What is mountaineering?
A: Mountaineering is a set of outdoor activities that involves ascending
tall mountains.
Mountaineering-related activities include what?
A: Traditional outdoor climbing, skiing, and traversing via ferratas.
Unlike most sports, mountaineering lacks widely applied
what?
A: Formal rules, regulations, and governance.
Mountaineers adhere to a large variety of what?
A: Techniques and philosophies when climbing mountains.
Numerous local alpine clubs support mountaineers by
doing what?
A: Hosting resources and social activities.
A federation of alpine clubs, the International
Climbing and Mountaineering Federation (UIAA), is the International Olympic
Committee-recognized world organization for what?
A: Mountaineering and climbing.
Humans have been present in mountains since when?
A: Prehistory.
The remains of Ötzi, who lived in the 4th millennium
BC, were found where?
A: In a glacier in the Ötztal Alps.
The highest mountains were rarely visited early on and
were often associated with what?
A: Supernatural or religious concepts.
There are many documented examples of people climbing
mountains prior to what?
A: The formal development of the sport in the 19th century.
The famous poet Petrarch describes his what, in one of
his epistolae familiars?
A: His 26 April 1336 ascent of Mount Ventoux (1,912 m (6,273 ft)).
For most of antiquity, climbing mountains was a
practical or symbolic activity, usually undertaken for what purpose?
A: Economic, political, or religious purposes.
A commonly cited example is the 1492 ascent of Mont
Aiguille (2,085 m (6,841 ft)) by whom?
A: Antoine de Ville, a French military officer and lord of Domjulien and
Beaupré.[16]
In the Andes, around the late 1400s and early 1500s
many ascents were made of extremely high peaks by whom?
A: The Incas and their subjects.
What is the highest they are known for certain to have
climbed?
A: 6739m at the summit of Volcan Llullaillaco.
In 1757 Swiss scientist Horace-Bénédict de Saussure
made the first of several unsuccessful attempts on what?
A: Mont Blanc in France.
He then offered a reward to anyone who could what?
A: Climb the mountain.
The reward was claimed in 1786 by whom?
A: Jacques Balmat and Michel-Gabriel Paccard.
The climb is usually considered a what?
A: An epochal event in the history of mountaineering, a symbolic mark of the
birth of the sport.
By the early 19th century, many of the alpine peaks
were reached, including what?
A: The Grossglockner in 1800, the Ortler in 1804, the Jungfrau in 1811, the
Finsteraarhorn in 1812, and the Breithorn in 1813.
In 1808, Marie Paradis became the first woman to climb
what?
A: Mont Blanc, followed in 1838 by Henriette d'Angeville.
The beginning of mountaineering as a sport in the UK is
generally dated to the ascent of what?
A: The Wetterhorn in 1854 by English mountaineer Sir Alfred Wills, who made
mountaineering fashionable in Britain.
This inaugurated what became known as what?
A: The Golden Age of Alpinism, with the first mountaineering club – the
Alpine Club – being founded in 1857.
One of the most dramatic events was the spectacular
first ascent of what?
A: The Matterhorn.
It took place in 1865 and was led by English
illustrator Edward Whymper, in which what happened?
A: Four of the party members fell to their deaths.
By this point the sport of mountaineering had largely
what?
A: Reached its modern form, with a large body of professional guides,
equipment, and methodologies.