I think DMT and Redneck have both hit the nail on the head. On the one hand it really doesn't matter and on the other it not only matters very much, but the mystery of questionable climbs makes it all the more interresting.

Baintha Brakk, do you have permission to use Doug Scott's photo of the Ogre?

Methinks you're trolling.

Bob Sihler wrote:Baintha Brakk, do you have permission to use Doug Scott's photo of the Ogre?

Methinks you're trolling.

And not a bad job of it.

curzon was awesome

redneck wrote:As a dedicated SummitPoster, there isn't a font size big enough for me to post how much I don't care about first ascents, 8000 meter peaks or Everest climbs. In fact, I care so little about such things I will prove my apathy by starting another three threads about how I don't care!

Well then maybe your'e not on the right website?

The OP raises a perfectly good question. Climbing history is very interesting, and alot of people care if the information is true.

Bob Sihler wrote:Baintha Brakk, do you have permission to use Doug Scott's photo of the Ogre?

Methinks you're trolling.

No, I dont have permission.The photo is all over the net, but I have removed it anyway. And I am noway near trolling. I think it's sad though that people who are obviously not interested in the initial question stand for most of the posts in this thread. Maybe this site need more active moderation?

/BB

As much as I would love Buhl for instance to have climbed NP, I dont see his summit photo as much of a proof other than that he was pretty high up. Or?

Buhl left his ice axe on the summit. The ice axe was found on the summit decades later, so there is no doubt that he reached the summit.

BainthaBrakk wrote:people who are obviously not interested in the initial question stand for most of the posts in this thread.

+1

BainthaBrakk wrote:Maybe this site need more active moderation?

-1

Rob wrote:

redneck wrote:As a dedicated SummitPoster, there isn't a font size big enough for me to post how much I don't care about first ascents, 8000 meter peaks or Everest climbs. In fact, I care so little about such things I will prove my apathy by starting another three threads about how I don't care!

Well then maybe your'e not on the right website?

The OP raises a perfectly good question. Climbing history is very interesting, and alot of people care if the information is true.

Whoosh!

Scott wrote:

As much as I would love Buhl for instance to have climbed NP, I dont see his summit photo as much of a proof other than that he was pretty high up. Or?

Buhl left his ice axe on the summit. The ice axe was found on the summit decades later, so there is no doubt that he reached the summit.

Hmh, well, there's no reasonable doubt, anyway

I think this is an interesting topic, and I tend to believe that people who neglect the geopolitical aspect of 19th and early 20th century mountaineering don't really understand how different the world was back then.

I remember discussing these things during high school history lessons. Imperialistic aspirations back then were just as much about publicity stunts as they were about materialistic gains. You absolutely have to remember that many of the aristocracy, for example, were basically above the financial world, so for them honor and prestige offered by such actions offered more than simply conquering more land to farm etc.

This is very much related to the concept of heroism, which has disappeared in the Western world. Maybe it's education, or just mere cynicism, but there just are no heroes anymore. Neither are there real rock stars. The population at large just isn't willing to look at anyone from such an angle anymore. And then we make the assumption that the preceding generations were the same, even though they quite evidently were not.

P.S: Sorry for incoherent rambling

Scott wrote: The ice axe was found on the summit decades later, so there is no doubt that he reached the summit.

Now there is some new light shed. And frankly it makes me quite happy to know that he made it as he was an extraordinary man.

Now how about some of the others?

/BB

Dubzion wrote:

P.S: Sorry for incoherent rambling

Neither incoherent nor rambling. Insightful rather.

/BB

Dubzion wrote:

Scott wrote:

....
I remember discussing these things during high school history lessons. Imperialistic aspirations back then were just as much about publicity stunts as they were about materialistic gains. You absolutely have to remember that many of the aristocracy, for example, were basically above the financial world, so for them honor and prestige offered by such actions offered more than simply conquering more land to farm etc.

A minor clarification is in order: recent studies in the history of British mountaineering are generally in agreement that as things got serious, it was not at all the aristocracy, but one step down, the often very wealthy upper class of more recent earned, not inherited, wealth and lack of noble status who provided the mountaineers. Dubzion's primary point remains solid here, however, that there was extraordinary value placed upon the 'publicity stunts' (only a slight exaggeration!) of achieving first ascents. See, e.g., Robert Macfarlane's Mountains of the Mind and Isserman and Weaver's Fallen Giants: A History of Himalayan Mountaineering from the Age of Empire to the Age of Extremes. I rather doubt that the climbers themselves saw their efforts as 'stunts,' but more as honorable accomplishments to the greater glory of the realm.

Aye, I think 'publicity stunt' was too strong as a concept (English is not my mother tongue). And I agree that from the era's mountaineers' point of view they were no stunts, but honest attempts at doing something extraordinary, both for the glory of themselves as well as their country (or king or queen).

The same ideas and issues are, in my opinion, also discussed in David Thomson's very good "Scott, Shackleton and Amundsen - Ambition and Tragedy in the Antarctic". The race to the Antarctic is not just between these great men, but also between their nationalities. But, I think, not their nations as such. Scott, for example, would not take advise from anyone outside British empire, based on the belief of superiority - even though from our point of view shrugging off feedback from Arctic people would seem silly.

(Edit: fixed a few typos)

Well put and interesting