Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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Topic Author's Original Post - Jul 5, 2015 - 09:56am PT
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Charles (1850-1918) and Lawrence Pilkington (1855-1941)
Charles and Lawrence Pilkington, of the glass making and colliery-owning family were among the leading guideless Alpine climbers of the 1870s and pioneers of British rock-climbing.
With their cousin, Frederick Gardiner, a Liverpool ship-owner, and George Hulton, a Manchester businessman, they pioneered guideless climbing in the Alps. They made the first guideless ascent of Barre des Ecrins (PD, 1878), La Meije (AD, 1879) - the last and one of the hardest of the major alpine peaks to be climbed - the Jungfrau from Wengern Alp (PD, 1881). The Pilkington Brothers climbed Pillar rock in 1869 when Lawrence was just 14 and were among the first to climb on Skye, which at that time was harder to reach than the Alps, making the first ascent of the Inaccessible Pinnacle (M, 1880) on Sgurr Dearg, the only major Scottish peak that requires rock climbing to reach.
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The east ridge of the In Pinn became steadily easier and more solid as it was “cleaned” by climbers in the decades following the first ascent by the Pilkington brothers in 1880.
Other climbers known to have pioneered guideless climbing in the Alps are Ludwig Purtscheller and the Zsigmondy Brothers.
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