Edited by:
Massimo Martini
A Valais-born mountain guide who grew up in Macugnaga, the first person to climb Aconcagua in 1897.
Personal details
Name: Matthias Zurbriggen (known as Mattia in Italy)
Date of birth: 15 May 1856 - Saas-Fee, Valais (Switzerland)
Died: 21 June 1917 - Geneva
Nationality: Swiss
Occupation: shepherd, blacksmith, miner and mountain guide
Nicknames: Signore della Est; Mathis; Dalponte; ‘Ein tifal’ (the devil) in Macugnaga
Biography
Matthias Zurbriggen was born on 15 May 1856 in Saas-Fee, in the Upper Valais, into a Walser family of modest means. In 1858, the family crossed the Monte Moro Pass and settled in Pestarena, a hamlet of Macugnaga, where his father had found work in the gold mines of the Anzasca Valley. His father died in an accident in a mine shaft, on a date that sources place between around 1861 and 1864, leaving his wife with several children: Matthias soon began to help support the family by taking goats and sheep out to pasture.
At the age of thirteen, he left Macugnaga and returned to Switzerland on his own. A long period of odd jobs followed – from miner to blacksmith, from stable boy and coachman to labourer on railway construction sites and in tunnels – which gave him manual skills and a familiarity with several languages, later proving invaluable in his dealings with foreign clients. Around 1881, at the age of twenty-five, he was planning to emigrate to South America; having returned to Macugnaga to say goodbye to his mother, he changed his plans and opened a small smithy in the village.
Sources differ as to the year in which he began working as a guide, with estimates ranging from around 1881 to 1884. At a time when there was no formal training and every guide had to provide their own equipment, he accompanied his first clients up Mont Blanc, the Matterhorn and to the Dufourspitze via the Marinelli Couloir. His favourite terrain was the east face of Monte Rosa, which he climbed and descended many times with clients, earning him the nickname ‘Lord of the East’. His clients included Edward Whymper, Martin Conway, Mr and Mrs de Fonblanque, Mr and Mrs Bullock Workman, Prince Scipione Borghese, Giuseppe Borsalino, Edward A. FitzGerald and Stuart Vines.
From 1892, his work shifted to mountain ranges outside Europe. Martin Conway hired him as a guide for an exploratory expedition to the Karakoram, which was then virtually unknown: the party traversed the Hispar and Biafo glaciers and ascended the Baltoro until they came within sight of K2. Conway, Charles Granville Bruce, Zurbriggen and two Gurkhas reached a secondary summit of Baltoro Kangri, named Pioneer Peak, which was then considered the highest altitude ever reached by man. According to accounts, which differ depending on whether one smokes cigars or cigarettes, whilst his companions collapsed from exhaustion, Zurbriggen calmly lit up a cigarette.
Between 1894 and 1895, he accompanied Edward FitzGerald to the Southern Alps of New Zealand. Mount Cook, the main objective, had been first ascended on Christmas Day 1894 by Tom Fyfe, Jack Clarke and George Graham, just a few days before FitzGerald and Zurbriggen left Christchurch for the mountains. FitzGerald abandoned the attempt on Mount Cook and turned his attention to the other peaks in the range. On Mount Sefton, the ‘Matterhorn of New Zealand’, Zurbriggen caught his companion during a fall and described that ascent as the most dangerous he had ever undertaken. At the end of the campaign, he climbed Mount Cook alone via the north-east ridge, accompanied up to around 3,000 metres by Jack Adamson of the Hermitage: this was the second ascent of the mountain, considered the first solo ascent.
At the end of 1896, FitzGerald organised an expedition toAconcagua, the highest peak in the Americas, with the geologist Stuart Vines, the naturalist Philip Gosse and a group of Swiss and Italian guides and porters, including Joseph and Louis Pollinger, Joseph Lochmatter, Nicola Lanti and Fritz Weibel, led by Zurbriggen. Having set off from Puente del Inca on 23 December, the expedition was repeatedly held back by exhaustion and altitude sickness. In mid-January 1897, FitzGerald was forced to abandon the attempt due to the effects of altitude; Zurbriggen, aware of the presence of a rival German expedition, obtained permission to continue alone up the steep, scree-covered slopes of the north-west face and reached the summit in the late afternoon, according to his account. He built a cairn and planted FitzGerald’s ice axe in it. He described the view as follows: ‘The whole of South America lay at my feet, with its lakes, mountains and plains, and villages and towns that looked like tiny specks’. On 13 February, Vines and Lanti made the second ascent.
On his return to the Alps, he went back to the Valsesian side of Monte Rosa with the brothers Giuseppe Fortunato and Giovanni Battista Gugliermina and, after two failed attempts, carried out the first traverse with them. In 1899, his autobiography was published in London: Zurbriggen had written it in Italian, but the original manuscript has been lost and the Italian edition is a retranslation from the English. Several sources cite it as the first memoir published by a mountain guide. In the same year, 1899, he accompanied Mr and Mrs Bullock Workman to the Karakorum, where Fanny Bullock Workman set the women’s altitude record of the time. In 1900, he took part in an expedition to the Tien Shan with Prince Scipione Borghese, and in 1902 he returned to the Karakorum with the Workmans. In his writings, he expressed a desire to tackleEverest, convinced that there was a viable route up every mountain.
Contemporary accounts paint a complex picture of him. Guidebooks praised his meticulous preparation for ascents, his sense of direction on difficult terrain, and his calm and swift decision-making; Rosemary de Fonblanque and Fanny Bullock Workman particularly recommended him as a guide for female mountaineers. Guido Rey described him as ‘that devil of a Zurbriggen’, and he himself told Carlo Restelli that ‘once Mattia Zurbriggen sets off, he never turns back’.
In the years that followed, his alcohol abuse exacerbated the more difficult aspects of his character, driving away clients and fellow villagers. The guidebook comes to an end in 1906, and sources place his retirement from the profession around 1907, for reasons that have never been clarified. Zurbriggen left his wife and children in Macugnaga and spent the last decade of his life in Geneva, in conditions of increasing poverty and isolation. On 21 June 1917, he was found hanged, in circumstances which sources indicate were a suicide. In his obituary, Martin Conway wrote that Zurbriggen had been ‘passionate, dissolute, lively and exuberant’ and that his life had ended ‘when he had drunk it to the very last drop’.
Mountaineering exploits
Matterhorn (4,478 m) - 1889 – ascent with his English client Fison
Conway expedition to the Karakorum (Hispar and Biafo glaciers, upper Baltoro) - 1892 – exploration to within sight of K2
Pioneer Peak (approx. 6,500 m, estimated at the time as 6,890 m) - 25 August 1892 – first ascent, with Martin Conway, Charles Granville Bruce, Parbir Thapa and Harkbir Thapa, Karakorum
Gnifetti Pass (4,454 m) - 3 September 1893 – new route up the east face of Monte Rosa via the Canalone Marinelli, with Guido Rey, Luigi Vaccarone, Luigi Burgener and Casimiro Thérisod
Punta Nordend (4,609 m) - 10 September 1893 – the Restelli route on the east face of Monte Rosa, with Carlo Restelli and Luigi Burgener
Mount Sealy (2,627m) - 24 January 1895 – first ascent, with Edward FitzGerald, Jack Clarke and C. L. Barrow, FitzGerald expedition to the Southern Alps (New Zealand)
Mount Tasman (3,497 m) - 5 February 1895 – first ascent, with Edward FitzGerald and Jack Clarke
Mount Haidinger (3,070 m) - 8 February 1895 – first ascent of the south (main) summit, with Edward FitzGerald and Jack Clarke
Mount Sefton (3,151 m) - 14 February 1895 – first ascent, with Edward FitzGerald
Silberhorn (3,300 m) - 1895 – first ascent, with Edward FitzGerald and Jack Clarke
Aoraki/Mount Cook (3,724 m) - 14 March 1895 – second ascent and first solo ascent, via the north-east ridge (Zurbriggen Ridge)
Aconcagua (6,962 m) - 14 January 1897 – first ascent, solo, British expedition led by Edward FitzGerald, Andes (Argentina)
Tupungato (6,570 m) - 12 April 1897 – first ascent, with Stuart Vines
Zurbriggen Pass (4,272 m) - 10–11 September 1898 – first traverse from the Valsesian side of Monte Rosa, with the brothers Gugliermina and Clemens Imseng
Siegfriedhorn (approx. 5,670 m) - 7 August 1899 – first ascent, with Fanny and William Bullock Workman, Karakorum
Mount Bullock Workman (approx. 5,930 m) - 11 August 1899 – first ascent, with Fanny and William Bullock Workman
Koser Gunge (approx. 6,400 m) - 25 August 1899 – with Fanny and William Bullock Workman, women’s altitude record at the time
Borghese expedition to the Tien Shan (Engilchek Valley) - 1900 – ascents of minor peaks, unsuccessful attempt on Khan Tengri
Workman expedition to the Karakoram - 1902 – second expedition with Mr and Mrs Bullock Workman
Places and names
Zurbriggen Ridge – north-east ridge ofAoraki/Mount Cook (New Zealand)
Zurbriggen Pass (4,272 m) - Monte Rosa massif, between the Corno Nero and the Ludwigshöhe – named by the Gugliermina brothers
Cerro Zurbriggen (approx. 5,400–5,500 m) - Cordón de los Penitentes, region of theAconcagua region (Argentina) – first ascended in 1953 by a rope team from the Círculo Andino Buenos Aires
guidebook (1894–1906) - Swiss Alpine Museum, Bern – rediscovered by American descendants and donated to the museum
first guidebook - National Mountain Museum, Turin – held since 1984
Works
From the Alps to the Andes. Being the Autobiography of a Mountain Guide, London, T. Fisher Unwin, 1899
From the Alps to the Andes. Memoirs of a Mountain Guide, Berlin, Roth, 1937
From the Alps to the Andes. Memoirs of a Mountain Guide, Turin, CDA & Vivalda (I Licheni series), 2001; reprinted by Priuli & Verlucca, 2017
Bibliography
As a writer
no works
As a key reference
Edward A. FitzGerald, Climbs in the New Zealand Alps. Being an Account of Travel and Discovery, T. Fisher Unwin, London, 1896
Edward A. FitzGerald, The Highest Andes. A Record of the First Ascent of Aconcagua and Tupungato in Argentina, and the Exploration of the Surrounding Valleys, Methuen & Co., London, 1899 (American edition: Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1899)
Fanny Bullock Workman, William Hunter Workman, In the Ice World of the Himalayas. Among the Peaks and Passes of Ladakh, Nubra, Suru, and Baltistan, T. Fisher Unwin, London, 1900
Felice Benuzzi, Mattia Zurbriggen: Mountain Guide. His exploits, his men, his mountains, Turin, 1987
Walter Kalbermatten, André Zurbriggen, Matthias Zurbriggen. The most famous foreign mountain guide of the 19th century, 1997