Monte Leone

The massive rock wall of the South-East face of Monte Leone (3553 m), the highest mountain of the Lepontine Alps, Italy/Schweiz. The first ascent of the mountain was made in the year 1859 from the Swiss side by Swiss military officers for military reasons. At the end of 1800s the American William Augustus Brevoort Coolidge, born in New York in the year 1850, priest of the Anglican church and professor of English history, completed about 1,750 ascents in the Western Alps, including the Lepontine Alps. He published, together with Martin Conway, the book: "Climbers' Guide to the Lepontine Alps". He died in 1926 in Grindelwald.