'Old Bags' - A climbing senator

 John Philip Bagwell, (‘Jack’) (1874–1946), railway executive and politician, was born 11 August 1874, only son of the historian Richard Bagwell, of Marlfield, Clonmel, Co. Tipperary, and Harriet Bagwell (née Newton) of Co. Carlow. He was educated at Harrow and Trinity College, Oxford.

Wikipedia (2010)

Bagwell in 1922 (Wikipedia)

After Oxford, he joined the Midland Railway (England), where he served as an assistant superintendent of line (1905–9). He then returned to Ireland and served as superintendent of passenger services (1910–11) and general manager of the Great Northern Railway (1911–26).

Le Brévant and Aiguille de la Gliere were his first Alpine forays with the guide Joseph Devouassey, when he was about 19 years old (1892).  His interest in climbing may have been inspired by his familiarity with the Comeragh Mountains of which, it was later claimed, he knew every inch.

In 1899, with the same mountain guide, he traveled to Western Canada and climbed Cheops and Eagle Peak in the Selkirks.

In 1922 he was one of W. T. Cosgrave's nominees to the senate, where he courageously served till its abolition in 1936, being reelected in November 1928 and November 1934 and it was that year that he returned to Alpine climbing (Aig du Moine; Aig des Petit Charmoz).

The following year (1923), because of his position as Senator in the Free State Government there was an arson attack on his home at Marlfield and he was kidnapped by anti-treaty forces in Howth and was incarcerated in a house in rural Co Meath.  After making his excape, he later claimed,  that it was his fitness that allowed him to race across the countryside before getting a lift by car back to safety in Dublin. The Press Association said: President Cosgrave paid a visit to Senator Bagwell at the Kildare street Club, Dublin, last evening and said that Mr. Bagwell appeared to be nothing the worse for his adventure and it added that Senator Bagwell crossed from Ireland last night, and will rest in the South of England.

This seems not to have affected his climbing for in that year he made a number of Alpine ascents, including Mt Blanc (Aigs de l'M, Petit Charmoz, Grand Charmoz, La Floriaz). The folowing three seasons saw him revisiting the Alps where he climbed numerous routes with the guides Camille and Benoit Couttet, including Mt Blanc for a second time.

In 1926 he was elected a member of the Alpine Club being proposed by W.T Kirkpatrick who was a friend.  Another friend was FS Smythe who stayed with him at Marlfield and walked with him over his favourite Comeragh Mountains.. His climbing record after that remains to be discovered.

Another botanist who climbed

From: Daily Gardener

 Charlotte Isabel Wheeler-Cuffe was born  in Wimbledon, Surrey (present-day London) to William and Rose (née Langrishe) Williams, the maternal granddaughter of the politician and clergyman Sir Hercules Richard Langrishe, 3rd Baronet of Knocktopher, Kilkenny. She was the niece of the architect and engineer Richard Langrishe (1834–1922).

On 3 June 1897, Charlotte married Otway Fortescue Luke Wheeler-Cuffe (later Sir Otway Fortescue Luke Wheeler-Cuffe, 3rd Baronet), of Leyrath (Lyrath), a civil-engineer for the Public Works Department in British Burma (now Myanmar).  Following her marriage, Wheeler-Cuffe settled there with her husband where she would sometimes accompany him on official inspection tours of the roads in remote regions. She described these tours in some of the hundreds of weekly letters to her mother.

After her mother's death in 1916, she continued the routine of writing once a week to her husband's cousin, Baroness Pauline Prochazka (1842–1930) who then lived at Leyrath, Kilkenny.

She would be unlikely to describe herself as a mountaineer but her enthusiasm for mountaineering is evident in that she wholeheartedly embraced the challenge of mountain climbing, and provided no evidence that she considered such endeavours solely the preserve of men.  Indeed, she found such excursions enchanting, enervating and educational and rarely turned down an opportunity to engage in them.  Observing, collecting and illustrating were all part of her botanising endeavours and she was enchanted by the scene: 'The cloud effects of light and shade rolling across the flanks of these great massive mountains are so wonderfully beautiful that I feel inclined to do nothing but sit and watch them all day'. 

From: Daily Gardener

The physical geography of the region proved alluring and in a letter she included a sketch map, which she claimed 'is only a guess as I have no map which gives it here'." Her cartographic and surveying skills had been honed over the decade she had spent in Burma accompanying her husband on many of his engineering projects and she undertook a trip with Otway to Mindon, 46 miles away, and assisted him in preparing the plans for a road-building project. She made  'a map of the whole road from here to Mindon, scale 1 inch to 1 mile' and, although it was signed off by Otway, 'he said that my initials must go somewhere "unbeknownst", so we put a lovely monogram at the end of the north point instead of the usual arrow points'.

Ascending Mount Victoria [Nat Ma Taung (Khonuamthung in Chin),    also known as Mount Victoria, is the highest mountain in Chin State of Northwestern Myanmar.]

In early 1911, Wheeler-Cuffe declared to her mother that Winifred MacNabb, wife of the Deputy Commissioner, had invited her 'to spend part of the hot weather up on Mt Victoria, the highest mountain in Burma . . .I'd sooner go there than to a "civilized" place'.  While Mount Victoria in the Chin Hills is not actually the highest peak in Burma at over 3000 metres, it was considered at the time to be among the highest in the land. The area had been originally surveyed and mapped around 1885 as part of the Survey of India, but Europeans rarely visited thereafter.

Charlotte fully embraced the scientific and aesthetic appeal of climbing Mount Victoria.  After a week botanising around Kampetlet, the party began their ascent and their entourage was an admixture of peoples, transport animals, food supplies, equipment and bedding. It included three pack ponies and about a dozen Chin coolies carrying their luggage. She described the coolies as 'the weirdest, wildest looking folk you ever beheld', but recognised that enrolling their labour was central to their success.  The group zigzagged across the spur on which Kampetlet was located until they reached the first crest (about 8000 feet) of the long ridge that terminated with Mount Victoria. They were travelling through evergreen forest... with patches of pine here and there. The ground clothed with wild strawberries in bloom and thickets of wild yellow raspberries and glades of bracken fern - Oak and Ilex, wild cherry and crimson tree rhododendron. In fact it is very like Woodstock  (in Kilkenny) on a very large scale.

 In this expedition, the following morning the two women rode their hired police ponies until the main path ended and they proceeded along foot tracks established by the Chins. For the final ascent to the summit, the superintendent 'rigged up a chair on poles for us, carried by four coolies, in case we could not take the ponies the whole way'. While the superintendent may have regarded this gesture of transporting the women on improvised sedan chairs appropriate, both had extensive experience of trekking and had the requisite fitness and constitution for the final climb. They discarded their chairs after a few hundred yards, preferring to ascend on foot:
    The first mile was up an open hill side, covered with bracken fern, primulas and blue gentian, with        big pine trees here and there then up a very steep, scrambly goat path with scrub jungle and thickets     of  tiny (and very prickly!) Scotch roses ... Then along a scratch of a path a few inches wide, around         a strip of pine clad shoulder, rising on our right and across a saddle covered in more fern and                 gnarled  tree rhododen- drons.

The terrain did not deter them and at 9000 ft some of the red blossoms of tree rhododendrons observed earlier 'still shone like great rubies against the sunshine'. Wheeler-Cuffe recorded that the white flowering rhododendrons stopped at 8000 ft. They continued through dense forest until they reached an open area dotted with the same red rhododendrons, here gnarled and twisted and stunted by the wind, and the most exquisite.

On the final saddle before the summit, they stopped for breakfast. Providing detailed observations of the physical geography of the region and its plant life characterised her depiction of the ascent. She made a record that later would be useful for species identification and observed that 'The air was thin and cool and clear - we were just 10,000 ft now and when the wind blew it was distinctly cold; (it freezes hard here in winter)'.

On arriving at the summit she observed a rounded knoll 'with one gnarled rhododendron on the side of it'.  It was the red-flowering species she had mentioned regularly during the ascent and in her watercolour it formed the focal point of the image . The party gazed over miles of jumbled mountains in what she described as 'unadministered territory' where the Svild' Chin tribes still raided one another. 

It is claimed that these 'represent the earliest collection from Kew as far as can be determined' , and thus perhaps confirms her as the first European to provide detailed knowledge of this region's natural history.

While this first visit did not yield any published reports, it laid the foundation for a second trip the following year. 

Mt Victoria

The web of connections she developed in the colonies enabled her to circulate scientific knowledge across the globe.  In April 1922 Charlotte Wheeler-Cuffe was elected a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. This honour was in recognition of her contribution to plant hunting and exploration, botanical illustration and anthropological knowledge accumulated about Burma during the quarter of a century (1897-1922) she spent there with her husband as part of the colonial service. 

Much of the above from:

On the colonial frontier: gender, exploration and plant-hunting on Mount Victoria in early 20th-century Burma  by Nuala C Johnson                                                                                                                            School of Natural and Built Environment, Queen's University Belfast, Belfast BT7 INN

20th Century - First Decades

     1900 -1910.   As we have already shown, the first decade of the 20th Century saw quite a bit of mountain activity at home in Ireland and in other places.  As Michael Fewer has indicated , the Wicklow mountains were being frequented regularly by a wide range of hikers and cyclists, if mainly of the upper and professional classes, as the visitors' book of Mc Guirk's teahouse indicates. The Brotherhood of the Lug had been founded; members of the Dublin Arts Club had been exploring Ireland's mountains and travelling to Wales for the rock clinbing organised by Geoffrey W. Young.  The Irish members of the Alpine Club held a dinner in Dublin in 1906.

About an equal number of women as of men visited Mc Guirk's on their visits into the Wicklow Hills, although the women's names were often not recorded (e.g Mr & Mrs F. Frowd and maid).  Some of the notable people people who visited were: G.A.J Cole, Director of Geological Survey of Ireland; J.M Synge; J.B. Malone (father of J.B.); Rev. W Doyle, S.J; J. Swift Joly; F.M Browne, S.J. 

    1910-1920.  This was a decade of upheaval in Ireland no less than in many other places. The following events had a significant and devastating effect on Irish society: Dublin Lockout 1913; Great War 1914-18 ; 1916 Rising.  (Follow the links for detailed accounts).  Despite such traumatic occurrances Mc Guirk's continued to be frequented throughout the decade by hikers and cyclists who were venturing into Wicklow's mountains; in 1917 J.J. Cronin beat Hart's time for the return walk from Terenure to Lugnaquilla by more than three hours.  Inevitably, however, mountaineering activities were curtailed due to the outbreak of WW 1, notably on the small group of rock climbers, members of the United Arts Club. 'Poignantly, despite O'Brien's return to Young's gatherings (in Wales) after the war, the influence of the little group on Irish climbing ceased, as Sparrow and Julian were killed during the war, while Dickenson suffered from shell shock.' (Paddy O' Leary)  Of the many notable people who wrote in Mc Guirk's visitors' book only a few are mentioned here because they feature again in this story: Dr John Healy, Alpine Club member and a founder of the IMC;      Joseph Maunsell Hone, wrote Persia in Revolution along with Page Dickinson;    Capt. Eoghan O'Brien, R.E, Alpine Club member;     Brotherhood of the Lug :     Na Sleibhteagaigh

   1920-1930.  Following the Great War Ireland was convulsed between 1919 and 1923 by the War of Independence that preceded the Irish Civil War.  Many of the hill areas that might have been frequented by hikers or mountaineers saw fighting and unrest and became guerilla refuges during the conflicts, somewhat akin to how they were used by Rapparees in earlier times. It would have been a foolhardy soul who ventured into such places for recreational activities.  With the end of hostilities in 1923 there was a gradual return to mountain activities in Ireland.  As Paddy O'Leary indicates it was Claude Wall and friends who were among the earliest to venture into the Dublin and Wicklow hills.  In 1925, the 15 year old Harold Johnson began climbing on The Scalp, an area of granite boulders and cliffs near Kiltiernan.  At school in Kendal, in the English Lake District, he subsequently was involved, with Maurice Linnell, in the devlopment of the climbing at Buckbarrow Crag near his school.

Buckbarrow Crag

The Scalp (1888 Lovett)

Despite the convulsed state of Ireland during these years numbers of Irish people were active in mountains in other parts of the world, viz. Valentine Ryan, Charles Howard Bury, Mervyn Ryan,   Ernest Shackleton, Tom Crean; and their exploits will be viewed in due course.

The Irish and Everest

 Mount Everest (known locally as Sagarmāthā in Nepal and Qomolangma  in Tibet) is Earth's highest

Everest from Rongbuk Glacier (1921)

 mountain above sea level. It lies in the Mahalangur Himal sub-range of the Himalayas and marks part of the China–Nepal border at its summit. Its height was most recently measured in 2020 by Chinese and Nepali authorities as 8,848.86 m (29,031 ft 8+1⁄2 in).  (Wikipedia).

The British geographic survey of 1849 attempted to preserve local names when possible (e.g., Kangchenjunga and Dhaulagiri). However, Andrew Waugh, the British Surveyor General of India, claimed that he could not find a commonly used local name, Waugh argued that – because there were many local names – it would be difficult to favour one name over all others; he therefore decided that Peak XV should be named after British surveyor Sir George Everest, his predecessor as Surveyor General of India. Everest himself opposed the honour.

Everest (Wikipedia)

He had visited Ireland in 1829 and inspected the 'Colby Bar' as used in the Survey of Ireland for baseliine measurement and its possible suitability in the Survey of India. (A neice, Mary, lived in Cork from 1855 to '64 as wife of  George Boole, professoor of mathematics at Queen's College - now UCC).  In 1852, stationed at the survey headquarters in Dehradun, Radhanath Sikdar, an Indian mathematician and surveyor from Bengal was the first to identify Everest as the world's highest peak.

The British expedition of 1921 was the first to explore the possibility of climbing Mt Everest.  Charles Kenneth Howard Bury was leader of the expedition and the surveyor was  a Canadian, Edward Oliver Wheeler.  On the third British Expedition, in 1924, Richard Hingston from Cork, was the medical officer.

The first Irish attempt on Everest was in 1993 and members were from both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. The Irish party in 1993 consisted of eight climbers: Dawson Stelfox, (leader); Frank Nugent (deputy leader); Dermot Somers, Robbie Fenlon, Mike Barry, Richard O'Neill Dean, Mick Murphy and Tony Burke. This was the first Irish attempt on Everest and members were from both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. The trip was supported by the Mountaineering Council of Ireland (MCI), the Sports Councils in Dublin and Belfast and financed by Irish companies and fund raising events.

Camp at Lakhpa La (1921)

(Some more details Here)

Some Irish Stats on Everest: (up to 2024).

– Everest has been climbed 76 times by 59 Irish climbers (9 women, 50 men) since the first Irish success in 1993.

– The geographic split of successful summits is 31 Northern Ireland, 41 Republic of Ireland and 4 Irish Diaspora.

– Irish success rate on Everest is 52%, while there have been four Irish fatalities (2005, 2011 & two in 2019).

– The first Irish climber to reach the summit of Everest was Dawson Stelfox from Antrim in 1993.

– The 1993 summit by Dawson Stelfox was the first North side ascent by a climber from Britain or Ireland.

– Noel Hanna (Co. Down) has 10 Everest summits – Noel died on Annapurna in 2023.

– Robert Smith (Co. Tyrone) has 7 Everest summits – Robert is an accomplished mountain guide.

– Pat Falvey & Lynne Hanna have 2 Everest summits each – once from each side (Nepal & Tibet).

– Linda Blakely (Armagh) in 2018 & Robert Smith (Tyrone) in 2019 summitted Everest & Lhotse within 24 hours.

– Everest & Lhotse by Linda Blakeley in 2018 was the first ‘same season double’ by a climber from Britain or Ireland.

– The youngest Irish citizen to summit is Anselm Murphy (24). Youngest Irish born to summit is Rob Mortell (26).

– The oldest Irish citizen to reach the summit of Everest was Martin Byrne from Offaly (58) in 2012.

– Four Irish born climbers died on Everest – Sean Egan (2005), John Delaney (2011), Seamus Lawless (2019) & Kevin Hynes (2019).

– Noel & Lynne Hanna hold the world record for the 1st married couple to summit together from both sides (2009 & 2016).

– Edmund Hillary’s grandmother came from Clondra in Longford. His other grandparents were from Yorkshire in England.

See Here for more info.

Richard Hingston

Dr Richard GW Hingston, FZS, FRES, FLS, FRGS (1887-1966) was an Irish physician, explorer and naturalist who worked in India with the Indian Medical Service. He attended Cork Grammar School and Merchants' Taylor School, London. Hingston qualified in the Medical School of Queen's College, Cork (now University College Cork) in 1910, where he passed his Final with First Class Honours.

On graduation Hingston entered the Indian Medical Service and retired from it in 1927 with the rank of Major. In 1913 he was naturalist to the Indo-Russian Pamir Expedition, a triangulation project in the Himalayas, mapping the region between India and Russia where he carried out experiments on the effects of high altitude on the human body on behalf of the RAF.  From 1914-1918 he served in the British Forces and was twice mentioned in despatches. He was awarded the MC. From the end of the war until 1924 he commanded military hospitals. In 1924 he acted as Medical Officer and Naturalist to the Mt Everest expedition.  This was the second mountaineering expedition with the express aim of making the first ascent of Mount Everest.

Everest '24 Team. Hingston - back row 2nd.

Richard Hingston was an analytical and dedicated diarist and even during the most trying periods of the Everest expedition he kept a record of events. It is from this diary that the following brief extracts have been taken:

4th June 1924: Norton and Somerville have extablished Camp VI at a height of 27,000 feet... Mallory and Irvine left camp today.  They intend to make an oxygen attempt...

5th June 1924: He (Somerville) and Norton had reached an altitude of 28,000 feet.  Norton had to be left at Camp IV.  He suffered badly ffrom snow blindness...Mallory and Irvine are now making an attempt. And this will probably be the last.

6th June 1924:  I set off at 6am...for Camp IV on an ice ridge at 23,000 feet.... The whole ascent was very wonderful, being practically a climb up a wall of ice about 2,000 feet in height...I had a job of work before me, to get a blind man down the Col...I was glad to get down...and finish the job without injury to anyone...

7th June 1924:...there is no news of Mallory and Irvine. Personally, I have not much hope of their success...

8th June 1924: Eyes again glued to the mountain. There is just a chance of Mallory and Irvine getting to the summit.... There is no sign of their having returned yet to Camp IV.

9th June 1924: Not a sign of Mallory and Irvine...they should have been at Camp IV ths morning, but there is no tracce of them as yet...

10 th June 1924: There can be no doubt - the worst has happened.  Not a sign of Mallory and Irvine.  They must have slipped near the summit and fallen down the face of the mountain.

After Everest he undertook a number of other expeditions. From 1925-1927 he was Surgeon Naturalist in the Indian Marine Survey. In 1928 he was second in command of the Oxford University Expedition to Greenland while in 1929 he was organiser and leader of the Oxford University Expedition to British Guyana. In 1930 he conducted a mission to Northern Rhodesia, Nyasaland, Tanganyika and Uganda in order to investigate methods of preserving the indigenous fauna.  In 1939 he was recalled to military duty in India and remained there until 1946.

After World War II Hingston retired to his home in Passage West, County Cork.

For further details of his Mt Everest  experience see Jim Murphy "Passage to Everest and Beyond" and Mountaineering Ireland (IMEHS Journal Vol 5).

  For sources of info on his career see Hingston Collection at UCC.

 

Edward Oliver Wheeler

 Sir Edward Oliver Wheeler MC (April 18, 1890 – March 19, 1962) was born in Ottawa.

His father, Arthur, Oliver, born in Kilkenny, Ireland, was one of the founders and first President of the Alpine Club of Canada and his mother was Clara, a daughter of the Irish- born (Maheralin, Co Down) Canadian naturalist John Macoun. Their only child, Edward Oliver, joined his father’s mountain survey parties at an early age.  His climbing companions were often the famous mountaineers and guides of the day and at age twelve, after making the first ascent of a hitherto unclimbed mountain, it was named Oliver’s Peak accordingly. 

After graduating from Trinity College School in 1908 he entered the Royal Military College of Canada where he excelled academically and in a variety of sports. Commissioned to the Royal Engineers in 1910 he spent the following two years in the Royal School of Military Engineering in Chatham after which he returned to Canada, made the first ascent of Mt Elkhorn on Vancouver Island before going on to India to join the 1st King George's Own Bengal Sappers and Miners and won the M.C and Legion of Honour for service during the first World War.  He joined the Survey of India in 1919 from which he was seconded to the 1921 Mount Everest Expedition led by Colonel Charles Howard Bury, chiefly as surveyor, and was largely responsible for the first detailed map of the Everest region,  making use of the photo-topographical method first extensively used in Canada. His work of five months, both survey and reconnaissance on this expedition, carried out despite the handicap of ill health which he refused to give in to,  constituted a remarkable tour de force.

Howard Bury.
Wheeler.

The young Canadian topographer, working alone in the solitude of the Rongbuk Valley, identified the crucial pass to the ‘North Col’ that today serves as the principal gateway to the roof of the world.

(see Wade Davis: Into the Silence, for a comprehensive account.)

His actual climbing had been done largely in Canada, from the age of 12 to about 20,  and on occasional visits later on leave. He had climbed with Sir James Outram, Val Fynn, Tom Longstaff, A. H. MacCarthy, and sometimes with the guides Edward Feuz and Conrad Kain who referred to him as “one of us” and as a fellow climber of comparable ability, a rare compliment from a guide in those days.

He joined The Alpine Club in 1911 and in 1956 he was made an Honorary Member. 

Everest Team 1921

 

Howard-Bury

 Charles Kenneth Howard-Bury was born in London on 15 August 1883,

C K Howard Bury
Courtesy: Alpine Club

where his mother, Lady Emily Alfreda Bury likely preferred the maternity services of London and the society image of her child being born there.  His father, Captain Kenneth Howard, grandson of the 16th Duke of Suffolk and Berkshire had married in September 1881 and assumed the name of Bury by deed-poll.

The parents were a well travelled couple - the father having served in India, Canada, Australia and
Ireland and the mother had chalets in the Italian Dolomites.  There was a sister, Marjorie, born in July 1885, who died of typhoid at Charleville Castle, the family home in Tullamore, aged twenty two.  Captain Howard died that year and and a relative was appointed as guardian to Charles - this was Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice, Lord Lansdowne who, as well as being a prominent politician, owned vast estates in Co Kerry.

Charleville Castle

  Charles spent much of his childhood on the Lansdowne estates in Dereen, Co Kerry, before attending school at Eton College in Berkshire, as had his father. After that he attended the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst and in 1904 joined the King's Royal Rifles.  He suffered a rebuke of Lord Curzon for entering Tibet illegally in 1905 due to delicate international relations. Between 1906 and 1912 he travelled widely in India and Tibet, learning some of the local languages. His army career came to an end that year when he inherited Belvedere, a large estate on the shore of Lough Ennel in Westmeath.

Belvedere House
(Brian Shaw cc2 Geograph

)

1913 saw him embark on a six month long hunting trip to the Tien Shan mountains from which he brought back a young bear that lived at Belvedere up to the 1950s and acted as a wrestling parner for him there.  On the outbreak of the Great War he rejoined his regiment and remained at the front throughout the war, saw action at the Somme, experienced the horrors and devastation of battle until his capture during the Spring Offensive of 1918.

After the war the question of Everest was being considered by the Alpine Club and the Royal Geographical Society.  In 1920 no one from the western world had been closer than 40 miles from the mountain.  From his travel experience, through contacts made in India and from his diplomatic abilities Howard Bury was instrumental in arranging the permissions necessary for the organisation of an expedition '...to proceed through Tibet for the exploration and ascent of Mount Everest....it was due to your tact and address that the negotiations on our behalf achieved their object... (Younghusband, President, RGS).

General Charles G. Bruce was the choice of the Everest Committee as leader of  the expedition. His unavailability meant that someone else had to be chosen.  Howard Bury had the necessary abilities and experience and his appointment was announced on 24th January 1921.  It may have helped that he offered to pay his own expenses.

Everest 1921 team.

The primary aim of the expedition was a reconnaissance for an attempt on the summit the following year and this aim was comprehensively achieved - it.."made an original survey at a scale of 4 miles to an ich of an area of some 12,00square miles; a detailed photographic survey of 600 square miles of the environs of Mt Everest had been worked out..." (Howard Bury Everest - The Reconnaisssance')

Howard Bury & Wheeler

Detailed accounts of the expedition are available in many places, most natably in Into the Silence by Wade Davis.

His Tien Shan expedition:  Mountains of Heaven  (ebay); and Pik Howard-Bury is a 4,766-meter (15,636-foot) mountain peak located in the Djangart region of the Tien Shan mountain range, named by an American/British expedition to honour him.

Biographical details : here and on his early life.

He died in September 1963.

Ireland and the Greater Ranges - (Early 20th C)

] Towards the end of the 19th century European mountaineers began to consider the world's Greater Ranges (Himalayas, Andes, Caucuses) as destinations for their craft.  Initial European activity in the Himalayas largely involved the British East India Company mapping the region for military and strategic reasons in the Survey of India         

Irish people, as part of the British Raj, carried out a variety of mountain activities during the second half of the century (see here) in India. 

The climbs of the British climber W.W. Graham in 1883 are often considered the first true mountaineering exploits in the Himalayas.

 An early attempt on a major peak was made by Albert F. Mummery who died in 1895 while attempting Nanga Parbat.

 Sir Martin Conway led an expedition to the Karakoram in the  Himalayas in 1892/3.  The ensuing book ( Climbing and Exploration in the Karakoram Himalaya  was illustrated by the Irish artist A. D. Mc Cormick.  He later accompanied Clinton T. Dent to Central Caucasus.

The higher of the two summits of Mount Elbrus in the Caucasus was first climbed in 1874 by a British expedition led by F. Crauford Grove.

The Survey of India, through the Great Trigonometrical Survey, first identified Mount Everest (then Peak XV) as the world's highest mountain in the 1850s, thanks to the work of Indian mathematician Radhanath Sikhdar, with final height confirmation coming from later surveys, leading to its naming in 1865 after former Surveyor General George Everest, despite local names like Chomolungma (Tibetan) and Sagarmatha (Nepali) existing. 

Interest in climbing the world's highest mountain culminated, in 1921, with the British Reconnaisance Expedition.

Bury (top) Wheeler (below)

This expedition was led by Charles Kenneth Howard-Bury from Mullingar, Ireland.

Also on this expedition was Edward Oliver Wheeler, a Canadian, whose father was born in Kilkenny, Ireland an whose mother (Clara) was the daughter of John Macoun, born in Maheralin, Co Down.

The subsequant 1924 Everest attempt saw the disapearance of George Mallory and Sandy Irvine during their summit attempt, which was witnessed by Richard Hingston, the medical officer of the expedition. Born in London, from about age eight spent most of his life and was educated in Cork.               See Jim Murphy's 'Passage to Everest & Beyond'  for greater details and Vol 5 of IMEHS Journal.

In 1925 the 4th ascent of Aconcagua, the highest mountain outside the Himalayas, was achieved by

Mervyn Ryan,

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.

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.