EXPLORATIONS OF THE DENALI REGION AND PREVIOUS ATTEMPTS AT ITS ASCENT
The first mention in literature of the greatest mountain group in North
America is in the narrative of that most notable navigator, George
Vancouver. While surveying the Knik Arm of Cook's Inlet, in 1794, he
speaks of his view of a connected mountain range "bounded by distant
stupendous snow mountains covered with snow and apparently detached from
each other." Vancouver's name has grown steadily greater during the last
fifty years as modern surveys have shown the wonderful detailed accuracy
of his work, and the seamen of the Alaskan coast speak of him as the
prince of all navigators.
Not until 1878 is there another direct mention of these mountains,
although the Russian name for Denali, "Bulshaia Gora," proves that it
had long been observed and known.
[Sidenote: Harper, Densmore, Dickey]
In that year two of the early Alaskan traders, Alfred Mayo and Arthur
Harper, made an adventurous journey some three hundred miles up the
Tanana River, the first ascent of that river by white men, and upon
their return reported finding gold in the bars and mentioned an enormous
ice mountain visible in the south, which they said was one of the most
remarkable things they had seen on their trip.
In 1889 Frank Densmore, a prospector, with several companions, crossed
from the Tanana to the Kuskokwim by way of the Coschaket and Lake
Minchúmina, and had the magnificent view of the Denali group which Lake
Minchúmina affords, which the present writer was privileged to have in
1911. Densmore's description was so enthusiastic that the mountain was
known for years among the Yukon prospectors as "Densmore's mountain."
Though unquestionably many men traversed the region after the discovery
of gold in Cook's Inlet in 1894, no other public recorded mention of the
great mountain was made until W. A. Dickey, a Princeton graduate,
journeyed extensively in the Sushitna and Chulitna valleys in 1896 and
reached the foot of the glacier which drains one of the flanks of
Denali, called later by Doctor Cook the Ruth Glacier. Dickey described
the mountain in a letter to the New York _Sun_ in January, 1907, and
guessed its height with remarkable accuracy at twenty thousand feet.
Probably unaware that the mountain had any native name, Dickey gave it
the name of the Republican candidate for President of the United States
at that time--McKinley. Says Mr. Dickey: "We named our great peak Mount
McKinley, after William McKinley, of Ohio, the news of whose nomination
for the presidency was the first we received on our way out of that
wonderful wilderness."
In 1898 George Eldridge and Robert Muldrow, of the United States
Geological Survey, traversed the region, and Muldrow estimated the
height of the mountain by triangulation at twenty thousand three hundred
feet.
[Sidenote: Herron, Brooks, Wickersham]
In 1899 Lieutenant Herron crossed the range from Cook's Inlet and
reached the Kuskokwim. It was he who named the lesser mountain of the
Denali group, always known by the natives as Denali's Wife, "Mount
Foraker," after the senator from Ohio.
In 1902 Alfred Brooks and D. L. Raeburn made a remarkable reconnoissance
survey from the Pacific Ocean, passing through the range and along the
whole western and northwestern faces of the group. They were the first
white men to set foot upon the slopes of Denali. Shortly afterward, in
response to the interest this journey aroused among Alpine clubs, Mr.
Brooks published a pamphlet setting forth what he considered the most
feasible plan for attempting the ascent of the mountain.
The next year saw two actual attempts at ascent. After holding the first
term of court at Fairbanks, the new town on the Tanana River that had
sprung suddenly into importance as the metropolis of Alaska upon the
discovery of the Tanana gold fields, Judge Wickersham (now delegate to
Congress) set out with four men and two mules in May, 1903, and by
steamboat ascended to the head of navigation of the Kantishna. Heading
straight across an unknown country for the base of the mountain, Judge
Wickersham's party unfortunately attacked the mountain by the Peters
Glacier and demonstrated the impossibility of that approach, being
stopped by the enormous ice-incrusted cliffs of the North Peak. Judge
Wickersham used to say that only by a balloon or a flying-machine could
the summit be reached; and, indeed, by no other means can the summit
ever be reached from the north face. After a week spent in climbing,
provisions began to run short and the party returned, descending the
rushing, turbid waters of that quite unnavigable and very dangerous
stream, the McKinley Fork of the Kantishna, on a raft, with little of
anything left to eat, and that little damaged by water. Judge Wickersham
was always keen for another attempt and often discussed the matter with
the writer, but his judicial and political activities thenceforward
occupied his time and attention to the exclusion of such enterprises.
His attempt was the first ever made to climb the mountain.
DOCTOR COOK'S ATTEMPTS
About the time that Judge Wickersham was leaving the north face of the
mountain an expedition under Doctor Frederick A. Cook set out from
Tyonek, on Cook's Inlet, on the other side of the range. Doctor Cook was
accompanied by Robert Dunn, Ralph Shainwald (the "Hiram" of Dunn's
narrative), and Fred Printz, who had been chief packer for Brooks and
Raeburn, and fourteen pack-horses bore their supplies. The route
followed was that of Brooks and Raeburn, and they had the advantage of
topographical maps and forty miles of trail cut in the timber and a
guide familiar with the country. Going up the Beluga and down the
Skwentna Rivers, they crossed the range by the Simpson Pass to the south
fork of the Kuskokwim, and then skirted the base of the mountains until
a southwesterly ridge was reached which it is not very easy to locate,
but which, as Doctor Brooks judges, must have been near the headwaters
of the Tatlathna, a tributary of the Kuskokwim. Here an attempt was made
to ascend the mountain, but at eight thousand feet a chasm cut them off
from further advance.
Pursuing their northeast course, they reached the Peters Glacier (which
Doctor Cook calls the Hanna Glacier) and stumbled across one of Judge
Wickersham's camps of a couple of months before. Here another attempt to
ascend was made, only to find progress stopped by the same stupendous
cliffs that had turned back the Wickersham party. "Over the glacier
which comes from the gap between the eastern and western peaks" (the
North and South Peaks as we speak of them), says Doctor Cook, "there was
a promising route." That is, indeed, part of the only route, but it can
be reached only by the Muldrow Glacier. "The walls of the main mountain
rise out of the Hanna (Peters) Glacier," Cook adds. The "main mountain"
has many walls; the walls by which the summit alone may be reached rise
out of the Muldrow Glacier, a circumstance that was not to be discovered
for some years yet.
The lateness of the season now compelled immediate return. Passing still
along the face of the range in the same direction, the party crossed the
terminal moraine of the Muldrow Glacier without recognizing that it
affords the only highway to the heart of the great mountain and
recrossed the range by an ice-covered pass to the waters of the Chulitna
River, down which they rafted after abandoning their horses. Doctor Cook
calls this pass "Harper Pass," and the name should stand, for Cook was
probably the first man ever to use it.
[Sidenote: Robert Dunn]
The chief result of this expedition, besides the exploration of about
one hundred miles of unknown country, was the publication by Robert Dunn
of an extraordinary narrative in several consecutive numbers of
_Outing_, afterward republished in book form, with some modifications,
as "The Shameless Diary of an Explorer," a vivid but unpleasant
production, for which every squabble and jealousy of the party furnishes
literary material. The book has a curious, undeniable power, despite its
brutal frankness and its striving after "the poor renown of being
smart," and it may live. One is thankful, however, that it is unique in
the literature of travel.
[Sidenote: Cook's Second Attempt]
Three years later Doctor Cook organized an expedition for a second
attempt upon the mountain. In May, 1906, accompanied by Professor
Herschel Parker, Mr. Belmore Browne, a topographer named Porter, who
made some valuable maps, and packers, the party landed at the head of
Cook's Inlet and penetrated by motor-boat and by pack-train into the
Sushitna country, south of the range. Failing to cross the range at the
head of the Yentna, they spent some time in explorations along the
Kahilitna River, and, finding no avenue of approach to the heights of
the mountain, the party returned to Cook's Inlet and broke up.
With only one companion, a packer named Edward Barrille, Cook returned
in the launch up the Chulitna River to the Tokositna late in August. "We
had already changed our mind as to the impossibility of climbing the
mountain," he writes. Ascending a glacier which the Tokositna River
drains, named by Cook the Ruth Glacier, they reached the amphitheatre at
the glacier head. From this point, "up and up to the heaven-scraped
granite of the top," Doctor Cook grows grandiloquent and vague, for at
this point his true narrative ends.
[Illustration: Approaching the range.]
The claims that Doctor Cook made upon his return are well known, but it
is quite impossible to follow his course from the description given in
his book, "To the Top of the Continent." This much may be said: from the
summit of the mountain, on a clear day, it seemed evident that no ascent
was possible from the south side of the range at all. That was the
judgment of all four members of our party. Doctor Cook talks about "the
heaven-scraped granite of the top" and "the dazzling whiteness of the
frosted granite blocks," and prints a photograph of the top showing
granite slabs. There is no rock of any kind on the South (the higher)
Peak above nineteen thousand feet. The last one thousand five hundred
feet of the mountain is all permanent snow and ice; nor is the
conformation of the summit in the least like the photograph printed as
the "top of Mt. McKinley." In his account of the view from the summit he
speaks of "the ice-blink caused by the extensive glacial sheets north of
the Saint Elias group," which would surely be out of the range of any
possible vision, but does not mention at all the master sight that
bursts upon the eye when the summit is actually gained--the great mass
of "Denali's Wife," or Mount Foraker, filling all the middle distance.
We were all agreed that no one who had ever stood on the top of Denali
in clear weather could fail to mention the sudden splendid sight of this
great mountain.
But it is not worth while to pursue the subject further. The present
writer feels confident that any man who climbs to the top of Denali, and
then reads Doctor Cook's account of his ascent, will not need Edward
Barrille's affidavit to convince him that Cook's narrative is untrue.
Indignation is, however, swallowed up in pity when one thinks upon the
really excellent pioneering and exploring work done by this man, and
realizes that the immediate success of the imposition about the ascent
of Denali doubtless led to the more audacious imposition about the
discovery of the North Pole--and that to his discredit and downfall.
THE PIONEER ASCENT
Although Cook's claim to have reached the summit of Denali met with
general acceptance outside, or at least was not openly scouted, it was
otherwise in Alaska. The men, in particular, who lived and worked in the
placer-mining regions about the base of the mountain, and were, perhaps,
more familiar with the orography of the range than any surveyor or
professed topographer, were openly incredulous. Upon the appearance of
Doctor Cook's book, "To the Top of the Continent," in 1908, the writer
well remembers the eagerness with which his copy (the only one in
Fairbanks) was perused by man after man from the Kantishna diggings, and
the acute way in which they detected the place where vague "fine
writing" began to be substituted for definite description.
Some of these men, convinced that the ascent had never been made,
conceived the purpose of proving it in the only way in which it could be
proved--by making the ascent themselves. They were confident that an
enterprise which had now baffled several parties of "scientists,"
equipped with all sorts of special apparatus, could be accomplished by
Alaskan "sourdoughs" with no special equipment at all. There seems also
to have entered into the undertaking a naïve notion that in some way or
other large money reward would follow a successful ascent.
The enterprise took form under Thomas Lloyd, who managed to secure the
financial backing of McPhee and Petersen, saloon-keepers of Fairbanks,
and Griffin, a wholesale liquor dealer of Chena. These three men are
said to have put up five hundred dollars apiece, and the sum thus raised
sufficed for the needs of the party. In February 1910, therefore, Thomas
Lloyd, Charles McGonogill, William Taylor, Peter Anderson, and Bob
Horne, all experienced prospectors and miners, and E. C. Davidson, a
surveyor, now the surveyor-general of Alaska, set out from Fairbanks,
and by 1st March had established a base camp at the mouth of Cache
Creek, within the foot-hills of the range.
Here Davidson and Horne left the party after a disagreement with Lloyd.
The loss of Davidson was a fatal blow to anything beyond a "sporting"
ascent, for he was the only man in the party with any scientific bent,
or who knew so much as the manipulation of a photographic camera.
[Sidenote: The Sourdough Climb]
The Lloyd expedition was the first to discover the only approach by
which the mountain may be climbed. Mr. Alfred Brooks, Mr. Robert
Muldrow, and Doctor Cook had passed the snout of the Muldrow Glacier
without realizing that it turned and twisted and led up until it gave
access to the ridge by which alone the upper glacier or Grand Basin can
be reached and the summits gained. From observations while hunting
mountain-sheep upon the foot-hills for years past, Lloyd had already
satisfied himself of this prime fact; had found the key to the
complicated orography of the great mass. Lloyd had previously crossed
the range with horses in this neighborhood by an easy pass that led
"from willows to willows" in eighteen miles. Pete Anderson had come into
the Kantishna country this way and had crossed and recrossed the range
by this pass no less than eleven times.
McGonogill, following quartz leads upon the high mountains of Moose
Creek, had traced from his aerie the course of the Muldrow Glacier, and
had satisfied himself that within the walls of that glacier the route
would be found. And, indeed, when he had us up there and pointed out the
long stretch of the parallel walls it was plain to us also that they
held the road to the heights. From the point where he had perched his
tiny hut, a stone's throw from his tunnel, how splendidly the mountain
rose and the range stretched out!
These men thus started with the great advantage of a knowledge of the
mountain, and their plan for climbing it was the first that contained
the possibility of success.
From the base camp Anderson and McGonogill scouted among the foot-hills
of the range for some time before they discovered the pass that gives
easy access to the Muldrow Glacier. On 25th March the party had
traversed the glacier and reached its head with dogs and supplies. A
camp was made on the ridge, while further prospecting was carried on
toward the upper glacier. This was the farthest point that Lloyd
reached. On 10th April, Taylor, Anderson, and McGonogill set out about
two in the morning with great climbing-irons strapped to their moccasins
and hooked pike-poles in their hands. Disdaining the rope and cutting no
steps, it was "every man for himself," with reliance solely upon the
_crampons_. They went up the ridge to the Grand Basin, crossed the ice
to the North Peak, and proceeded to climb it, carrying the fourteen-foot
flagstaff with them. Within perhaps five hundred feet of the summit,
McGonogill, outstripped by Taylor and Anderson, and fearful of the
return over the slippery ice-incrusted rocks if he went farther, turned
back, but Taylor and Anderson reached the top (about twenty thousand
feet above the sea) and firmly planted the flagstaff, which is there
yet.
[Sidenote: Lloyd and McGonogill]
This is the true narrative of a most extraordinary feat, unique--the
writer has no hesitation in claiming--in all the annals of
mountaineering. He has been at the pains of talking with every member of
the actual climbing party with a view to sifting the matter thoroughly.
For, largely by the fault of these men themselves, through a mistaken
though not unchivalrous sense of loyalty to the organizer of the
expedition, much incredulity was aroused in Alaska touching their
exploit. It was most unfortunate that any mystery was made about the
details, most unfortunate that in the newspaper accounts false claims
were set up. Surely the merest common sense should have dictated that in
the account of an ascent undertaken with the prime purpose of proving
that Doctor Cook had _not_ made the ascent, and had falsified his
narrative, everything should be frank and aboveboard; but it was not so.
A narrative, gathered from Lloyd himself and agreed to by the others,
was reduced to writing by Mr. W. E. Thompson, an able journalist of
Fairbanks, and was sold to a newspaper syndicate. The account the writer
has examined was "featured" in the New York Sunday _Times_ of the 5th
June, 1910.
In that account Lloyd is made to claim unequivocally that he himself
reached both summits of the mountain. "There were two summits and we
climbed them both"; and again, "When I reached the coast summit" are
reported in quotation marks as from his lips. As a matter of fact, Lloyd
himself reached neither summit, nor was much above the glacier floor;
and the south or coast summit, the higher of the two, was not attempted
by the party at all. There is no question that the party _could_ have
climbed the South Peak, though by reason of its greater distance it is
safe to say that it could not have been reached, as the North Peak was,
in one march from the ridge camp. It must have involved a camp in the
Grand Basin with all the delay and the labor of relaying the stuff up
there. But the men who accomplished the astonishing feat of climbing the
North Peak, in one almost superhuman march from the saddle of the
Northeast Ridge, could most certainly have climbed the South Peak too.
[Sidenote: The North Peak]
They did not attempt it for two reasons, first, because they wanted to
plant their fourteen-foot flagstaff where it could be seen through a
telescope from Fairbanks, one hundred and fifty miles away, as they
fondly supposed, and, second, because not until they had reached the
summit of the North Peak did they realize that the South Peak is higher.
They told the writer that upon their return to the floor of the _upper_
glacier they were greatly disappointed to find that their flagstaff was
not visible to them. It is, indeed, only just visible with the naked eye
from certain points on the upper glacier and quite invisible at any
lower or more distant point. Walter Harper has particularly keen sight,
and he was well up in the Grand Basin, at nearly seventeen thousand feet
altitude, sitting and scanning the sky-line of the North Peak, seeking
for the pole, when he caught sight of it and pointed it out. The writer
was never sure that he saw it with the naked eye, though Karstens and
Tatum did so as soon as Walter pointed it out, but through the
field-glasses it was plain and prominent and unmistakable.
When we came down to the Kantishna diggings and announced to the men who
planted it that we had seen the flagstaff, there was a feeling expressed
that the climbing party of the previous summer must have seen it also
and had suppressed mention of it; but there is no ground whatever for
such a damaging assumption. It would never be seen with the naked eye
save by those who were intently searching for it. Professor Parker and
Mr. Belmore Browne entertained the pretty general incredulity about the
"Pioneer" ascent, perhaps too readily, certainly too confidently; but
the men themselves must bear the chief blame for that. The writer and
his party, knowing these men much better, had never doubt that _some_ of
them had accomplished what was claimed, and these details have been gone
into for no other reason than that honor may at last be given where
honor is due.
[Sidenote: Pete Anderson and Billy Taylor]
To Lloyd belongs the honor of conceiving and organizing the attempt but
not of accomplishing it. To him probably also belongs the original
discovery of the route that made the ascent possible. To McGonogill
belongs the credit of discovering the pass, probably the only pass, by
which the glacier may be reached without following it from its snout up,
a long and difficult journey; and to him also the credit of climbing
some nineteen thousand five hundred feet, or to within five hundred feet
of the North Peak. But to Pete Anderson and Billy Taylor, two of the
strongest men, physically, in all the North, and to none other, belongs
the honor of the first ascent of the North Peak and the planting of what
must assuredly be the highest flagstaff in the world. The North Peak has
never since been climbed or attempted.
* * * * *
In the summer of the same year, 1910, Professor Parker and Mr. Belmore
Browne, members of the second Cook party, convinced by this time that
Cook's claim was wholly unfounded, attempted the mountain again, and
another party, organized by Mr. C. E. Rust, of Portland, Oregon, also
endeavored the ascent. But both these expeditions confined themselves to
the hopeless southern side of the range, from which, in all probability,
the mountain never can be climbed.
THE PARKER-BROWNE EXPEDITION
To a man living in the interior of Alaska, aware of the outfitting and
transportation facilities which the large commerce of Fairbanks affords,
aware of the navigable waterways that penetrate close to the foot-hills
of the Alaskan range, aware also of the amenities of the interior slope
with its dry, mild climate, its abundance of game and rich pasturage
compared with the trackless, lifeless snows of the coast slopes, there
seems a strange fatuity in the persistent efforts to approach the
mountain from the southern side of the range.
It is morally certain that if the only expedition that remains to be
dealt with--that organized by Professor Parker and Mr. Belmore Browne in
1912, which came within an ace of success--had approached the mountain
from the interior instead of from the coast, it would have forestalled
us and accomplished the first complete ascent.
The difficulties of the coast approach have been described graphically
enough by Robert Dunn in the summer and by Belmore Browne himself in the
winter. There are no trails; the snow lies deep and loose and falls
continually, or else the whole country is bog and swamp. There is no
game.
[Sidenote: Parker and Browne]
The Parker-Browne expedition left Seward, on Resurrection Bay, late in
January, 1912, and after nearly three months' travel, relaying their
stuff forward, they crossed the range under extreme difficulties, being
seventeen days above any vegetation, and reached the northern face of
the mountain on 25th March. The expedition either missed the pass near
the foot of the Muldrow Glacier, well known to the Kantishna miners, by
which it is possible to cross from willows to willows in eighteen miles,
or else avoided it in the vain hope of finding another. They then went
to the Kantishna diggings and procured supplies and topographical
information from the miners, and were thus able to follow the course of
the Lloyd party of 1910, reaching the Muldrow Glacier by the gap in the
glacier wall discovered by McGonogill and named McPhee Pass by him.
Mr. Belmore Browne has written a lucid and stirring account of the
ascent which his party made. We were fortunate enough to secure a copy
of the magazine in which it appeared just before leaving Fairbanks, and
he had been good enough to write a letter in response to our inquiries
and to enclose a sketch map. Our course was almost precisely the same as
that of the Parker-Browne party up to seventeen thousand feet, and the
course of that party was precisely the same as that of the Lloyd party
up to fifteen thousand feet. There is only one way up the mountain, and
Lloyd and his companions discovered it. The earthquake had enormously
increased the labor of the ascent; it had not altered the route.
A reconnoissance of the Muldrow Glacier to its head and a long spell of
bad weather delayed the party so much that it was the 4th June before
the actual ascent was begun--a very late date indeed; more than a month
later than our date and nearly three months later than the "Pioneer"
date. It is rarely that the mountain is clear after the 1st June; almost
all the summer through its summit is wrapped in cloud. From the junction
of the Tanana and Yukon Rivers it is often visible for weeks at a time
during the winter, but is rarely seen at all after the ice goes out. A
close watch kept by friends at Tanana (the town at the confluence of the
rivers) discovered the summit on the day we reached it and the following
day (the 7th and 8th June) but not for three weeks before and not at all
afterward; from which it does not follow, however, that the summit was
not visible momentarily, or at certain hours of the day, but only that
it was not visible for long enough to be observed. The rapidity with
which that summit shrouds and clears itself is sometimes marvellous.
As is well known, the Parker-Browne party pushed up the Northeast Ridge
and the upper glacier and made a first attack upon the summit itself,
from a camp at seventeen thousand feet, on the 29th June. When within
three or four hundred feet of the top they were overwhelmed and driven
down, half frozen, by a blizzard that suddenly arose. On the 1st July
another attempt was made, but the clouds ascended and completely
enveloped the party in a cold, wind-driven mist so that retreat to camp
was again imperative. Only those who have experienced bad weather at
great heights can understand how impossible it is to proceed in the face
of it. The strongest, the hardiest, the most resolute must yield. The
party could linger no longer; food supplies were exhausted. They broke
camp and went down the mountain.
The falling short of complete success of this very gallant
mountaineering attempt seems to have been due, first to the mistake of
approaching the mountain by the most difficult route, so that it was
more than five months after starting that the actual climbing began; or,
if the survey made justified, and indeed decided, the route, then the
summit was sacrificed to the survey. But the immediate cause of the
failure was the mistake of relying upon canned pemmican for the main
food supply. This provision, hauled with infinite labor from the coast,
and carried on the backs of the party to the high levels of the
mountain, proved uneatable and useless at the very time when it was
depended upon for subsistence. There is no finer big-game country in the
world than that around the interior slopes of the Alaskan range; there
is no finer meat in the world than caribou and mountain-sheep. It is
carrying coals to Newcastle to bring canned meat into this
country--nature's own larder stocked with her choicest supplies. But if,
attempting the mountain when they did, the Parker-Browne party had
remained two or three days longer in the Grand Basin, which they would
assuredly have done had their food been eatable, their bodies would be
lying up there yet or would be crushed beneath the débris of the
earthquake on the ridge.