Scrambles Amongst The Alps

Triumph and Tragedy: the Life of Edward Whymper is an engrossing account of the extraordinary life of Edward Whymper (1840-1911), the best known but perhaps least understood mountain climber of the 19th century. Acclaimed as the first to scale the Matterhorn, Whymper personifies the spirited amateurism of the Golden Age of Mountaineering (1854-1865).Triumph and Tragedy accompanies a young but supremely confident Whymper on exhilarating ascents and narrow escapes amid beautiful, often dangerous Alpine peaks. The book lays bare the trauma of his companions’ deaths on the Matterhorn, and empathizes with him during the intense pressures of the accident’s aftermath. Emil Henry’s thoroughly researched biography then moves on to Whymper’s post-Matterhorn years. Following the publication of his classic Scrambles Amongst the Alps, Whymper travels first to Greenland’s unexplored interior and then to the high Andes mountains of South America where he becomes the first westerner to reach a 20,000 foot summit. In later life he is recognized as a noted explorer and the author of two best-selling books illustrated with drawings from a sketch-pad kept always in his shirt pocket. Triumph and Tragedy: the Life of Edward Whymper offers new and refreshing insights into the life of this notable Victorian personality. Spread throughout the book are examples of Whymper’s accomplishments as an author, artist, natural scientist, pioneering photographer, lecturer, and raconteur.

The first edition narrating the ascent of the Matterhorn, with numerous illustrations: maps, views, equipment

The ascent of Mont Pelvoux (including the disagreeables) was a very delightful scramble. The mountain air did not act as an emetic; the sky did not look black, instead of blue; nor did I feel tempted to throw myself over precipices. I hastened to enlarge my experience, and went to the Matterhorn. I was urged towards Mont Pelvoux by those mysterious impulses which cause men to peer into the unknown. Not only was this mountain reputed to be the highest in France, and on that account was worthy of attention, but it was the dominating point of a most picturesque district of the highest interest, which, to this day, remains almost unexplored! The Matterhorn attracted me simply by its grandeur. It was considered to be the most thoroughly inaccessible of all mountains, even by those who ought to have known better. Stimulated to make fresh exertions by one repulse after another, I returned, year after year, as I had opportunity, more and more determined to find a way up it, or to prove it to be really inaccessible

The definitive story of the British adventurers who survived the trenches of World War I and went on to risk their lives climbing Mount Everest. On June 6, 1924, two men set out from a camp perched at 23,000 feet on an ice ledge just below the lip of Everest’s North Col. George Mallory, thirty-seven, was Britain’s finest climber. Sandy Irvine was a twenty-two-year-old Oxford scholar with little previous mountaineering experience. Neither of them returned. Drawing on more than a decade of prodigious research, bestselling author and explorer Wade Davis vividly re-creates the heroic efforts of Mallory and his fellow climbers, setting their significant achievements in sweeping historical context: from Britain’s nineteen-century imperial ambitions to the war that shaped Mallory’s generation. Theirs was a country broken, and the Everest expeditions emerged as a powerful symbol of national redemption and hope. In Davis’s rich exploration, he creates a timeless portrait of these remarkable men and their extraordinary times.

These pictures, mostly not seen for 100 years and never been published as a set before, give us a unique glimpse of the mountain world at the end of the 19th century.