Frederick Cook - The 1906 Mt. McKinley Climb

The 1906 Mt. McKinley Climb

Cook claimed to have achieved the first summit of Mount McKinley in September 1906, reaching the top with one other member of his expedition. Other members of the team (e. g., Belmore Browne), whom he had left lower on the mountain, expressed private doubts about this immediately. His claims were not publicly challenged however until the 1909 fight with Peary over which had first reached the North Pole, at which time it was publicly alleged by Peary's supporters that Cook's ascent of Mt. McKinley was fraudulent. Ed Barrill, Cook's sole companion during the 1906 climb, signed an affidavit in 1909 denying that they had reached the top. He was paid by Peary supporters to do so (Henderson, 2005) (a fact which Henderson claims was covered up and Bryce claims was never a secret), although Barrill had consistently until a month before asserted that he and Cook had reached the summit. Unlike Hudson Stuck in 1913 (Ascent of Denali, 1914, photograph opposite p. 102) Cook took no photograph of the view from atop McKinley, and his photograph which he claimed to be of the summit was found to have been taken of a tiny peak 19 miles away. An expedition by the Mazama Club in 1910 reported that Cook's map departed abruptly from reality while the summit was still 10 miles distant. Critics of Cook's claims have compared Cook's map of his alleged 1906 route versus reality, over the last 10 miles. Modern climber Bradford Washburn made it a personal mission to determine the truth of Cook's 1906 claim. Washburn and Brian Okonek ultimately (between 1956 and 1995) were able to identify the location of most of the photographs Cook took during his 1906 McKinley foray, and reproduce them, and in 1997 Bryce identified the locations of the remaining photographs, including his "summit" photograph. None was taken anywhere near the summit. Washburn showed that none of Cook's 1906 photos was taken past the "Gateway" (north end of the Great Gorge), 12 horizontal bee-line miles from McKinley and 3 miles below its top. Barrill's 1909 affidavit included a map correctly locating the Fake Peak of Cook's "summit" photo and showing that Cook and he had turned back at the Gateway. Cook's descriptions of the summit ridge are variously claimed to bear no resemblance to the actual mountain and to have been verified by many subsequent climbers. In the 1970s Hans Waale found a route which fitted Cook's narrative and descriptions, but according to Washburn no-one else has tried to climb McKinley by that route. No evidence of Cook's presence between the "Gateway" and the summit has been found. His claim to have reached the summit is not supported by his photos' vistas, his two sketch maps' markers and peak-numberings for points attained, his compass bearings, his barometer readings, his route-map or his camp trash — though samples of all such evidences have been found short of the Gateway.