Champagne Celebration Adds Evelyn Runnette To Club 52, 1947

[gore galore]

A CHAMPAGNE CELEBRATION ADDS EVELYN RUNNETTE TO EXCLUSIVE CLUB 52, 1947
by gore galore

Celebrations are something of the part of the rituals of completing the climbing of all of Colorado’s 14,000 foot peaks. In the case of Evelyn Runnette of Denver, Colorado it was a double celebration that day of September 14, 1947 when Miss Runnette celebrated a birthday party on Slumgullion Pass the day after her party of ten people had climbed Uncompahgre Peak. Champagne sparkled in the double celebration for which she had also climbed all the other 14,000 foot peaks in Colorado.

Evelyn Runnette climbed Longs Peak as her first 14,000-foot peak in 1931. Climbing all fifty-two peaks wasn’t a planned feat for her. She doesn’t, she said in a newspaper interview, “do things by lists,” so accomplishing it was only a casual process of elimination. Her roll of mountain climbs “just grew like Topsy.”

Evelyn was the 21st person to climb all of the Colorado 14,000 foot peaks according to the Colorado Mountain Club’s list of “Men and Women Who Climbed Them All.” During that champagne celebration for her completion the idea came about of “Let’s have a Club 52" for those who have climbed them all. Among those present that day was Carl Blaurock, who with Bill Ervin were the first to climb them all and Elwyn Arps the 7th person to complete them. It was said of Club 52 that it boasts possibly the “highest” membership requirements of any group in the nation.

Club 52 grew out of that period of stabilization when the number of Colorado 14,000 foot peaks held steady at fifty-two peaks for a period of ten years from 1946 to 1955 when Missouri Mountain and Huron Peak were added. In 1955 according to the club’s records Alex Carson became the 52nd person to climb all of the fifty-two 14,000 foot peaks. It was written that Alex “absolutely refuses to discuss Missouri Mountain . . .”

The reality of additional peaks being added to the list gave rise to the thought of “It might have been interesting to see certain of the once-frantic members of the Fifty-two Club who retired with the remark, ‘Thank goodness, that’s over with,’ be compelled to dig out the old boots again and go climbing another mountain.”

This thought would give rise to an important corollary of 14,000 foot climbs when Evelyn Runnette wrote in 1968 of a past 1940's finisher that “Well we think (he) finished his fourteens when he climbed all the fourteens on the list - not when he finished all the fourteens that new surveys have added and subtracted since then.”

By 1955 Club 52 would become obsolete because of the addition and subtraction of peaks to the 14,000 foot list in time and not so exclusive as more people would complete climbing the list in the following years and decades. An indication of this is that Alex Carson was not really the 52nd person to climb all of the Colorado 14,000 foot peaks in 1955 as by this time the list was off by at least one person to who knows how many persons the list is off by now.

Evelyn Runnette climbed during that era when the Colorado Mountain Club scheduled large parties to climb to the summits of the 14,000 foot peaks. On July 4, 1937, forty-two members of the Club led by Carl Blaurock and Evelyn Runnette “scaled the dizzy heights of Pyramid Peak,” as the newspaper reported. “The party traveled in groups of from five to eight on both the ascent and descent to minimize the danger of rolling rocks which are usually started by parties in the lead.” Twenty-seven reached the top.

An interesting note of that Pyramid trip is that Fritz Wiessner of Nanga Parbat fame was the campfire guest of honor. “The camp was so spellbound” as he told of his 1932 attempt, Mummery’s achievements in 1895 and the tragedy of the ill-fated Merkl party in 1934. Weissner had just returned from making the first ascent of Devil’s Tower on June 29, 1937 and was on his way from Aspen to Colorado Springs in his business of selling ski wax.

Another notable climb for Evelyn was the fourth ascent of Ice Mountain in 1936 with a party of forty CMC members of which some twenty-two reached the summit. Her outing report describes the west ridge as a good route, “with quite a spectacular drop-off on either side,” where “we went a cheval in two places, then we made a little jump to a snowfield for an added thrill shortly before we gained the summit.”

From 1938 to 1951 Evelyn Runnette was Executive Secretary of the Colorado Mountain Club. She also became a member of the American Alpine Club in 1937 having climbed throughout Colorado and the West in the Tetons and Wind Rivers of Wyoming. In these positions her activities and associations with various climbing organizations in the United States placed her among the best-known women in mountaineering circles of the time.

Evelyn was also an ardent and expert skier and helped to bring skiing to the importance that it held in Colorado in the 1950's. John Ambler who was the 15th person to climb the Colorado 14,000 foot peaks remembers “the first time I met Evelyn Runnette she was hanging upside down in a tree - caught by her skis - on Berthoud Pass, Colorado.”

In 1978 Evelyn Runnette was inducted into the Colorado Ski Hall of Fame not so much for hanging upside down in a tree but for her activities in building the sport of skiing. In addition to ski racing she was a charter member and secretary and treasurer of the Southern Rocky Mountain Ski Association, served on committees for the National Ski Association, an editor and writer for ski publications and was involved in the planning of the 1960 Winter Olympics in Squaw Valley. She was also a backer of all of the Colorado Mountain Club Winter Sports programs and “often did much of the labor that others avoided.”

Miss Evelyn Runnette died in 1984 at age 79. She was a forty-year member of the CMC. Her legacy lives in the Colorado Ski Hall of Fame but as a climber of Colorado’s 14,000 foot peaks she is long forgotten and unknown today. But I think we would all raise our glass in champagne celebration to that long ago day in 1947 when Evelyn Runnette became a member of Club 52 on the summit of Uncompahgre Peak.

[jeremy27]

Bump