Mountaineering In 1573 Francesco De Marchi and Francesco Di Domenico ascended Corno Grande, the highest peak in the Apennine Mountains. During the Enlightenment, as a product of the new spirit of curiosity for the natural world, many mountain summits were surmounted for the first time.. In 1741 Richard Pococke and William Windham made a historic visit to Chamonix. In 1757 Swiss scientist Horace-Bénédict de Saussure made the first of several unsuccessful attempts on Mont Blanc in France, finally offering a reward, which was claimed in 1786 by Jacques Balmat and Michel-Gabriel Paccard. By the early 19th century many of the alpine
First ascent of the Matterhorn of this and they were acquitted. The ascent followed a long series of usually separate attempts by Edward Whymper and Jean-Antoine Carrel to reach the summit. Carrel's group had been 200 m below the summit on the Italian site when Croz and Whymper summited. The climbers from Valtournenche withdrew deflated, but three days later Carrel and Jean-Baptiste Bich reached the summit without incident. The Matterhorn was the last great Alpine peak to be climbed and its first ascent marked the end of the golden age of alpinism. In the summer of 1860, Edward Whymper, an athletic, twenty-year-old English artist, visited