Carson Black, Thunder Mountain and the Hundred Highest Summits, 1970

[gore galore]

CARSON BLACK, THUNDER MOUNTAIN AND THE HUNDRED HIGHEST SUMMITS, 1970
by gore galore

The recent passing of Carson Black who was a member of the historic 1970 Thunder Mountain climb and my locating of a forgotten member of that climb prompts me to write something of the pivotal role that ascent had as one of the Hundred Highest Summits in regards to Colorado mountaineering/peak bagging history.

To put Thunder Mountain and the Hundred Highest Summits in perspective one must remember that by 1970 only 116 persons had climbed the 53 Colorado fourteeners. In 1970 alone only 6 climbers had finished all the fourteeners with the longest elapsed time being 36 years.

In the first half of the twentieth century virtually all fourteener finishers were members of the Colorado Mountain Club who climbed the near and easier peaks on weekend trips of the club's Summer Schedule. The more difficult and farther flung peaks of the Elks, Sangre de Cristo and San Juans were scheduled for the Annual Summer Outing of two weeks. This was the only way for most to climb all the fourteeners because of the difficulties of transportation, logistics and knowing the approaches and routes to the peaks.

Most of the finishers of that time took a decade(s) or more to complete the fourteener list. The lack of any additional peak lists led many to repeat climbs of the fourteeners or nearby peaks before ending their climbing interest altogether. But that outlook was due to change because of two published articles at the end of the 1960's.

In 1968 William Graves published an article in the Colorado Mountain Club's “Trail and Timberline” magazine advocating a 300-foot concept of adjoining saddle to summit rise to determine an individual mountain. Graves' proposal was not original for that idea was in use in the northeast mountains by the Appalachian Mountain Club in the 1930's.

Graves followed his proposal with a 1968 list of the “100 Highest Summits In Colorado” using the 300 foot criteria. This was the first list of peaks beyond the fourteeners other than a little known personal list by John Whitnah and Bob Peterson who first climbed all 43 peaks over 12,000 feet in Rocky National Park in 1947.

HUNDRED HIGHEST SUMMITS
Graves' original list had 51 fourteeners omitting El Diente and North Maroon Peak. Most of the remaining 49 peaks might as well been a listing of the mountains of the moon for little was known of many of them.

Thirty peaks of which ten were unnamed were not even listed in the standard guidebook of the 1960's of Robert Ormes, “Guide to the Colorado Mountains.” Ten other peaks were only mentioned by name without any additional information.

Nine peaks of which Grizzly Peak and Stewart Peak were former fourteeners had brief route descriptions. The others were Pigeon Peak, Hagerman Peak, Turret Peak, Jagged Mountain, Rio Grande Pyramid, Mount Silverheels and Arrow Peak.

Spencer Swanger who became the first to climb the Hundred Highest in 1977 wrote of the character of these peaks. “It was necessary to search out peaks on topographical maps. Trails or old mining roads which gave access to the peaks had to be located, and then careful scrutiny of contour lines had to be made to get an idea of the steepness of ridges, cols, and faces.”

And one of the unnamed peaks of 13,932 on the list to be eventually named Thunder Mountain was found to be unclimbed.

THUNDER MOUNTAIN, 1970
On a Saturday and Sunday of August 1 and 2, 1970 the Pikes Peak Group of the CMC scheduled a climb of Peak 13,932 in the Elk Mountains with Spencer Swanger as trip leader. The trip announcement read:

Unnamed (13,932') south of Pyramid Peak
A challenging climb on the ridge south of Pyramid,
this requires a competent and relatively small party.
Rope will be taken. Round trip 10 miles,
elevation gain 4300 feet. Leader: Spencer Swanger.

Of the six man party all were members of the CMC with four of them from Colorado Springs. They were:

SPENCER SWANGER was a 30 year old Colorado Springs postman at the time of the Thunder Mountain climb. He finished the fourteeners in 1969 and became the first to climb the Hundred Highest in 1977. He is one of the major figures in Colorado mountaineering/peak bagging history. I wrote of him in my post, “Spencer Swanger Becomes the First to Climb Colorado's Hundred Highest Peaks, 1977.” He died in a fall while climbing in the Dolomites of Italy in 2010 at the age of 70 years.

STEWART GREEN was a 17 year old Colorado Springs high school student. In 1969 he and Spencer had climbed Maroon Peak and saw across the valley a rugged high point on the ridge south of Pyramid Peak and found that it was Peak 13,932 on the map. It was also on Grave's Hundred Highest list. Spencer put it on the CMC official trip list for the following year.

In an “Elevation Outdoors” magazine article of a fifty year remembrance of that climb Stewart wrote that “My mom liked me to climb with him since she figured an older guy like Spence would be a good role model and would make sure I didn't pull any foolish adolescent stunts in the mountains.” Stewart Green is now a noted photographer, author and climbing guide of the Colorado Springs area.

CARSON BLACK was a 30 year old Colorado Springs dentist. He finished the fourteeners in 1975 and went on to climb the Hundred Highest in 1998, #99 and then the Bicentennials in 2012, #69. Carson Black recently passed away in September of 2021 at the age of 80.

GORDON BLANZ was 39 years old from Colorado Springs. In his 2020 "Elevation Outdoors" magazine article Stewart thought he and Carson Black were the only ones living at the time from the Thunder Mountain climb. But I recently located Gordon Blanz in Arizona. In an email he wrote that unfortunately at 90 years old “I don't remember anything about the Thunder Mtn climb” but “I do remember the name Carson Black.”

JACK L. HARRY was from Montrose. He finished the fourteeners in 1969 but other than his signature in the Thunder Mountain summit register I know nothing more of him.

BILL GRAVES was 44 years old from Fort Collins. He was a professor of mechanical engineering at Colorado State University. He finished the fourteeners in 1967. Bill Graves is another major figure in Colorado mountaineering/peak bagging history for his landmark “Trail and Timberline” magazine articles of 1968 proposing the 300-foot rule and the initial list of the 100 Highest Summits in Colorado. He passed away in 2003 at the age of 77 years.

Spencer Swanger wrote the Thunder Mountain climbing report in the 1970 “Trail and Timberline” magazine. Their route went up the loose rock of the west face to the summit where they found no cairn or register or other trace by anyone.

Various names were suggested for the peak until “finally the name Thunder Mountain was suggested and no sooner were the words uttered than the sky gave forth with a rumbling acquiescence of thunder. The name was accepted in the face of heavenly approval and inscribed in the register.” It was also sometimes called Thunder Peak but by 1979 climbers knew the mountain as Thunder Pyramid.

William Bueler would later write in his book “Roof of the Rockies” that “it is most interesting that as late as 1970 there could be found a distinctive peak of nearly 14,000-feet which apparently had not been climbed.”

AFTERWARD
In a 14ers.com post of January 2013, “Historic Climb of Thunder Pyramid” by sgladbach, Stewart Green posted that he and Spencer Swanger had planned to climb the peak in August of 2010 as a 40th anniversary ascent. But “Carson Black wanted no part of it!” and Spencer's climbing accident in the Dolomites ended that idea.

d_baker posted that “I think Carson didn't want to go back because he's been back to Thunder several times over the years since that first ascent” and paraphrasing Carson about that first ascent: “there's better climbs around than this one!”

Although there may be better climbs around, Thunder Mountain was a defining moment in Colorado mountaineering/peak bagging history. It was the last of Colorado's Hundred Highest mountains to be climbed and the original list of which it was #60 was a harbinger of the multiple lists to follow which changed forever how people climbed the Colorado mountains. And those six climbers of Thunder Mountain in 1970 became a forever part of that history.

[fepic1]

Very interesting. Much respect for the early trailblazers. No internet, no detailed weather forecasts, no GPS. Just maybe
read a route description in a book. Study a map and go figure it out. Thanks for posting this.

[Will_E]

Very interesting. Much respect for the early trailblazers. No internet, no detailed weather forecasts, no GPS. Just maybe
read a route description in a book. Study a map and go figure it out. Thanks for posting this.

Yep, when I see people post pics from the 70’s and 80’s in the FB group, I’m amazed at what it must have taken to get peaks back then. Those guys are studs.