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.

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)

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,

Quaternions and Mountains - Charles Jasper Joly

   There seems to be little connection between Quaternions and Mountains but Charles Jasper Joly was a man who combined a deep knowledge and love of both.  (What are 'quaternions' - you might well ask. According to Wikipedia they are: A type of four-dimensional hypercomplex number consisting of a real part and three imaginary parts and are commonly used in vector mathematics and as an alternative to matrix algebra in calculating the rotation of three-dimensional objects. Quaternions were first described by the Irish mathematician William Rowan Hamilton in 1843 and applied to mechanics in three-dimensional space and also have practical uses in applied mathematics, particularly for calculations involving three-dimensional rotations, such as in three-dimensional computer graphics, computer vision, magnetic resonance.)

Born in County Offaly in 1864, at St Catherine's Rectory where his father was Rector, ( The land for the rectory had been provided by the town's landlord Charles William Bury, whose family will enter our story later.)  Joly's first school was in Portarlington before attending

Weissmies (Wikipedia)

 Galway Grammar School and entering Trinity College in 1882 from where he graduated in mathematics and experimental physics in 1886.  After this he went to Berlin to follow his interest in experimental physics in the laboratory of Herman von Helmholtz ( as had John Tyndall, some 30 years earlier). It may have been here that his interest in mountaineering began. He returned to Ireland on the death of his father and his first Alpine exploit seems to have been in 1892 on a visit to Switzerland when he climbed the Weissmies and crossed the Alhubeljoch.

His climbs of that year and the following two seasons were his qualifying achievements for membership of the Alpine Club to which he was elected in 1895 where he was proposed and seconded by two other Irish members and Trinity graduates - George Scriven and William Spotswood Green.

Rock climbing was of special interest and he spent some of his happiest mountain holidays among the the Dolomites around Cortina and San Martino. Despite a delicate appearance he possessed endurance, courage, and a keen sense of humour, once leading a group successfully down from the Eiger in a snowstorm.

In 1897 he was appointed Royal Astronomer of Ireland and lived at Dunsink observatory until his early death from typhoid in 1906.  By then he had published on mathematics and astronomy; one of his most important works was Manual of Quaternions (1905), brought out in the centenary year of Hamilton's birth. 

Alpine Club

                                                     For further biographical details see DIB      

                  

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Beatrice Tomasson

It is not being claimed that Beatrice Tomasson was Irish since she was born in 1859 to William and Sarah Anne Tomasson, in Barnby Moor, Nottinghamshire, England.  However, at ten years old, Tomasson and her family moved to Ireland, where they lived in Gortnamona House (formerly Mount Pleasant) a property near Tullamore, County Offaly.

The diary of the High Sheriff of Kings County, now Co. Offaly, Ireland in 1868 records the arrival of the Tomasson family at Gortnamona House, Blue Ball, 5 miles south west of Tullamore.  The house is about 500 yards south of the lake at Blue Ball called Loch na Phailis. (Pallas Lake). It was built by Moris O'Connor, son of John O'Connor, last Chief of the O'Connor's, and was leased to William Tomasson.  William Tomasson knew the art of land reclamation from his experience on their lands at Grainfoot where about sixty acres on the hillsides close to the farm had been enclosed.  Here he was successful in growing crops on what had been very boggy land.

The family had some interaction with the Howard-Bury family of nearby Charleville Castle.  

It was here in Gortnamona that Beatrice spent her formative years up to age 22. In 1882 she  travelled to Potsdam, then part of Prussia, to work as a private tutor for the household of Prussian army General von Bülow.  She was proficient in a number of European languages and worked on translations of books from German to English.  How and where she received her education is unclear but likely to have been by home tuition under a tutor.

 Tomasson moved to Innsbruck in 1885 where she took up mountain climbing. From 1892, she worked as a governess for Edward Lisle Strutt, whom she accompanied on numerous expeditions to Tyrol, Ötztal, the Stubai Alps and the Karwendel range. Despite Tommason being 15 years older than Strutt the family believed they were romantically involved. Tomasson became a member of  the Austrian Alpine Club in 1893 and began to attempt major climbs in the Dolomites from 1896 onwards.

Tomasson began climbing with Michele Bettega, a mountain guide, in 1897. Together, they made the first ascents of Cima d'Alberghetto, Torre del Giubileo, Campanile della Regina Vittoria, Monte Lastei d'Agner, and Sasso delle Capre.  In 1898 she made the first ascent of the northeast face of Monte Zebrù, which was considered at the time to be the most difficult ice wall to climb in the Tyrol, as well as the first ascent of Ortler and the second ascent of the west face of Laurinswand, which was considered to be the Dolomites' most difficult rock wall. She and Luigi Rizzi were the first climbers to summit the Dent di Mesdi via the south face in 1900. In July 1901 Tomasson, Bettega and Bartolo Zagonel made the first ascent of the south face of the Marmolada, which is considered her greatest climbing achievement. The route had been considered "the longest and most difficult climb in the Alps" for more than a decade, yet Tomasson's team made the ascent in just one day.

Alpine Journal

For the duration of her mountaineering career, Tomasson worked as a governess for wealthy families in Innsbruck.

Beatrice was an 'extraordinary character, very determined', according to a statement by her relative Paul Demoge of Paris.  Her determination was in those days a completely unfeminine attribute.  Her niece Mrs Philomena Baynes (b.1928) from her husband's side of the family described her simply as 'masculine' and 'wiry'. 'Wiry' is an appropriate description of her character.  No curls, hair combed straight back into a bun, and no smile on her face, a completely un-English aunt in her wonderful country house down in Sussex, was her niece's memory of Beatrice. 'We cousins in London had a nickname for our aunt: "the old hairpin".'

 Beatrice died on the 13 February 1947 at the age of 87.

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