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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