Background

Background: There are no very big mountains on the island of Ireland. The highest Irish mountain, Carrauntoohill (Corrán Tuathail) is a little higher than 1,000m. There is no summit that cannot be reached by walking, yet there are many regions that are enjoyed by hillwalkers, hikers and climbers. Although the altitude of such regions is hardly more than Spain's Meseta, due to the combination of altitude and latitude such terrain is agriculturally unproductive , being used mainly as rough grazing for sheep. Many people enjoy mountain activities such as hiking and climbing in Ireland and over the centuries many people have travelled from Ireland to perform feats of mountaineering in the Greater Ranges of the world.

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Monday, April 24, 2023

Outside the Alps

Bryce.  Wikipedia
 The Golden Age of Alpinism is generally agreed to have ushered in a sustained period of mountain climbing in the Alps that made fashionable the idea of mountaineering as a sporting activity.  In the period between 1854 and 1865 thirty six summits higher than 4,000m (13,000 ft) were first climbed, 31 of them by British parties and their guides: we have seen that a significant number of the climbers were Irish.  

A notable feature of the people undertaking this activity was that they were wealthy.  It required substantial financial resources to travel to the Alps, spend at least a couple of weeks there and to hire the necessary porters and guides to undertake expeditions that may have lasted for a number of days.  John Tyndall's initial foray to the mountains may have been an exception because he 'got by very cheaply' but that was before he did 'serious' climbing.

The local people who climbed summits did so mainly at the behest of the 'wealthy tourists' who employed them as guides and porters because their knowledge and experience gained through hunting and other activities.

Russell. Wikipedia

Cotter

Many of the 'summiteers' wrote of the experiences and the result was that  the interest in climbing mountains spread to many other regions in the years following the Golden Age.  Some of the Irish who were involved in the second half of the 19th Century were the following and not all were wealthy:


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Richard Cotter in North America.

James Bryce in many places

Henry Russell in the Pyrenees.

William Spotswood Green in Canada and New Zealand.


More about all these to follow.


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