The Last First Ascent of A Colorado 14,000-Foot Peak

[gore galore]

THE LAST FIRST ASCENT OF A COLORADO 14,000-FOOT PEAK
by gore galore

Conventional mountaineering history has it that Crestone Peak (14,294), Crestone Needle (14,197) and Kit Carson Peak (14,165) were the last of the Colorado 14,000-foot peaks to be climbed in 1916. This makes for a good story but is not entirely true.

Mountaineering histories of the day such as William Bueler's book “Roof Of the Rockies,” 2000 follows the story that “these were the last 14,000-foot peaks in Colorado to be climbed, and many admirers would say that the best was saved for last.”

Borneman and Lampert's “A Climbing Guide To Colorado's Fourteeners,” 1998 has the same story line that “by 1916 Crestone Peak, Crestone Needle and Kit Carson Peak were the only 14,000-foot peaks in Colorado that were unclimbed.” But some research reveals these story lines are not entirely the case.

KIT CARSON PEAK, 1916, 1883
In 1916 Albert Ellingwood and seven others among them being Eleanor Davis who is often considered as one of Colorado's greatest woman mountaineers journeyed to the Sangre de Cristos “fed in part by tales of peaks unclimbed and peaks unclimbable.”

On July 19, 1916, Ellingwood, Davis and Bee Rogers made the first ascent of Kit Carson Peak by the northwest ridge from the Willow Creek valley.

In 2008 Woody Smith, past historian of the Colorado Mountain Club found a report in “The Rocky Mountain News” of July 29, 1883, of a five person climb on July 24, 1883, of “Crestone's Crest” or Crestone Peak as Kit Carson Peak was then known. In 2011 Smith wrote an article in “Trail and Timberline” magazine titled “The Mystery Climb of 1883.”

The route as described in the newspaper report went up the Willow Creek valley to upper Willow Lake where “we 'girded our lions', prepatory (sic) to the final climb; and such a climb, ye gods, it makes me shudder to think of it now. It seems that in searching for an easy place, we had selected the worst possible one. However, 'at it we went' and were on top” after six hours of climbing.

Although the climbing route is sparse on details, Smith believes they angled up the ridge from the lake using the North Couloir route.

The 1883 article described “the top or crest we had reached … is separated by deep chasms from its surroundings, but is by several hundred feet the highest 'comb' which crowns the grand old mountain.”

Woody Smith believes that the use of the term “combs” and the descriptions of the summit and views indicates a successful ascent of Kit Carson. Smith asks the question of “Was Kit Carson Mountain climbed on July 24, 1883?” and concludes that “The answer seems to be yes.”

Jeff Arnold in his book “Albert Ellingwood, Scholar of Summits,” 2010 mentions this 1883 climb and concludes that “this claim was unsupported by photographs or any evidence such as a summit cairn but it may have happened.”

We can now say that Kit Carson Peak was not one of the last Colorado 14,000-foot peaks when it was climbed by Albert Ellingwood in 1916.

CHALLENGER POINT, 1916, 1881
Ellingwood's party in 1916 climbed Kit Carson Peak by its northwest ridge which “leads by a steep but not difficult slope to the long north summit of the peak.” This north summit of Kit Carson is now known as Challenger Point, 14,081 and by default Ellingwood would seem to be the first on this summit also. But this is not the case either.

James McCalpin in his book “Crestone, Gateway to the Higher Realms,” 2011 credits the first recorded ascent of Challenger Point to Wm. Edward White and party on June 24, 1881. White's article “Crestone Peak” in the “Saguache Chronicle” of July 1, 1881, seems more to claim that his party stood on the summit of Crestone Peak from the Willow Creek approach than Challenger Point though.

Writing more on scenery than actual climbing White's party went “on up Crestone peak treading on flowers and moss or climbing over rugged cliffs that stand hundreds of feet above the yawning chasms below, and at last we stand upon the summit, 14,233 feet above the sea.”

According to McCalpin, White called the mountain now known as Challenger Point as Crestone Peak an occurrence not unusual to the confusing array of names that have been applied to the Crestone Peaks.

CRESTONE PEAK, 1916
On July 24, 1916, the more energetic of the party, Albert Ellingwood, Eleanor Davis, Bee Rogers and Jo Deutschbein left their camp in Spanish Creek “to make a test of the unclimbability of the Crestones.” They climbed the north arete to the eastern summit, 14,260 and then crossed to the main summit, 14,294. Crestone Peak was the second-to-last 14,000-foot Colorado peak to be climbed as of the time.

CRESTONE NEEDLE, 1916
Continuing from Crestone Peak, Ellingwood and Davis made the Peak-to Needle traverse where they built a cairn on the Needle's point. This has been called the last of Colorado's 14,000-foot peaks to be climbed. This would be true until 1933.

Ellingwood would write of the Crestone Peaks that “we found no trace of predecessors on any of the summits in this group and, as far as I have been able to ascertain, we were the first to disturb their solitude. If this is actually the case, it is obvious that their prolonged virginity is not due to any inherent difficulty or inhospitality, but only to the lack of a not too fainthearted wooer.”

Ellingwood would only be partially right in his conclusion as the earlier reported ascents of Kit Carson in 1883 and Challenger in 1881 would prove otherwise.

MOUNT COLUMBIA, 1916
In 1916 Roger Toll of the Colorado Mountain Club placed club registers on the Sawatch peaks and made the first recorded ascent of this peak which he found to be 14,070 feet in elevation.

In keeping with the tradition of nearby Mount Harvard and Mount Yale he named this peak Columbia for his alma mater. Depending on the month of Toll's ascent this peak could once be considered as the last 14,000-foot peak climbed.

CRESTONE NEEDLE, 1920, 1916
In 1920 Carl Blaurock, Dudley Tyler Smith, Clyde Smedley and Jack Heinrich climbed Crestone Needle by the west face and thought they had made the first ascent. Recalling their climb sixty-two years later, Dudley Smith wrote that “we reached the summit about 4 p. m. and found no indication that there had been a previous ascent.”

For a short period of time Crestone Needle could again be considered the last of Colorado's 14,000-foot peaks to be climbed, that is, until Carl Blaurock returned to Denver. There, as Carl tells the story in his book “A Climber's Climber,” 1984 he was told by Francis (Bee) Rogers who was with Ellingwood in 1916 that Ellingwood and Davis had climbed the peak in that year.

There was no public notice of the time of Ellingwood's climbs as Ellingwood would not write of his 1916 Crestone Peaks climbs in the Sangre de Cristo Range until 1925 in “Trail and Timberline” magazine.

EL DIENTE, 1930, 1890
El Diente, 14,159 could have been considered the last 14,000-foot peak climbed when on July 4, 1930, Dwight Lavender, Forrest Greenfield and Chester Price climbed the west ridge and found no evidence of a previous ascent.

Some months later Lavender was “prowling around in an 'ancient' volume of the (British) Alpine Journal,” of August, 1891 where he came across Percy Thomas' account of “Mountaineering In Southern Colorado,” in which Thomas wrote of viewing and climbing Mt. Wilson from Dunton Hot Springs.

Lavender was convinced that Thomas had mistaken El Diente for Mt. Wilson and gives credit to Mr. P. W. Thomas and Mr. N. G. Douglass for the first ascent of El Diente on September 2, 1890. Bad weather had prevented Thomas from seeing Mount Wilson to the east and one hundred feet higher.

MOUNT OXFORD, 1933
In 1925 Albert Ellingwood and Stephen Hart were taking observations with a transit from the summits of Mt. Harvard and Mt. Columbia of an unnamed mountain north and west of Mt. Harvard with an elevation of 14,000 feet as shown on the Hayden Atlas of 1877. “This mountain has never been named or climbed as far as we can tell.”

The mountain was named Mount Oxford by John L. Jerome Hart for the universities attended by Ellingwood and both Hart's. Hart found that inhabitants of long residences of the area had no name for the mountain.

The mountain was included in the list of 14,000-foot peaks of J. L. J. Hart's “Fourteen Thousand Feet,” second edition 1931. The climbing guide that was included in the book “A Climber's Guide To the High Colorado Peaks” by Elinor Eppich Kingery stated that Mt. Oxford “as far as we know, this peak has never been climbed.”

Hart reported that in August of 1933 Mt. Oxford was ascended for the first time by Dr. John Henry Strong, his daughter Mrs. Alfred Cowles, III, and Mr. Francis M. Froelicher.

Janet Robertson in her book “Betsy Cowles Partridge, Mountaineer,” 1998 writes of this first ascent of Mount Oxford as “the three waited for each other just before the top so they could set foot on the summit simultaneously.”

JOHN HENRY STRONG, 1867-1960 was a Baptist minister from New York who began mountain climbing at the age of fifty-seven during a trip to Switzerland in 1924. Dr. Strong joined the American Alpine Club in 1926 and also climbed in the Tetons and the Canadian Rockies.

Before their climb of Mount Oxford, he and his daughter Elizabeth climbed Mount Sheridan and Mount Sherman. His register of climbs for membership in the American Alpine Club lists the climb of Oxford in 1933 as a first ascent.

He would much later climb the Jungfrau in Switzerland at the age of eighty-three. At his passing he was ninety-three years of age.

Mrs. Alfred Cowles is better known as ELIZABETH COWLES PARTRIDGE, 1902-1974 who would become Colorado's first female mountain climber of international stature. She came to Colorado at the age of twenty-one and began mountain climbing in 1932 with an ascent of Mt. Lincoln. In the following year Mount Oxford “had caught their attention because a recent survey had elevated it to the status of a fourteener.” She finished the 14,000-foot peaks in 1949 as the 27th person and 7th woman to do so.

She climbed in Switzerland making over 50 ascents of peaks with her father. She also climbed in the Canadian Rockies and made notable ascents in the Tetons. Betsy Cowles Partridge went on to become a vice-president of the American Alpine Club in 1947.

Betsy climbed with many of the top American climbers of her time. In 1947 she organized a party guided by Paul Petzoldt that made first ascents of 18,000-foot peaks in the Santa Marta Range of Columbia.

She also did two trekking tours in the Himalayas one of which in 1950 was to scout out the approaches to Mount Everest from within Nepal's borders.

Elizabeth Partridge lived for nearly 50 years in the Pikes Peak region where she was a generous benefactor to various institutions. She died in Colorado Springs at the age of seventy-two.

FRANCIS FROELICHER, 1892-1960 was the headmaster of Fountain Valley School of Colorado Springs from 1930-1950. He formed the Fountain Valley Mt. Club that took students rock climbing.

Although he “climbed all of Colorado's peaks over 14,000 ft.” his name does not appear on the Colorado Mountain Club's list of “Men and Women Who Climbed Them All.” But that is not unusual as there are several early climbers who completed them all, but their names do not appear on the list.

Mount Oxford was the last claimed first ascent of a Colorado 14,000-foot peak. But the romanticism of early 20th century Colorado mountaineering and the “tales of peaks unclimbed and unclimbable” of the Crestones in 1916 is a story that has been perpetuated for over one hundred years. And it is a story that is not entirely true.

[bdloftin77]

Thanks for the interesting myth-busting read! I find historic ascents intriguing.

[the_hare]

Yessss more gore galore

[Scott P]

That's some really interesting history and information and is very enjoyable to read.

I have to admit though that I'm very skeptical that Oxford would remain unclimbed until 1933. 1933 might have been it's first recorded ascent, but Oxford is very close to no fewer than five 1880's mining towns (Winfield, Rockdale, Vicksburg, Silverdale, and Beaver Creek). Belford is covered with prospect holes from the 1880s including on the summit itself and there were prospects on the south side of Oxford. Waverly Mountain just to the NE of Oxford also has several prospects high on the mountain. It seems very unlikely that miners didn't climb Oxford in the 1880s. Of course if it did happen (which is very likely), the names have been lost to time.

Either way that's some great history and keep posting.

[gore galore]

Scott, your skepticism is probably valid as unfortunately many ascents of the fourteeners by miners have been lost to time as have any Native American climbs. Mount Oxford though is still the last claimed first ascent of record of a Colorado 14,000-foot peak. The progression of the last first ascents of the fourteeners from "tales of peaks unclimbed and peaks unclimbable" of the Crestones in 1916 has always intrigued me and thus the post.