1840-1911

British mountaineer, writer, and artist who is the best known of the nineteenth-century mountaineers because of his many "firsts" in Europe and South America. From 1860 to 1869, Whymper conquered several unscaled peaks of the Alps, including being the first to find a viable route up the Matterhorn (1865). He described these adventures in Scrambles Amongst the Alps (1871). In 1880, Whymper was the first climber to reach the summit of Chimborazo in the Andes.