page_title: Finsteraarhorn
section_title: Controversial first ascent
hierarchical_section_title: Finsteraarhorn / Climbing history / Controversial first ascent
caption_attribution_description: Finsteraarhorn, Bernese Alps
context_page_description: The Finsteraarhorn is the highest mountain in the Bernese Alps in Switzerland and the most prominent peak of Switzerland. The Finsteraarhorn is the ninth-highest mountain and third-most prominent peak in the Alps. In 2001 the whole massif and surrounding glaciers were designated as part of the Jungfrau-Aletsch World Heritage Site.
context_section_description: The first ascent was long a controversial matter. The first attempt was made on 16 August 1812 by the Aargau merchant Rudolph Meyer, guided by the locals Kaspar Huber, Arnold Abbühl, Joseph Bortes and Aloys Volker. Bortes and Volker, guiding Meyer's father and uncle, had been the first to climb the Jungfrau the previous year. They approached the mountain via the Oberaarjoch, Studer glacier, and south-east ridge, which is a more difficult and longer route than the current normal route over the north-west ridge. Meyer became exhausted and remained behind after reaching the ridge, perhaps near P. 3883 (Meyer's Peak). Huber kept him company, while the three other guides went on and purportedly reached the summit after three hours.
  On 19 August 1828, Franz Joseph Hugi, a geologist from Solothurn, made another attempt with seven local climbers. Among these was Arnold Abbühl, who told Hugi about his ascent 16 years earlier, but Hugi scoffingly dismissed his account, partly because Abbühl misidentified the peak in the beginning of their approach. The group reached a ca. 4,080-metre (13,390-foot) saddle (the Hugisattel) on the north-west ridge, but had to retreat because of bad weather after Hugi and one of the guides (Arnold Dändler) nearly had fallen off the ridge.
  The next year Hugi organized another expedition via the same route. While an attempt on the 3rd of August faltered, on 10 August 1829  two of his guides, Jakob Leuthold and Johann Währen were able to reach the summit, where they spent three hours building a 7-foot pyramid to anchor a flagpole. Hugi stayed behind somewhat above the saddle not daring to cross a steep slope, partly because he had twisted an ankle four weeks earlier. On the way back Hugi's ankle played up and Leuthold, Währen and Joseph Zemt took turns carrying him down the glacier. Hugi's account makes no mention of evidence of an earlier ascent.
  In articles of 1881 and 1908, the mountaineers and leading historians of Alpine exploration Gottlieb Studer  and W.A.B. Coolidge, respectively, declared to be convinced that the Meyer expedition had been successful. However, John Percy Farrar concluded in 1913 in an article in the Alpine Journal that the guides in 1812 must have reached the 4,167 m high shoulder 200 m south of the true summit, which he considered nevertheless a feat half a century ahead of its time.
caption: View from the west. The Hugisattel lies just below the summit on the left
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