be taken of bright, warm days, late in August, or early in September, no real lover of nature will return disappointed from a ramble in the Commeragh Mountains.

Iska Solas

A number of things are to be noted in the account; 

first of all the date of publication - 1849;

and also the writer is addressing an audience  of like minded people who apparently are accustomed to such activity.

(Of course the images were not part of the original article).

Mary Burtchaell, a resident of Graiguenamanagh, kept a diary in which she recorded a number of walks and hikes including, on two occasions, a climb of Brandon Hill. (16th Aug 1845 & 9th Sep 1850.)  Even if this is of no great mountaineering significance it does indicate that such people were enjoying these activities at this time. (NLI Ms 7800-11).

John Palliser, a landlord whose property included large swathes of the Comeragh Mountains is known to have hunted and hiked in those hills and he plays a greater role in this story - more to follow.

Are there similar accounts of such activities from other parts of the country?

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