Albert F. Mummery

Who was Albert F. Mummery?

Albert Frederick Mummery, was an English mountaineer and author. Although most notable for his many and varied first ascents put up in the Alps, Mummery, along with J. Norman Collie, Hastings, and two Gurkhas are also known to have been the first men in recorded history to have attempted to summit one of the Himalayan eight-thousanders - the fourteen highest peaks in the world.

Their innovative, light-weight endeavour upon Nanga Parbat in 1895 was to prove ill-fated with Mummery and both Gurkhas appeared to have perished in an avalanche whilst reconnoitring the mountain's Rakhiot Face. The mountain would go on to earn its reputation as a "man-eater" as thirty-one men would lose their lives on its slopes before the first ascent was made by the legendary Austrian Mountaineer Hermann Buhl in 1953. Buhl described Mummery as "One of the greatest mountaineers of all time".