Early in his climbing career, on August 14 and 15, 1894, Kaufmann was one of three guides (including Christian Burgener as first guide) who led the young Winston Churchill to the Gleckstein hut and then to the summit of the Wetterhorn. That year, nineteen-year-old Churchill, his brother Jack, and his tutor J. D. G. Little were on a walking tour of Switzerland; they visited Grindelwald and stayed at the Bear Hotel. Churchill was impressed with his first encounter with the high alps, saying that the spectacle of the sunrise striking the peaks of the Bernese Oberland is a marvel of light and colour unsurpassed in my experience. Like many of his classmates at Harrow School, Winston had developed a keen interest in mountaineering, inspired by Edward Whymper's lantern-side lecture at the school. In fact, after his alpine climbs, Winston had expressed a desire to become a mountaineer in a letter to Harrow's headmaster, J. E. C. Welldon, who positively encouraged him: You have got the figure of a mountaineer, and you ought to make yourself a name. However, his life-long friend L. S. Amery, with whom he later climbed Monte Rosa, reported that Winston had suffered from mountain sickness and a badly flayed face. These unpleasant experiences probably discouraged Churchill from following a career in mountaineering.