[4] Precisely a year later (12 August 1848), Johann Madutz from Matt, Glarus, and Matthias Zumtaugwald guided the Swiss theologian de:Melchior Ulrich to the pass for an ascent of the highest summit.

Ulrich had to give up, but the guides proceeded to climb to what they thought to be the Ostspitze and established a new altitude record in Switzerland (which since 1820 had been held at 4,563 m by the climbers of the Zumsteinspitze).

Coolidge analyzed these ascents and concluded that both parties had reached the 4,618 m Grenzgipfel instead, which is a mere 50 meters to the east of Dunantspitze, an idea adopted by the Alpine historian Gottlieb Studer in 1899.

Coolidge transferred the honor of first climbing Dunantspitze to the brothers Christopher, Edmund and James G. Smyth from Great Yarmouth and unnamed guides, who reached it on 1 September 1854, also from the Silbersattel.

The real, 14 m height difference (a ~24° instead of 12° angle from Grenzspitze) and the presence of Zumtaugwalds at every ascent suggest a weakness in Coolidge's argument, and modern writers like Pusch, Dumler and Burkhardt assume that the 1848 and 1851 ascendants reached Dunantspitze after all.