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An easy day for a lady

From Jon Krakauer's Eiger Dreams:

As the heavy traffic on Mont Blanc began to rob the climb of its cachet (by its easiest routes, the 15,771-foot peak is not technically demanding or even very steep), ambitious alpinists turned their attention to the hundreds of sheer-walled satellite peaks—the fabled Chamonix Aiguilles—that stud the ridges of the massif like the spines of a stegasaur. In 1881, when Albert Mummery, Alexander Burgener, and Benedict Venetz bagged the fearsome-looking Aiguille du Grepon, it was lauded as a superhuman feat. Nevertheless, in a prescient moment following the climb, Mummery predicted that it would only be a matter of time before the Grepon lost its reputation as "the most difficult ascent in the Alps" and came to be regarded as an "easy day for a lady."

A hundred years after Mummery's heyday, new techniques, better equipment, and a population explosion on the heights have brought about just the sort of devaluation Mummery feared, not only of the Grepon, but of most of the other "last great problems" that followed: the Walker Spur, the Freney Pillar, the North Face of Les Droites, the Dru Couloir, to name a few.