Glen Dawson and the California 14,000 Footers

[gore galore]

GLEN DAWSON AND THE CALIFORNIA 14,000 FOOTERS
by gore galore

As it has been noted on this site and several others, the Sierra rock climbing pioneer of the 1930's Glen Dawson passed away in March of this year at the age of 103 years. The tributes that have been written are by those who have known and met him and reflect on his rock climbing in the high Sierra, Yosemite, Tahquitz, Zion and elsewhere.

I never met Mr. Dawson but came to know something of him through my fourteener research project and correspondence. Some of Glen’s rock climbing exploits occurred on the California 14,000 foot peaks but I think few realize and I haven’t seen anything to the extent that has been written about the fact that Gen Dawson in terms of fourteener history was one of the early completers of the California 14,000 foot peaks and the Pacific Coast 14,000ers. The following is something of that history of Glen Dawson and the 14,000 footers.

On July 10, 1948, Glen Dawson climbed Mount Langley to complete all the California 14,000 footers. He had climbed Mount Rainier in 1934 and thus with the ascent of Langley also completed the Pacific Coast 14,000ers.

There is no entity that keeps track of the completers of these lists such as the Colorado Mountain Club does for the Colorado fourteeners. In my fourteener research I have identified the first ten completers of the California and Pacific Coast lists and believe that Glen Dawson in 1948 was among the first twenty on those lists. Here is a chronology as I know it and some highlights of Glen Dawson’s climbs on the California 14,000 footers.

1927 - White Mountain Peak, first 14,000 footer with Norman Clyde as trip guide.

1930 - Middle Palisade from SW. Dawson, Jules Eichorn and John Olmsted.

1930 - Mount Sill to North Palisade, first traverse and crossing Polemonium Peak an apparent first ascent. Dawson, Eichorn, Olmsted and Charles Dodge.

1930 - Glen Dawson receives the certificate of the “14,000-Foot Climbers of the Sierra Club” certifying that he “has climbed five mountains 14,000 feet or more above the level of the sea.” The qualifying peaks were White Mountain (1927), Matterhorn (1928), Middle Palisade (1930), Mount Sill (1930) and North Palisade (1930).

Glen climbed the Matterhorn with his father Ernest Dawson and Swiss guides. Of his father, Glen would write that he “climbed before the days of the use of ropes, but never discouraged me from trying the most difficult climbs.”

1931 - North Palisade from glacier and first traverse to Starlight Peak, a second ascent. Dawson, Eichorn, Clyde, Francis P. Farquhar, Robert Underhill, Bestor Robinson, Lewis Clark, Neill C. Wilson and Elmer Collet.

1931 - Thunderbolt Peak, first ascent. At that time this peak was known as the “Northwest Peak of North Palisade.” The seven person party of Glen Dawson, Lewis Clark, Jules Eichorn, Robert Underhill, Francis P. Farquhar, Norman Clyde and Bestor Robinson began the climb in threatening weather and were engulfed in a furious storm of lightning, snow, hail, sleet and rain at the summit. Glen Dawson and Jules Eichorn were the ones that climbed the summit monolith.

In a 1989 interview Eichorn recalled that climb. As the storm suddenly enveloped the whole peak, “there were sparks coming off my fingers and off the ice axe. I had never experienced this before, and Norman felt strongly that we should get off the damn thing immediately. I was the last man down. It seemed that there was an unbelievable force of electrical energy around the area. I was about 25 yards from the pinnacle when suddenly there was a tremendous explosion right in my face. I felt very lucky I wasn’t directly struck by the lightning.” Thus, these events led to the subsequent naming of Thunderbolt Peak.

Aside from the near miss and an arduous descent off the peak led by Norman Clyde, Glen Dawson in a Sierra Club chapter newsletter interview in 2005 would call the first ascent of Thunderbolt Peak “. . . one of the high points of my climbing.”

1931 - Mount Whitney, first ascent of the east face. This is the famous ascent written about in many climbing history books. In 1931 Francis P. Farquhar, editor the “Sierra Club Bulletin” invited the well known climber Robert Underhill who had learned the most current climbing techniques of rope and piton use in the Alps to teach rope work to a select group of California climbers. Underhill had written the article “On the Use and Management of the Rope in Rock Work” that appeared in the “Sierra Club Bulletin.”

The group of about sixteen began in the Minarets and then continued to the Palisades climbing Thunderbolt Peak before finally dwindling to four at Mount Whitney. On August 16th Glen Dawson and Jules Eichorn both 19 years old and often climbing in the lead with Robert Underhill 42 years and Norman Clyde 46 years made the first ascent of this face in two hours and 45 minutes at a 5.4 standard.

This climb was not the first use of the rope in the Sierras but was a pivotal moment in Sierra climbing history as modern rock climbing was introduced during Underhill’s tenure. A few years later the Rock Climbing Sections of the Sierra Club from the Bay area and southern California were formed and a host of young climbers acquired the necessary skills for technical ascents in the Sierras, Yosemite and elsewhere.

In a “Los Angeles Times” newspaper interview in 2005 Glen recalled this ascent. “I’ve climbed in many parts of the world . . . But of all the things of my life, that day in August in 1931, well, I still get a good deal of pleasure out of it.” In the foreword to Peter Croft’s book with Wynne Benti, “Climbing Mt. Whitney,” 2005 edition, Glen would further write, “During my lifetime . . . that one event of August 16, 1931 is my footnote in climbing history.”

1931 - Mount Muir, climbed the same day of the Whitney East Face ascent. Dawson, Eichorn and Farquhar.

1931 - Mount Whitney, first descent of the east face when such descents of challenging routes were a big fad in the early 1930's. Dawson, Dick Jones and Walter Brem.

1932 - Mount Russell, new route of the west chute on the south face and descent of the southwest face, west arete. Dawson, Eichorn, Brem and Hans Helmut Leschke.

1932 - Mount Williamson, Mount Tyndall and Mount Barnard which was considered a 14,000 foot peak in the 1930's. Glen Dawson was a participant on the Sierra Club’s High Trip of 1932 when Williamson was climbed by 13 members, Tyndall by 28 and Barnard by seven but there is no specific record that I have found whether Glen Dawson climbed these peaks at that time.

1933 - Middle Palisade, new route and first traverse from Norman Clyde Peak. Dawson and Eichorn.

1933 - Split Mountain. Glen Dawson was a participant on the Sierra Club’s High Trip of 1933 when Split Mountain was climbed by 20 members but there is no specific record I have found whether Glen Dawson climbed this peak at that time.

1934 - Mount Whitney, second ascent of the east face. Dawson and Ted Waller.

1934 - Mount Shasta. Dawson climbed with Tony Chorlton of the New Zealand Alpine Club on a climbing trip to the Pacific northwest and Canada.

1934 - Mount Rainier. Dawson and Chorlton.

1936 - Mount Whitney, new route attempt on the east buttress. Dawson, Dick Jones and Art Johnson.

1937 - Mount Sill, north face. Dawson, Muir Dawson, LaVere Daniels and Wayland Gilbert.

1937 - Mount Whitney, first ascent of the east buttress, “Sunshine-Peewee Route.” Dawson, brother Muir Dawson 16 years old, Dick Jones, Bob Brinton and Howard Koster. Glen Dawson would write in a Sierra Club article that “the East Buttress is slightly more difficult than the usual East Face Route.” The East Buttress is rated 5.6 and the East Face at 5.4.

Glen compared the two climbs from a different perspective in a reply to Sierra historian Bill Oliver in 2007. “In 1931 it was the vision of Francis Farquhar to climb the East Face of Mount Whitney. He selected the participants. The real leaders were Robert Underhill and Norman Clyde. Jules (Eichorn) and I did what we were told. In 1937 it was my idea to climb the East Buttress. I was the leader and selected the participants, although it was a cooperative leadership.”

Glen Dawson would later write that “the year 1937 was in many ways the apex of my climbing career - with the first ascent of the East Buttress of Mt. Whitney, and climbs in Zion National Park of the Great White Throne and the first ascent of the East Temple and in Yosemite the Higher Cathedral Spire.” And he could have added the Mechanics Route at Tahquitz Rock with Dick Jones which was later recognized as the first 5.8 climb in North America.

1943 - Mount Elbert and Mount Massive, New Years weekend climb with the 10th Mountain Division of some seventy troopers. In a wartime letter Glen wrote, “Massive was a long cold climb, but I was all fixed up with face mask, parka, double mitts and Bermonti boots.”

1948 - Mount Langley, Glen Dawson completes the California 14,000 footers and the Pacific Coast 14,000ers.

Decades later Glen Dawson would write his observations of the California 14,000 footers in the foreword to Croft’s book, “Climbing Mount Whitney,” 2005 edition. “Today, every imaginable climbing record has been set for each 14,000-foot peak in California: by the shortest possible time; by the youngest or oldest; one day ascents; solo climbs; from the lowest to the highest point; with dogs. Whatever the feat, the mountains are still there for all to enjoy.”

Glen Dawson climbed in an era that is entirely foreign and unfamiliar to anyone today. In the “LA Times” newspaper interview of 2005 Dawson recalled that “a lot of climbers back then wore basketball shoes, but I didn’t like those. I could feel the rock better with an ankle-high lightweight tennis shoe.”

The “LA Times” reporter wrote that it was with such that Dawson and Eichorn with Underhill and Clyde set off on their 1931 Mount Whitney East Face route “with two 100-foot manila ropes, the first pitons to be seen (if not used) in the Sierra, no established route to work from and footwear that would make any present-day climber get back in the car.”

In 1992 Michael Rettie, a photo collector purchased a collection of negatives at an estate sale. He puzzled over them for many years with the only clue that they were of Sierra Club origin until he saw prints in a book in 2001 that solved the mystery. He had found a treasure trove of photographic history of Sierra climbers from the early 1920's to the late 1930's. Among the photographs were those of Dawson, Eichorn, Underhill and Clyde during that historic summer of 1931 climbing in the Sierra. In 2011 Rettie published the book “Manila, Wool, & Basketball Shoes” to commemorate those pioneer climbers.

I had learned of Glen Dawson and those pioneer Sierra climbers from the printed word years ago when I would read through the back issues of those old “Sierra Club Bulletins.” In the 1990's I would occasionally buy mountaineering books from catalogs issued by Dawson’s Book Shop founded by Glen’s father Ernest Dawson in Los Angeles in 1905. I still have several of those catalogs today.

In 2011, I got the idea upon learning of Rettie’s book to write Glen Dawson about the California 14,000 footers thinking of an outside chance I might get a reply. I can say I was more than pleasantly surprised when his letter came back. Here is part of that letter:

“Thanks for your letter. Sorry to be so late in responding. I am 99 years old and you were lucky to get a reply.
I retired from active climbing in 1940 so I must have climbed all of the peaks in CA over 14,000 before that time. At one time the Sierra Club gave a certificate to anyone who climbed 5 or more 14,000 ft peaks.
My first 14,000 was White Mountain which is near the Nevada border. Norman Clyde was supposed to be our guide but he went ahead as he had to get back to teach school in Owen’s Valley. I did make a New Years weekend ascent of Mt. Elbert and Massive which I believe are the two highest peaks in CO. This was when I was stationed in Camp Hale in the 10th Mountain Div.”
Berg Heil,
Glen Dawson

With the passing of Glen Dawson in March and Wolf Bauer of the Mountaineers in January of this year also at age 103 years the losses of the last two of those climbers from the 1920's have ended an era in American mountaineering.

So that is something on the order of what I know about Glen Dawson’s place in fourteener history written from a good deal of research and a little bit of luck. I will end this post with the words Glen Dawson ended his letter to me with Berg Heil, Mr. Glen Dawson.

[Kent McLemore]

A fine tribute. Thanks for sharing and berg heil!

[FireOnTheMountain]

Wow! Very nice and interesting tribute Mr. Galore.

Really fun to read about a lot of these old school guys who routes/peaks are now named after throughout the Sierra region. Thanks for sharing.

[Jay521]

Thank you for this...

[14erFred]

Gore Galore: Thanks for sharing with us the fruits of your research into Glen Dawson's exploits on the California 14ers. His early days of pioneering routes on the High Sierra 14ers form the bedrock of much of American mountaineering. May his indomitable spirit and love of the mountains always inspire those who seek the highest summits.