Well, You're the Mountain Man Trivia Quiz

Answer: Ang Rita

A member of the Sherpa ethnic group, Ang Rita was born in Nepal in 1948. He was the first person to summit Mount Everest 10 times and incredibly he did not use supplemental oxygen for any of those ascents. A fellow Nepalese mountain man, Kami Rita Sherpa, became the first person to summit Mount Everest 22 times when he completed his 22nd ascent in May 2018.

Answer: El Capitan

The first ascent of El Capitan was completed along a route known as 'The Nose' over a period of 47 days. Sixty years later in 2018 Tommy Caldwell and Alex Honnold became the first team to speed climb 'The Nose' route of El Capitan in under two hours.

Answer: Reinhold Messner

The 14 tallest mountains on Earth are known as eight-thousanders and they are all located in the Himalayas and Karakoram ranges in the nations of Nepal, China, Pakistan and India. Not only was Reinhold Messner the first to conquer all the eight-thousanders, he climbed them all without supplemental oxygen.

The second person to climb the 14 eight-thousanders was Jerzy Kukuczka who completed the group in eight years from 1979 to 1987, half the time it took Messner.

Answer: Chimborazo

Edward Whymper was a prolific mountaineer and he was a part of nine first ascents spanning three continents. Chimborazo in Ecuador actually has four summits, the highest of which being named Whymper peak. Chimborazo is located only one degree from the equator and it is 2.1 km (1.3 miles) further from the center of the Earth than Mount Everest.

Answer: Heinrich Harrer

The north face of the Eiger rises to 3,967 m (13,025 ft) and it was so dangerous that for much of the early 1900s climbing on it was banned. Harrer's team reached the summit of the Eiger in 1938 and his experience climbing its north face inspired his book "The White Spider". Harrer arrived in Tibet in January 1946 and in time he would become the tutor and friend of Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama. Harrer's experiences in Tibet were famously dramatized in the 1997 film "Seven Years in Tibet" that starred Brad Pitt, David Thewlis and B. D. Wong.

Answer: John Ewbank

John Ewbank was born in Yorkshire, England in 1948 and in 1963 he moved to Australia. Ewbank helped contribute to the rise in rock climbing in Australia and he created many new routes in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales. The Ewbank System was unique at its inception in that it used only numbers and was open ended to allow for more difficult grades.

At the time of his death in 2013 the hardest climb in Australia had a Ewbank score of 35 and the hardest worldwide climb had a score of 37.

Answer: Galen Rowell

Galen Rowell was born in 1940 and he studied physics while at the University of California in Berkeley. He quit his degree program to pursue his passion of photographing the great outdoors. Rowell also had the first one-day ascent of Kilimanjaro and in 1997 at the age of 57 he set the record for the oldest person to ascend El Capitan in one day.

Answer: Mount Whitney

Many well-known high altitude mountains have age restrictions that require special permission to climb for anyone below a certain age. Tyler Armstrong began mountain climbing at the age of six and he obtained special permits for Kilimanjaro (age 8) and Aconcagua (age 9). Armstrong sought to climb Mount Everest in 2016 and 2017 but he was denied a permit in both years.

Answer: Michel Croz

Michel Croz was a mountain guide and he formed a climbing partnership with Edward Whymper. The two were part of the team of seven that made the first successful ascent of the Matterhorn. Tragically on this same climb four of the members of the team (Michael Croz, Lord Francis Douglas, Charles Hudson and Douglas Hadow) fell to their deaths on the descent after Hadow slipped.

In addition to the first ascent of the Matterhorn, Croz was a part of seven other first ascents in the Alps from 1860 to 1865.

Answer: K2

K2, also called Mount Godwin-Austin, is the second-tallest mountain in the world reaching a height of 8,611 m (28,251 ft). Over its first 300 successful climbs K2 had claimed a staggering 77 fatalities. Although he did not reach the apex at the time, Ardito Desio was the leader of the Italian team that made the first successful summit in 1954.