British People in general first paid attention to mountaineering when………. .

Mountaineering as a sport has developed since about 1857, when the Alpine Club was founded in London. Earlier, climbers did not climb for pleasure but for some scientific or monetary motive, Dr Paccard of Chamonix was the first to scale Mont Blanc, in 1786, to show that man could live above the snow-line, but it was the lectures of Albert Smith, who climbed the peak in 1851, that kindled British interest. In 1854, Wills climbed the Wetterhorn and eleven years later, Whymper made his famous ascent of the Matterhorn. By 1880, all the major peaks of the Alps had been scaled, and so climbers went further a field to the Andes and the Himalayas.