Mary Petherick Mummery

Mary Petherick, also known as Mary Mummery (1859 to 1946), was a mountaineer and writer who became the first woman to ascend the Teufelsgrat. Her father, J. W. Petherick, was a solicitor from Exeter, and in 1883 she married the climber Albert F. Mummery, with whom she often climbed. In 1887 she, Mummery and the guide Alexander Burgener climbed the Jungfrau, Zinalrothorn, Dreieckhorn and Taschorn, and on 15 July made the first ascent of the Teufelsgrat, the Devil's Ridge, reaching the summit in a thunderstorm. Her chapter on the climb in her husband's book My Climbs in the Alps and the Caucasus uses the ascent to criticise the sexism of mountaineering at the time, and her writing is noted for its humour.