Climbing mountains for pleasure

 As we've seen, travel in and through the mountains took place in many different cultures and in many different places for many different reasons.  Mountains were seen not just as physical entities but represented a wide spectrum of ideas, needs and fears at different times in history.  They were; the sacred places of pilgrimage; barriers to military advances; source of bad weather and the home of dragons and other demons.  They were visited only of necessity.

Croagh Patrick

Croagh Patrick

Christianity may have caused a change in attitude towards mountains and many of the pagan mountain sites were subsumed into Christian practice - Croagh Patrick in Ireland, Harz Mountains in Germany,

Gr St Bernard. Courtesy IAAH

,Great St Bernard Pass in Switzerland -  so that pilgrimages to mountains became part of Christian spirituality.

To climb for the pleasure of doing so!  The Italian, Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch) is regarded as the first person to have climbed a mountain simply "for the view" in April 1336.  Mt Ventoux was close to where he lived and he felt  a "wish to see what so great an elevation had to offer". 

Through the succeeding centuries some mountains in Europe were being climbed by individuals for such 'non utilitarian' reasons:

Antoine de Ville - (d.1504) ordered by the King of France (Charles VIII) to climb Mont Aiguille, then regarded as 'unclimbable', he assailed the mountain with ropes and ladders and succeeded in 1492.  This is regarded as the first ascent of a peak of any technical difficulty and, using techniques far ahead of the time, is considered the first truly "Alpine" climb.

During these centuries there were others who were interested in the Alps and Alpine travel:

Josias Simmler (1530-'76), an academic in Zurich interested in classical accountsof Alpine travel and his work promotes a growing interest in the topography of the Alps. he produced the first book solely related to Th Alps. (Wikipedia).

Conrad Gesner (1516-65), 'his writings were the first to instil a positive delight in the mountains and a joy in the scenery for its own sake'.  His account of the ascent of Mt Pilatus in 1555 is one of the early classics of mountain literature. He declared in a letter to a friend the he " resolved for the future ... to climb mountains, or...to climb one mountain every year".  (Wikipedia)

Conrad Gessner

Josias Simmler

In Ireland there seems to be no evidence that any such activity was taking place although mountain journeys continued to be undertaken, as related earlier, in relation to pilgrimages to holy mountains and Lughnasa festivals.

The earliest mention of an Irishman climbing a significant mountain was Darby Field who made the first ascent of Mt Washington in USA in 1642. (More to follow)

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Mountains in prehistory

                          

       

    

Summit cairn on Slievenamon.

    In many cultures the high places (mountain tops) were venerated places. In some they were regarded with awe as locations where the gods resided. It may have been felt that such sites were closer to God and were used as places of initiation, burial or ceremonial locations. In Tibet ancient cultures worshipped the mountains as manifestations of warrior gods - Shivling. There are sacred mountains in Africa - the Mountain of God (Ol Doinyo Lengai) in Tanzania, sacred to the Maasai people. In North America the Devil's Tower of Wyoming has been sacred to the native peoples since Neolithic times. In Greek mythology the foremost deities of the Greek pantheon were believed to have lived on the summit of Mount Olympus.

  In prehistoric Ireland, whatever the beliefs about the mountain summits, they were certainly held in some esteem by the people. There is hardly a significant hill summit that does not have a rock cairn, many of which have been shown to be ancient burial sites. They were also places of pilgrimage where some form of ritual was carried out. The prime example is Croagh Patrick in Co Mayo. This was a place of pilgrimage well before the Christian era and it's thought that the modern track to the summit is an archaeological artifact itself. Three summit mounds are recognised as being of ancient pre-Christian origin. 

  No one can tell what rituals took place there but one possibility is that they were 'Sun' related. There are numerous locations where topographical features align with sunrise or sunset on particularly significant times of the year. The most renowned might be Newgrange in Co Meath but there are numbers of others, some being on mountain summits.

Solstice sunrise from 'Ritual Site' near summit of Brandon Hill in Co Kilkenny, 

looking towards Mt Leinster.

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Some links to Sun phenomena:

Croagh Patrick  ;   Newgrange