Mary Cronin Completes Her List, 1934

[gore galore]

MARY CRONIN COMPLETES HER LIST - THE FIRST WOMAN TO CLIMB ALL THE 14,000 FOOT PEAKS IN COLORADO, 1934
by gore galore

Cronin Peak in the Sawatch Range is named for Mary Cronin, the first woman and fourth person to climb all of the 14,000 foot peaks in Colorado. Except for the name recognition little is probably known of this intrepid mountaineer of the 1920's and 1930's. Mary Cronin’s story of climbing the 14,000 foot peaks begins with her first hike and then an outing with the Colorado Mountain Club in 1921.

The Colorado Mountain Club held its 10th annual summer outing in August of 1921 in the Never Summer Mountains. Among the roster of 75 participants called “Those Who Ate At The Long Table” were two notable women. Agnes Vaille, 31 joined the Colorado Mountain Club in 1912 and quickly became a force in club affairs and climbing. Mary Cronin, 28 had just joined the club in June of 1921.

Mary Cronin participated in her first hiking trip as a guest with the CMC on April 24 of 1921. The announcement for the Beaver Brook Trail hike noted “the usual charm of the Mountain Parks’ trail is likely to be enhanced on this date by spring beauties and pasque flowers.” The actual hike took place on a wild winter day in mid-April. “In a howling blizzard twenty-seven sturdy souls - mostly of the frailer (?) sex - waded and plowed their resistless way thru the bottomless drifts in the mountain parks trail from Beaver Brook to Golden.”

Mary would recall that first trip of hers in a 1975 letter to the editor of “Trail and Timberline” magazine. “The clothes I wore were inadequate for any kind of trail trip at that time of year. That was the forerunner of many trips with the Club over a period of many years while it was my privilege to live in Colorado, my native state.”

CLIMBING THE 14,000 FOOT PEAKS
Mary Cronin climbed Longs Peak as her first fourteen-thousand foot peak at the end of the 1921 summer outing. The outing announcement had read that “if a sufficient number wish it, arrangements will be made to break camp a day or two ahead of the main party, and make the ascent of Longs Peak (14,255 feet) on the way back to Denver.”

The climb was led by Agnes Vaille who had first climbed Longs Peak in 1913. The outing report noted that the crowning climb of the Outing, was “when a score of scared but dauntless climbers dared the storm and waded through clouds from the Boulder Field to the top of Longs Peak and back, soaked to the skin but always hopeful that the raw scurrying clouds would lift, - which they didn’t.”

After this trip, Mary Cronin became a frequent climbing companion with Agnes Vaille. In 1923 both of them in company with a few others took a trip to the Sangre de Cristos. A few weeks later Agnes and Mary went on a longer peak bagging trip to the San Juan Mountains.

Carl Blaurock in his book “A Climber’s Climber” recalls a humourous coincidence regarding his and Bill Ervin’s trip to the San Juans in 1921 and Agnes and Mary’s ( surname of Crowell in the book) similar trip in 1923. Blaurock and Ervin stopped at a shoemaker in Telluride to have their edging nails tightened. “We got to talking to him and told him we were going out the next day to climb the Wilsons.” After climbing those peaks “we dropped into the shoemaker’s again and told him we had climbed the Wilsons. He didn’t seem much impressed.”

Agnes and Mary on their own trip dropped in on the same shoemaker to have their edging nails tightened. They asked him if many people came there to climb the peaks. As told to Blaurock, the shoemaker said, “Last summer a couple of guys came in here and claimed to have climbed ‘em.” Blaurock continues, “The gals got a kick out of that. Told us about it. He wasn’t too sure that we’d been able to do it. They went out and climbed them, too.”

By 1924 Mary Cronin had climbed fifteen 14,000 foot peaks and Agnes Vaille was well on her way to finishing them all having climbed twenty-six 14,000 foot peaks plus two more 14,000 foot peaks in California on a Sierra Club Outing in 1916. In 1924 the list of Colorado 14,000 foot peaks was forty-six.

But on January 12, 1925 Agnes Vaille tragically died descending the north face of Longs Peak after a winter climb of the peak’s east face with Walter Kiener. A Denver newspaper reported that she had scaled all but sixteen of the peaks of more than 14,000 feet elevation in the United States. This number seems overstated because if the word “Colorado” is substituted for the “United States” and sixteen is subtracted from forty-six her total of thirty 14,000 foot peaks is more in line with the previous source of twenty-six.

It would seem natural that the subject of climbing all of the Colorado 14,000 foot peaks would be discussed between climbing companions like Agnes Vaille and Mary Cronin. If Agnes Vaille’s death was the resolve for Mary Cronin to complete climbing the 14,000 peaks, it would take her another ten years to complete the list.

Mary Cronin increasingly took on club responsibilities along with climbing the 14,000 foot peaks in the following years. She was appointed to the club’s Board of Directors and the Membership Committee in 1926 and the Local Walks Committee in 1925.

Some of Mary Cronin’s highlights of climbing those remaining 14,000 foot peaks were being part of the “four-peak crowd” of five persons during the Colorado Mountain Club 1927 annual outing to the Needle Mountains that climbed Windom, Sunlight, Eolus and North Eolus in one day. “The trip was said to be prompted by an earnest desire to afford Mary the opportunity of adding four more 14,000-foot peaks to her rapidly growing list of ‘high tops’.”

On the 1928 Snowmass Lake annual outing when South Maroon was the goal, “there was a goodly group of fire-eaters to follow Mary Cronin over to North Maroon for a two-peak day.” On that same outing Mary was among two parties that climbed Capitol Peak from a high camp. An outing report described the famous knife-ridge. “Parts of this ridge must be literally straddled. In other places one may hook hands or forearms over the edge of the ridge while finding footholds in cracks or ledges a few feet down one side or the other. Part of it is traversed on all fours when the wind is blowing, or walked if there is no wind.”

During the Labor Day weekend of 1928 a club trip with Wm. F. Ervin and Jack Beesley as leaders along with Mary Cronin and four others climbed Little Bear Mountain from the summit of Blanca Peak.

In 1931 Mary climbed the east face of Longs Peak with Carl Blaurock and two others. When twenty-three members of the Colorado Mountain Club climbed Mount Antero for the first time in 1931, “one, Mary Cronin, did a solo ascent of Mt. Princeton.”

Mary Cronin became the first woman to ascend El Diente during the 1931 annual outing in the San Miguel Mountains. After a large party climbed Mount Wilson, she along with Bill Ervin and Carl Blaurock already 14,000 foot peak finishers and Harry Standley an eventual finisher continued to the summit of El Diente.

A 14,000 FOOT PEAK FINISHER
By 1934 Mary Cronin was closing in on her last 14,000 foot peaks. Finally on the Labor Day weekend an extraordinary group of Colorado Mountain Club members climbed Mount Belford and Mount Oxford in “cloudy - little rain - hail storm - constant strong wind” weather conditions for Mary Cronin’s final 14,000 foot peak on September 2, 1934.

Of the fourteen persons who signed the summit register, nine persons were or would be 14,000 foot finishers themselves. They were Elwyn Arps, 7th (1938); Mary Cronin, 4th (1934); Wm F. Ervin, 1st (1923); Carl Blaurock, 1st (1923); Evelyn Runnette, 21st (1947); O. P. Settles, 9th (1939); Ruth Gorham, 17th (1944); Paul Gorham, 16th (1944); and H. L. Standley, 10th (1939). In addition Polly Bouck, a cousin of Agnes Vaille was also present. Those nine persons on the summit that day were one third of the twenty-seven of the Colorado Mountain Club’s list of “Men and Women Who Climbed Them All” in the first part of the twentieth century.

The magazine of the club “Trail and Timberline” noted her accomplishment. “It was a proud group that encircled the campfire that evening, all proud in the achievement of Mary Cronin who that day with her fifty-first 14,000-foot peak completed her list - the first woman to climb all the high peaks in Colorado. She has quietly and unostentatiously pursued her objective and at the same time contributed much to the Mountain Club in her emulation of its real ideals and been a real help to everyone interested in mountaineering.”

A GRADUATE EXPERT MOUNTAINEER
Mary Cronin was one of the leading climbers of the Colorado Mountain Club in the 1920's and 1930's. In 1940 the Colorado Mountain Club awarded special classifications to members for mountaineering achievement based mainly upon their experience in climbing 14,000 foot peaks. The classifications were Qualified Members, Advanced Members, Expert Members and Graduate Expert Members.

Graduate Expert Members, were those who have climbed all of the 14,000-foot mountains in Colorado, led two trips up 14,000-foot mountains, made five rock climbs and made one winter climb of a 14,000-foot mountain or one snow and ice climb. The initial lists of Graduate Expert Climbers in 1941 numbered eight persons. Mary Cronin was among them.

According to Carl Blaurock, “Mary took an active part in the Club’s activities right after joining, principally on trips and outings.” Her demeanor as a leader is characterized by a 1930 trip report notice that “over Labor Day, under the leadership of the genial mountain climbers, Fred U. H. Braun and Mary Cronin, a party made the ascent of Castle Peak.”

Rock climbing in the era that Mary Cronin climbed in usually meant rock work as the term was used for the high peaks. On her Capitol Peak climb in 1928 the outing report advised that “all should be experienced on some such rock work as afforded by Pyramid, the east face of Long’s Peak, and the Crestone Peak and Needle: experience with loose rock and adequate nerve in ‘looking down off the high places’.”

In this respect it is notable that Mary Cronin completed three of the four of what is now known as the Great Traverses of the 14,000 foot peaks: South Maroon to North Maroon in 1928, Blanca Peak to Little Bear also in 1928 and Mount Wilson to El Diente in 1931.

Mary Cronin also did some rope climbing. In August of 1931 she and Carl Blaurock led a party of seventeen climbers on a rock climb of Lindbergh Peak (Lone Eagle Peak). “Ropes were used as safe-guards on steep places.”

In August of 1934 Mary Cronin climbed Ice Mountain with a CMC party. When Carl Blaurock led a small party on the same peak in 1933 he wrote “the climbing was more difficult in some places than had been anticipated, and the leaders feel that for any considerable party in the future a rope would be desirable.”

And in September of 1937 Mary Cronin with her frequent climbing companion Carl Blaurock made the second ascent of the northeast ridge and face of Blanca Peak. The climb rated a note in the “American Alpine Journal.”

Snow and ice climbs on the high peaks were infrequent and not often sought out in the 1920's and 1930's. In this respect Mary Cronin co-led a scheduled CMC trip to Fair Glacier in August of 1924. The trip announcement planned to follow a new forest service trail to the crest of the divide and then “down to Crater Lake, by way of Fair Glacier.”

In June of 1934 Mary Cronin was on a club trip of about thirty people to Loch Vale in Rocky Mountain National Park. “Most of the crowd climbed Taylor and Hallett Peaks, then slid down Andrews Glacier, returning to camp by Loch Vale.”

In 1926 Mary Cronin climbed Mount Rainier. It appears little is known of this climb except that she probably climbed Rainier after attending the Colorado Mountain Club Glacier National Park Outing in July of that year. The outing report noted trips were taken to Grinnell and Sperry glaciers “on which we walked with such care.”

Mary Cronin is pictured in a group photo at the Granite Park Chalet. From the chalet some climbed Swift Current Peak, Mount Wilbur was ascended by several different routes and “some found thrills in rock climbing on the steepest portions of the (Garden) Wall.”

Mary concluded her outing experiences in an eighteen-stanza poem titled “Fifty Mountain Camp” published in “Trail and Timberline” magazine. (“‘Fifty Mountain’ read our schedule, its significance to be,
The number of mountains from our camp that we could see.”)

LATER YEARS
But by 1941 the year of her Graduate Expert designation by the Colorado Mountain Club, Mary Cronin’s climbing days on the high peaks were over. A few years earlier her job as an accounting clerk with Western Union Telegraph Company took her to Omaha, Nebraska and then to Dallas, Texas where she retired in 1958 returning to Denver.

After leaving Colorado in the late 1930's she returned for Summer Outings with the Club for a period of more than twenty years apparently as an attendee rather than a participant of high peak climbs. She was a member of the Colorado Mountain Club for almost sixty-one years becoming a Life member in about 1940.

In the mid 1960's she moved to Seattle, Washington to be near her sister. Mary Cronin endured weak eyesight all of her life and spent her last few years totally blind. Mary Cronin died in Port Angeles, Washington in 1982 at the age of eighty-eight. Her remains were interred in Denver’s Fairmount Cemetery in the state that she earlier expressed was her privilege to live in.

In 2005 the U. S. Board on Geographic Names approved the name Cronin Peak for the previously unnamed Peak 13,870' in the Sawatch Range, in honor of CMC member Mary Cronin (1893-1982) who in 1934 became the first woman to climb all of the 14,000-foot peaks in Colorado.

It would be fitting that Mary’s old climbing companion Carl Blaurock should have the final words. “She was a strong, capable climber and thoroughly enjoyed the outdoors. Those of our era who knew her will miss her friendly attitude and congenial companionship.”

[Zambo]

As always, these posts are much appreciated and enjoyed. Fascinating read and excellent history.

[Jay521]

Ditto what Zambo said. You really need to think about writing a book.....

[flyingmagpie]

I would have loved to have been on the climb when Mary Cronin finished her list, September 2, 1934! What a group of people she was with! Elwyn Arps must have been related in some way to Louisa Ward Arps, who co-wrote High Country Names, which provides the history of the origin of the place names in Rocky Mountain National Park and Indian Peaks Wilderness. We all know Carl Blaurock, but for those of you who don't know Harry Landis Standley, not only was he a climber, he was a pioneering Colorado photographer. In those days, there were no color photographs. Only black and white. The technology for color hadn't been perfected yet. Standley meticulously hand-colored his prints with a special paint. The result is a kind of blend between photography and art. Even though color photography is the norm now, some people still learn that paint-tinting process Standley used, because it makes the resulting photographs/paintings so unique. I am sure all of the people on that climb played equally important roles not only in climbing history, but Colorado history as well. Always a pleasure to read these posts as a reminder of all that has gone before. . . .

[14erFred]

Thanks for posting this wonderful piece, gore galore. As noted by my peers above, it's a beautiful historical sketch of this most remarkable Colorado mountaineer. You have such a gift for investigative research, as well as for writing. We are truly blessed to have you share your work with us here on 14ers.com. I second Jay521's sentiment -- you really do need to write a book about the untold history of Colorado mountaineering. I would buy it in a New York minute. Keep the faith, and keep up the marvelous work!

[gore galore]

A belated thanks for the comments on these early Colorado climbers who really did set the table for all of us today. A great note too, flyingmagpie on Harry Standley. Some of his hand colored prints illustrate the early editions of the Ormes' "Guide to the Colorado Mountains." And yes Elwyn Arps and Louisa Ward Arps were husband and wife. As to a book there does need to be something of a history of climbing the Fourteeners because much of importance is untold, unknown, forgotten or lost today. Maybe in the future.

[Fr3ako]

I agree with 14erFred, a book gathering all these historical information would be fascinating to read and I would also buy it in a minute...thanks for the post.