Mummery tent

A Mummery tent is a small, lightweight tent designed and used by Albert Frederick Mummery in the 1880s and named after him. Fred Mummery (1855–1895) was an English pioneer in alpine climbing, making many first ascents, and he developed this type of tent for his lightweight expeditions.

The first tent designed specifically for mountaineering was the Whymper tent of the 1860s. This weighed about 20 pounds (9 kg) and used four poles 6.5 feet (2.0 m) long and so was only suitable for full expeditions of the kind Edward Whymper undertook in the 1860s in the Alps. Mummery favoured small expeditions without professional guides or porters so he required a much smaller and lighter tent, which he developed between 1888 and 1892.

In his 1892 book Mountaineering, Mummery's contemporary Clinton Dent gave a detailed description of the design. It was a ridge tent with low side walls, very similar to a current-day "pup tent". The roof and wall material that he used was oiled silk. Tents were made in various sizes but 6 by 4 feet (1.8 by 1.2 m) was typical, which could accommodate two people. The ice axe was being developed from the earlier and by the 1880s was generally about 4 to 4.5 feet (1.2 to 1.4 m) long. Mummery's revolutionary idea was to put them to additional use as tent poles – one at each end of the ridge and supported by guy ropes. The weight (excluding ice axes which were carried anyway) could be less than 2 pounds (1 kg) (3.5 pounds (1.6 kg) with groundsheet and tent pegs). Unlike Whymper's tent, which usually had attached flooring, Mummery used a separate groundsheet, if he used one at all.

Mummery did not attempt to exploit his design commercially but in 1892 the British firm Benjamin Edgington put the tent into production. Parsons, former CEO of Karrimor, has commented "... as a general design it was ideal and the tent, whether in canvas or silk, virtually became an emblem of high-altitude camps until the 1950s". It remained in production until 1968.

"Why there are not more mountaineers who take small tents to the Alps is always to me a mystery. For long ago most of the huts have become abominations, whilst the free life that is afforded by camp life adds a very great charm to mountain expeditions. Having tried it so often in the Himalaya, in Skye, in Norway, in the Canadian Rocky Mountains, and Switzerland, perhaps I may be biassed, but even if I never again had a chance of climbing a first-class peak in the Alps, I would return there to live the lazy, delightful, disreputable life in a tent, near the ice and the snows and the pine woods, to smell the camp fire, lie on my back all day amidst the grass and the flowers, listening to the wind, and looking at the sky and the great silent peaks."

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