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While the eastern side forms the tallest wall in the
Alps, the western side of Monte Rosa gives birth to the Gorner
Glacier, the second largest glacier in the Alps. Other high summits of
the Swiss
Alps, including the Matterhorn,
are located within a few tens of kilometres away.
Early exploration.
At the end of the 15th century Leonardo da Vinci probably visited the Italian side of Monte Rosa and explored the mountain, even though the exact summit or place he reached is unknown. He made some observations about the existing permanent snows and the darkness of the sky, showing that he reached high altitude. He wrote:
The base of this mountain gives birth to the 4 rivers which flow in four different directions through the whole of Europe. And no mountain has its base at so great a height as this, which lifts itself above almost all the clouds; and snow seldom falls there, but only hail in the summer, when the clouds are highest. And this hail lies there, so that if it were not for the absorption of the rising and falling clouds, which does not happen more than twice in an age, an enormous mass of ice would be piled up there by the layers of hail, and in the middle of July I found it very considerable; and I saw the sky above me quite dark, and the sun as it fell on the mountain was far brighter here than in the plains below, because a smaller extent of atmosphere lay between the summit of the mountain and the
sun.
In 1778 a group of seven people from Gressoney reached the 4,178 m
- high Entdeckungsfels (German: Rock of Discovery) above the Lisjoch; it was the first recorded exploration of the upper Grenz Glacier, located on the west slopes.
An attempt was made from Macugna by the Count Morozza della Rocca in 1787. He reached the place of the actual Marinelli hut on the east face, but still 1,500 m below the summit. The route on the east face will be opened only in 1873.
In 1789 Horace-Bénédict de Saussure climbed the Pizzo Bianco, a summit east of Monte Rosa, in order to study its eastern wall and to try to find a way to the top, but without success.
A major ascent was made in the year 1820 by Joseph Zumstein and party on a lower summit, the
Zumsteinspitze. During the expedition they thought they had climbed the true highest peak, but when they reached the summit they found out it was only a subpeak of the
massif.
First ascents.
The first approaches to the summit were made from the west slopes. The Silbersattel was reached in 1847 by V.
Puisieux, E. Ordinaire and guides J. Brantschen, J. Moser, M. and J.
Zumtaugwald.On September 1854, the brothers Christopher, Edmund and James G. Smyth with guides Ulrich Lauener climbed a 4,630 m high minor summit located 100 m east of the
Dufourspitze, now called Ostspitze. The brothers Smith were convinced they had climbed the highest peak because at the time it was unclear where exactly was the highest
point.
The first complete ascent was made from Zermatt on August 1, 1855 by John
Birkbeck, Charles Hudson, Christopher Smyth, James G. Smyth, Edward Stephenson with the guides Matthäus Zumtaugwald and Johannes Zumtaugwald
and Ulrich Lauener. They followed the already opened route to the Ostspitze by the
Silbersattel. On the summits, instead of turning back on the same way, they decided to continue on the unexplored western ridge and thus passed the thrue summit before going down to
Zermatt. One of the climbers, Charles Hudson, will die 10 years later during the first ascent of the
Matterhorn.
John Tyndall in addition to be a prominent physicist, was an accomplished mountaineer. According to his account (Glaciers of the Alps), in 1858 he made the first solo ascent. Tyndall had already summited the Dufourspitze in a guided group one week before but he made an unplanned second summit solo on 17 August.
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