Annie Peck's conquest of Huascarán

Annie Smith Peck · 1908 CE · Earth

Annie Peck's conquest of Huascarán — Annie Smith Peck · 1908 CE · Earth — Recorded expedition route · schematic map

Reach the summit of Huascarán, which she believed higher than Aconcagua, and measure its altitude with a hypsometer.

Historical context

Annie Smith Peck, a classics professor from Providence who had taken up climbing at forty-five, wanted a summit higher than any yet reached by a man or woman in the Americas, and settled on Huascarán in the Peruvian Cordillera Blanca after two failures on Illampu in Bolivia. She tried Huascarán in 1904 and 1906 with unwilling porters and no proper guides, then in 1908, at fifty-eight, brought two Swiss guides from Zermatt, Gabriel Zumtaugwald and Rudolf Taugwalder. Their sixth attempt on the mountain reached the north summit on 2 September 1908.

The voyage, step by step

  1. The sixth departure from Yungay

    28 August 1908

    On Friday 28 August 1908 Annie Peck sets out from Yungay for Huascarán for the sixth and, she hopes, last time, with the Swiss guides Gabriel Zumtaugwald and Rudolf Taugwalder and two new porters. The townspeople say pobre Miss Peck; she answers that she does not want to go, she must go.

  2. The mine at Matarao

    29 August 1908

    The party rides up through Mancos to the mine of Matarao on the mountain's flank, where Señor and Señora Campos put them up and Señor Jaramillo lends a heavy poncho. Clouds on the mountain cost a day; on Sunday 30 August at about eight they set out for the snow line and camp there at a quarter past two.

  3. Onto the glacier

    31 August 1908

    On Monday 31 August at a quarter past seven they enter the glacier, the four Indians wearing climbing irons, the Swiss preferring their nailed boots. The snow is in better condition than ever before, and by four o'clock they pitch the tent well up in the saddle at the foot of a more than vertically inclined snow wall.

  4. Lucas in the crevasse

    1 September 1908

    On 1 September they climb the great wall of ice at eighty or eighty-five degrees in two ropes, Gabriel leading one and Rudolf the other, and on the easy ground above a snow bridge gives way under the porter Lucas. Peck and Rudolf hold him on the rope; Gabriel climbs thirty feet down into the crevasse to recover the pack with the stove.

  5. Camp on the top of the saddle

    1 September 1908

    In fairly good season they camp on the plain at the top of the saddle between the two summits, two days from the snow line, on the coldest day of her six attempts. A high wind gets up at night, and in the morning she wants to wait for it to drop; the guides prefer to go.

  6. Half past three on the north summit

    2 September 1908

    At the late hour of eight on 2 September 1908 Peck and the two guides set out, cutting steps for hours across slopes smooth as glass; at three her left hand is nearly black and she rubs it back to aching with snow. Gabriel strikes twenty matches in vain at the hypsometer, and at half past three, seven hours from camp, she reaches the north summit of Huascarán.

  7. A horrible nightmare

    2 September 1908

    They start down without a moment's rest, the steps mere toe-holes, the little moon at her back throwing shadows over each one; Rudolf loses one mitten on the icy slope and the other after dark. Peck slips five or six times and slides until the rope checks her, and Gabriel's axe alone holds the three of them when Rudolf goes too.

Outcome

The north summit at half past three on 2 September 1908, the hypsometer unlit in the wind, a night descent, and Taugwalder's hand and foot lost to frostbite; the altitude she claimed was later cut by 600 metres.

Annie Smith Peck

A classics professor who took up climbing at forty-five, wore trousers on the mountain when it was a scandal, and at fifty-eight reached the north summit of Huascarán on 2 September 1908 on her sixth attempt.

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Sources

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