Edward Whymper

Edward Whymper was a British mountaineer , born the April 27th 1840 with London, dead the September 16th 1911 with Chamonix.

It receives a training of draftsman and engraver.

He discovers the the Alps at the time of an engagement to carry out illustrations.

First remarkable rises: Cervin (1865), Green Needle (1865) and Large Jorasses (id.), Bar of the Jewel cases and Chimborazo (1880)

The success in Cervin was tarnished by an accident where four people perished, of which the Chamoniard guide Michel Croz. A polemic opposed it then this fact to the guides of Chamonix. One showed it to have cut the cord, which was not never proven and seems not very probable. Its success, little front time, with the Green Needle, accompanied by Valaisan guides, was particularly badly felt in Chamonix.

The account of its rises forms the matter of its book Scrambles among the Alps (1871) where its conquering character appears. Whymper is interested in the tops, not with the ways: it chooses the virgin tops most beautiful and difficult of its time, is surrounded of the best possible guides, and thanks to its extraordinary direction of the mountain determines the most effective way to arrive at the top. Thus for the Green Needle it did not borrow the corridor which bears its name on all its height, in spite of its intrinsic beauty: it forked directly towards the top in the last third, avoiding by a passage that one does not borrow any more from now on, the stiffest and interesting part of the corridor. In that, Whymper is distinguished clearly from Mummery, for which, twenty years later, the beauty of the way and its difficulty precede.

If, like writes it Rébuffat ( Hundred more beautiful races of the Solid mass of Mont Blanc ) “With Green, one becomes mountain dweller”, Whymper is the first true mountain dweller. In fact, it is with the turning point of the alpinism, between the alpinism of exploration and the sporting alpinism (its book is still full with scientific notations on the glaciers, etc which one then any more does not find among his continuators).

Exploration of Greenland (1867) and (1872)

Of its forwarding to the Greenland, Whymper brought back an important collection of plants fossil, described by Professor Heer and deposited to the British Museum. Although handicapped by a lack of living, it proved that the interior of Greenland could be explored by means of sledges and that contributed to advanced of Arctic exploration. Another forwarding in 1872 have for goal an exploration of the coast.

Exploration of South America (1880)

Whymper organized then a forwarding in Ecuador with an aim of studying the Mal altitude and the effects of an atmospheric pressure reduced on the human body. Its guide was Jean-Antoine Carrel (which will die later of exhaustion in Cervin after having saved its customers of a snowstorm). Whymper carried out two rises of the Chimborazo (6 310 m). It spent one night at the top of the Cotopaxi and realized with Jean-Antoine Carrel and Louis Carrel a half dozen first rises of great tops:

first of the Chimborazo (6 310 meters) on January 4th; second with Baltran and Campana by the now normal way, on July 3rd;
second of Corazon (4 816 meters) on February 2nd. This top had been reached for the first time by Condamine and Bouguer on July 20th, 1738;
second with the Cotopaxi (5 897 meters with 6.005 meters according to the height of the layers of ash and snow bordering its crater, of a diameter from 7 to 800 meters) 18 February 19th and 20th; this top had been already conquered on November 28th, 1872 by Escobar and Wilhelm Reiss;
first of the Sincholagua (5 220 meters) on February 23rd;
first of the Antisana (5 766 meters) on March 10th;
first of the Pinchincha (4 787 meters) on March 22nd;
first of the Cayambe (5 860 meters) on April 4th;
first of the Sara-Urcu (4 900 meters) on April 17th;
first of the Cotacachi (5 000 meters) on April 24th;
first of the It (5 305 meters) on May 4th;
first of the Western summit of the Carihuairazo (5 060 meters) on June 29th.

For 6 months, they will traverse the plates of the inter-Andean furrow, spending on the whole 36 nights above 4.000 meters. Scientific experiments will come to supplement these sporting exploits: prospections geological, glaciologic and volcanic. Carrel will cart kilos of stones and ashes.

In 1892, Whymper published the account of its voyage in a work entitled Voyages through the large Andes of Ecuador ( Travels amongst the Great the Andes off the Equator ). This book very delivers also a sum of new knowledge on the life with high-altitude in hardly known areas then.

Quotations

“Where there is a will, there is a way”
“Climb if you want it, but never forget that courage and the force are nothing without prudence, and that only one moment of negligence can destroy a whole life of happiness. ”
“never act with haste, take guard with the least step. And as of the beginning, think that it could be the end. ”

Writings

Climbings in the Alps of 1860 to 1868 ( Scrambles Amongst the Alps ), ED. Slatkine, Geneva 1975.
Matterhorn ( The Ascent off the Matterhorn ), Rag Book.
Travels Amongst the Great the Andes off the Equator , 1892.
The Valley off Zermatt and the Matterhorn (1897).

Biography

Whymper, the insane one of Cervin , max Chamson Perrin Edition, 1986

Bonds

Account of the rise of Cervin by Whymper
Account of the rise of Cervin by Rebuffat

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