In the early years of the "golden age", scientific pursuits were intermixed with the sport. More often than not, the mountaineers carried a variety of instruments up the mountain with them to be used for scientific observations. The physicist John Tyndall was the most prominent of the scientists. Among the non-scientist mountaineers, the literary critic Leslie Stephen was the most prominent. In the later years of the "golden age", the non-scientist pure sportsmen came to dominate the London-based Alpine Club and alpine mountaineering overall.[5]
^Though Wills thought he had made a first ascent, the Wetterhorn had been climbed in 1844, and his was the fourth ascent. However, mountaineering became fashionable in Britain after the barrister's climb.