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 scholar from Providence whom the sight of the Matterhorn had turned to climbing in 1885, went to South America to find a summit higher than Aconcagua, then thought the highest in the Americas, and settled on Huascarán in the Peruvian Cordillera Blanca after two failures on Illampu in Bolivia. She tried Huascarán twice in 1904 and twice in 1906 with porters from the valley and no Swiss guides, then in 1908, at fifty-seven, with Harper's Magazine paying part of the cost, brought two 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 four porters, new men, since Domingo and Anacreo of the last attempt cannot come. 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

    On the afternoon of 28 August 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 porters wearing climbing irons, enough having been made for each of the party to have a pair, 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 solid old snow rather than 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 time 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 by her count, 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. They reach the tent at half past ten at night.

Outcome

The north summit at about half past three on 2 September 1908, by Peck's account, with Rudolf Taugwalder on the top before her; the hypsometer unlit in the wind, a descent in the dark, and most of Taugwalder's left hand, a finger of his right and half of one foot amputated after frostbite. She judged the peak certainly above 23,000 feet and probably 24,000; the engineers Fanny Bullock Workman sent triangulated it at 21,812 feet, about 6,650 metres.

Annie Smith Peck

A classics scholar whom the sight of the Matterhorn turned to climbing in 1885, who wore trousers on the mountain when it caused a stir, and who at fifty-seven reached the north summit of Huascarán on 2 September 1908, on her sixth attempt.

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