OTHER Trip Report 09/24/2016

Report Type	Full
Peak(s)	Dora Mountain - 12292
Date Posted	09/24/2016
Date Climbed	07/30/2016
Author	gore galore

Searching For Parka Rock "Aiguille" And Finding Heinie Cappel's Cross On Dora Mtn
SEARCHING FOR PARKA ROCK "AIGUILLE" AND FINDING HEINIE CAPPEL'S CROSS ON DORA MOUNTAIN, GORE RANGE by gore galore Dora Mountain is one of those big flat-topped mountains such that if it were located in any other Colorado mountain range it would appropriately be named by its generic description as "Flattop Mountain." But we are fortunate that this mountain, a remnant of a pre glacial erosion surface is located in the Gore Range where some unknown homesteader, rancher or prospector gave it the fetching feminine name of Dora Mountain. One would think that such a mountain would have a well-constructed trail to its summit but this is the Gore Range and things like that don't happen in these mountains. The closest you can get to the mountain by trail is Surprise Lake on the northern flanks of the mountain where a bushwhack of some 1,500 feet brings one to the edge of this geologic peneplain. Then as if by deliberate geologic machinations the exact summit is placed on the opposite southern side of the mountain or in hiking terms one and a half miles south from timberline to Dora Lake and a mile east gaining another 700 feet from timberline to the talus and rock outcrops that distinguish the summit. This dogleg hiking route is necessary because of the tremendous Otter Creek cirque which cuts into the northeast part of the mountain. In my previous explorations of Dora Mountain I once entered this cirque from Surprise Lake and climbed its north buttress directly in line to the summit of Dora. You would also think Dora Mountain as one of the few named mountains in the Gore Range would have its share of ascents but it doesn't. A register placed in 2008 showed only five parties signing to 2016 when I made my present climb as related in this report. I think part of the reason for this is that others may consider Dora Lake as the top of the mountain. Although I first climbed Dora Mountain in 1981, my present interest in Dora can be traced back to 1992 when I received a diary of the 1935 Colorado Mountain Club Outing in the Gore Range from Bob Blair one of the participants in that historic two-week outing. Back then I was interested in the big lettered peaks climbed from their camp site on the south fork of Black Creek. Eventually I filed the diary away in a manilla envelope in a box of papers to be forgotten for some years. My interest in the 1935 C. M. C. Outing was rekindled in 2015 when I participated in the Black Creek Tribute Trip as a remembrance of those climbs and climbers from eighty years ago. As part of my trip report "Peak K and the 1935 Black Creek Tribute Trip of 2015" I relocated the diary in the box of papers and in reading through it again I came across the entry for Wed. 14 Aug. 1935 when eighteen-year-old Bob Blair and seventeen-year-old Fred Nagel assigned to wood and water duties for the camp "went down the trail to the creek, crossed it and started up Dora Mountain to climb Parka Rock." And there began my search to locate Parka Rock. The south side of Dora Mountain from Black Creek is seldom climbed. There is a continuous line of cliffs with dense timber in its lower reaches that run from its western end punctuated by the indentation of the bare walls of the Doig Lake cirque and then resuming in a tortuous wrap around of glacial aprons hidden in the timber of the lower southeast ridge until finally curving around to the east where it meets the huge slide path of a tangled jungle of aspen saplings thick as any willow patch could grow. Two weeks before climbing Dora and searching for Parka Rock I hiked the seven miles into the 1935 C. M. C. camp site to get an idea of what Bob Blair and Fred Nagel were looking at when they set out for Dora Mountain and Parka Rock. I could see from the camp site that there were two rock points at the top of the southeast ridge that conceivably could be Parka Rock. The lower point seemed more plausible as it had the form of an upthrust-clenched fist with the thumb pressed against the palm of the hand and a thumb point of rock poking through the middle fingers of the knuckles of the clenched fist. Bob had written that they "climbed a swell pointed aiguille." It was not clear from the diary whether the "swell pointed aiguille" was the point of rock I saw or the clenched fist of knuckles of rock was Parka Rock or were they one and the same or different? But it was a starting point for the search. I wasn't prepared to climb that day as the trail Bob and Fred had used to approach Dora from the campsite has long since been abandoned and I had no hopes of finding it. I used the time in the remainder of the day to hike out on the old C. C. C. Trail above Black Lake and the Olinger property where I decided the most direct but surely not the most prudent line to bypass the timbered glacial aprons of the lower southeast ridge was the tangled jungle of aspen saplings of the eastern slide path to intersect with the upper two points of the southeast ridge. CLIMBING DORA MOUNTAIN I returned two weeks later camping across the Black Creek valley from the east side slide path of Dora Mountain. The following is an anatomy of bushwhacking in the Gore Range. I had before me from my camp a 400-foot descent from the C. C. C. Trail through the twisted dead fall of the timber to the creek where I had taken a bearing on a Y shaped pond that bisected the creek. I readily found some downed logs across the creek and then crossed two smaller channels on rocks to the unexpected marsh lands that were part of the pond. I had to detour around them back into the timber until I could gain the small talus patch that signaled the beginning of the 3,000 foot slide path. I knew I couldn't possibly thrash my way up 3,000 feet of tangled aspen saplings so I took to the margins of the left side of the slide path where a less dense mixture of spruce and aspen provided a route to the next small clearing. Now the margin of the timber was at the base of the jumbled lower faces of the southeast ridge which gave me no other option than to veer into the tangled jungle of aspen saplings where I felt the paranoia of the imprisonment of the dense branches that I beat my way through until I broke free at their upper limits a couple of hundred feet below the intersection of the southeast ridge with the plateau of Dora Mountain. FINDING HEINIE CAPPEL'S CROSS There is something on the order of an old saying that you can't find what you are looking for because it is right in front of you. At first I saw it as something of a pole magnified against a bright blue sky on the ridge line of the highest point of the southeast ridge which was still a couple of hundred feet above me. I kept my eye on this pole as something of a curiosity as I climbed the remainder of the slide path to the plateau where I turned and faced the southeast ridge where the pole was now a definite cross which according to a 1932 reference "a wooden cross, eight or ten feet high, stands on a point of Dora, and Heinie Cappel, a local rancher, claims he put it there." The Mt. Powell 1933 15M quadrangle map shows this highest point of the southeast ridge where the cross is located as Point 12,119. I descended to the point and found a stout and weathered wooden pole of the height mentioned solidly anchored in the rocks with the cross piece held in place with rusted strands and a newer strand of baling wire. I have no doubt that this is the point of Dora Mountain where Heinie Cappel placed his cross as this point is visible in the lower Black Creek valley. It might be a stretch to think this was Heinie's original cross from eighty-four years ago but perhaps one that has been replaced over the years. But I was satisfied that I had found the site of Heinie Cappel's cross on Dora Mountain. SEARCHING FOR PARKA ROCK "AIGUILLE" I had high hopes after detouring to Dora's summit that the point on the southeast ridge below Heinie Cappel's cross location might be Parka Rock. I had wanted to definitely locate and climb Parka Rock because the eighty-one interval between the 1935 ascent and my potential ascent in 2016 would be the longest documented interval between a first and second ascent in Colorado. The longest known previous interval of a Colorado summit register without climbs is fifty years between 1934 and 1984 found by Bob Martin and Mike Garratt on Wolcott Peak. The register on Guyselmann Mountain placed in 1935 and found in 1995 had an interval of sixty years without being signed but I had climbed it twice during that period and possibly others too. The longest known interval between signed climbs on a register in American mountaineering is ninety-one years dating from 1873 and found in 1964 on a pinnacle near Angora Mountain in California. I discuss these registers in more detail in my trip report "Hay Camp Creek and A Way to Guyselmann Mountain." I descended past the point of the cross on the southeast ridge and then scrambled the right side of the descending ridge to the knuckles of rock with the thumb point of rock poking above. It looked like something of an "aiguille" to me. Bob described his climb of his "swell pointed aiguille" as such. "I had to step on Fred, lying flat, to get up. Fred didn't want to go up. I had to put on my gym shoes to get down." But from what I was seeing of my "aiguille" before me didn't match Bob's short description of his climb. It would have taken something of a shoulder stand to reach a sloping ledge of inches above a serious drop off. From the ledge if one could reach it were minuscule holds to a pocket above for a stance to touch the tiniest of tops. As a consolation I climbed two of the knuckles of rock adjacent to my "aiguille" but I could see no need for someone lying flat to get up these. I had to conclude that after much effort that I hadn't located Parka Rock nor the "swell pointed aiguille" as I couldn't convince myself that my "aiguille" was the one Bob had climbed. Bob continues their climbing adventure. "Fred and I went up farther, rock climbing and then found that he had lost one of his gloves. Went back for it but couldn't find it." Then it was time for their descent. "Dropped down to a lake we had seen on the side of Dora. (Doig Lake) We dangled our feet in the water. Ate lunch there. Talked to our echoes. Came down . . . & back to camp." Now it was time for my descent and my continuing anatomy of a Gore Range bushwhack down the tortuous wrap around of the glacial aprons hidden in the timber of the lower southeast ridge. I went down the initial slopes from the ridge into the timber where gullies led to the tops of cliffs and then laterally moving left or right to find other connecting gullies between the cliffs. In one place I used a fallen tree as handholds down a break in the cliffs. When I heard the loud sounds of the rushing water of Black Creek below it was both refreshing to know the end was near but also ominous because the creek was running fast between its pinched banks. I wrestled a log out of the bank and threw it partway across the creek. It caught on some rocks and sank just as my hopes of getting across the creek did. But I had no choice but to balance myself across the submerged log to shallower water. I had one more obstacle to overcome as the creek crossing dumped me into one of those annoying trickle creek side drainages where the vegetation was as thick as those aspen saplings on the ascent. I made some final thrashings up the hillside where I knew the trail was buried in the bottom of the vegetation. I had put in a thirteen hour day to find Heinie Cappel's cross and an unsuccessful search for Bob Blair's Parka Rock and "swell pointed aiguille." But my greatest satisfaction was being able to say "well-done Bob and Fred whatever you climbed that day in 1935 on your climbing adventure on Dora Mountain." Their adventure gave me a great climbing adventure of my own. So I will put Parka Rock for another day in my Cold Case Peak File along with the likes of the "Loose Goose Pinnacle" on Red Peak and "Ikey Mountain" in the South Rock Creek valley. And I will remember something of Bob Blair and Fred Nagel and Heinie Cappel in the following. BOB BLAIR joined the Junior Group of the Colorado Mountain Club in 1932 and became an avid mountaineer and skier. He probably led his first 14,000-foot peak climb being that of Humboldt during the 1932 Junior Annual Summer Outing. In 1933 he attended the Colorado Mountain Club's Annual Summer Outing at Snowmass Lake where he undoubtedly gained experience in climbing the fourteen thousand foot peaks of the outing. In that same year he was elected President of the Junior Group of the C. M. C. By 1934 Bob had gained enough mountaineering experience that he was part of some notable climbs on the Annual Summer Outing to the Blue Lakes region of Mount Sneffles. He and two others made a survey of possible routes up Dallas Peak before turning back at the col immediately east of the summit. A day or so later Bob and another climbed S3 for a first ascent and then followed along the southwest ridge to T0 for a second ascent. The pair then concluded their day's activities by traversing along the east ridge for a first ascent of West Dallas Peak. Later in the outing a first ascent of S6 was made by Bob and two others when they joined a party of four on top. The 1935 Gore Range Outing saw Bob and Fred Nagel with two others make the first ascents of Peaks D and E. In addition to those ascents and Parka Rock of Dora Mountain, Bob also climbed Little Powell, Mount Powell, Peak L, Peak G and a second ascent of Peak F with others. When Bob sent me his diary of that outing in 1992 he wrote "I was 18 then and interested in climbing, girls and food." Bob had used a small rope in climbing Peak G and possibly gained some technical climbing experience in the following years for he is listed as the Equipment Director for the first Colorado Mountain Club School of Mountaineering at the 1939 Annual Summer Outing in Rocky Mountain National Park. After being accepted for flight training with the Army Air Corps, Bob while climbing with the Colorado Mountain Club in September of 1940 fell while rock climbing on North Maroon Peak and was hospitalized with a fractured pelvis. His evacuation was one of the earliest large scale organized mountain rescues in the state. The rescue details were written up in the Club's magazine "Trail and Timberline" and in "Popular Mechanics" magazine. Bob recovered from his injuries and like many of the Colorado Mountain Club Juniors who climbed in the 1930's, Robert Blair served during World War II as a Captain in the Army Air Force as a bomber pilot in the Aleutians, Formosa and the Philippines. And like many of those who served and returned I find no further record of Bob Blair climbing with the Colorado Mountain Club. Bob had graduated from the University of Colorado in 1938 with a degree in geology and after the war became an exploration geologist. Robert Blair passed away in Durango, Colorado in 2009 at the age of 92. FRED NAGEL joined the Juniors of the Colorado Mountain Club in 1935. I wrote of him in a previous trip report, "Peak K and the 1935 Black Creek Tribute Trip of 2015." I was never able to find more about local rancher HEINIE CAPPEL other than the reference to the cross that he placed on a point of Dora Mountain and which I located at the top of the southeast ridge.

Searching For Parka Rock "Aiguille" And Finding Heinie Cappel's Cross On Dora Mtn

SEARCHING FOR PARKA ROCK "AIGUILLE" AND FINDING HEINIE CAPPEL'S CROSS ON DORA MOUNTAIN, GORE RANGE
by gore galore

Dora Mountain is one of those big flat-topped mountains such that if it were located in any other Colorado mountain range it would appropriately be named by its generic description as "Flattop Mountain." But we are fortunate that this mountain, a remnant of a pre glacial erosion surface is located in the Gore Range where some unknown homesteader, rancher or prospector gave it the fetching feminine name of Dora Mountain.

One would think that such a mountain would have a well-constructed trail to its summit but this is the Gore Range and things like that don't happen in these mountains. The closest you can get to the mountain by trail is Surprise Lake on the northern flanks of the mountain where a bushwhack of some 1,500 feet brings one to the edge of this geologic peneplain.

Then as if by deliberate geologic machinations the exact summit is placed on the opposite southern side of the mountain or in hiking terms one and a half miles south from timberline to Dora Lake and a mile east gaining another 700 feet from timberline to the talus and rock outcrops that distinguish the summit.

This dogleg hiking route is necessary because of the tremendous Otter Creek cirque which cuts into the northeast part of the mountain. In my previous explorations of Dora Mountain I once entered this cirque from Surprise Lake and climbed its north buttress directly in line to the summit of Dora.

You would also think Dora Mountain as one of the few named mountains in the Gore Range would have its share of ascents but it doesn't. A register placed in 2008 showed only five parties signing to 2016 when I made my present climb as related in this report. I think part of the reason for this is that others may consider Dora Lake as the top of the mountain.

Although I first climbed Dora Mountain in 1981, my present interest in Dora can be traced back to 1992 when I received a diary of the 1935 Colorado Mountain Club Outing in the Gore Range from Bob Blair one of the participants in that historic two-week outing. Back then I was interested in the big lettered peaks climbed from their camp site on the south fork of Black Creek. Eventually I filed the diary away in a manilla envelope in a box of papers to be forgotten for some years.

My interest in the 1935 C. M. C. Outing was rekindled in 2015 when I participated in the Black Creek Tribute Trip as a remembrance of those climbs and climbers from eighty years ago. As part of my trip report "Peak K and the 1935 Black Creek Tribute Trip of 2015" I relocated the diary in the box of papers and in reading through it again I came across the entry for Wed. 14 Aug. 1935 when eighteen-year-old Bob Blair and seventeen-year-old Fred Nagel assigned to wood and water duties for the camp "went down the trail to the creek, crossed it and started up Dora Mountain to climb Parka Rock." And there began my search to locate Parka Rock.

The south side of Dora Mountain from Black Creek is seldom climbed. There is a continuous line of cliffs with dense timber in its lower reaches that run from its western end punctuated by the indentation of the bare walls of the Doig Lake cirque and then resuming in a tortuous wrap around of glacial aprons hidden in the timber of the lower southeast ridge until finally curving around to the east where it meets the huge slide path of a tangled jungle of aspen saplings thick as any willow patch could grow.

Two weeks before climbing Dora and searching for Parka Rock I hiked the seven miles into the 1935 C. M. C. camp site to get an idea of what Bob Blair and Fred Nagel were looking at when they set out for Dora Mountain and Parka Rock. I could see from the camp site that there were two rock points at the top of the southeast ridge that conceivably could be Parka Rock. The lower point seemed more plausible as it had the form of an upthrust-clenched fist with the thumb pressed against the palm of the hand and a thumb point of rock poking through the middle fingers of the knuckles of the clenched fist.

Bob had written that they "climbed a swell pointed aiguille." It was not clear from the diary whether the "swell pointed aiguille" was the point of rock I saw or the clenched fist of knuckles of rock was Parka Rock or were they one and the same or different? But it was a starting point for the search.

I wasn't prepared to climb that day as the trail Bob and Fred had used to approach Dora from the campsite has long since been abandoned and I had no hopes of finding it. I used the time in the remainder of the day to hike out on the old C. C. C. Trail above Black Lake and the Olinger property where I decided the most direct but surely not the most prudent line to bypass the timbered glacial aprons of the lower southeast ridge was the tangled jungle of aspen saplings of the eastern slide path to intersect with the upper two points of the southeast ridge.

CLIMBING DORA MOUNTAIN
I returned two weeks later camping across the Black Creek valley from the east side slide path of Dora Mountain. The following is an anatomy of bushwhacking in the Gore Range.

I had before me from my camp a 400-foot descent from the C. C. C. Trail through the twisted dead fall of the timber to the creek where I had taken a bearing on a Y shaped pond that bisected the creek. I readily found some downed logs across the creek and then crossed two smaller channels on rocks to the unexpected marsh lands that were part of the pond. I had to detour around them back into the timber until I could gain the small talus patch that signaled the beginning of the 3,000 foot slide path.

I knew I couldn't possibly thrash my way up 3,000 feet of tangled aspen saplings so I took to the margins of the left side of the slide path where a less dense mixture of spruce and aspen provided a route to the next small clearing.

Now the margin of the timber was at the base of the jumbled lower faces of the southeast ridge which gave me no other option than to veer into the tangled jungle of aspen saplings where I felt the paranoia of the imprisonment of the dense branches that I beat my way through until I broke free at their upper limits a couple of hundred feet below the intersection of the southeast ridge with the plateau of Dora Mountain.

FINDING HEINIE CAPPEL'S CROSS
There is something on the order of an old saying that you can't find what you are looking for because it is right in front of you. At first I saw it as something of a pole magnified against a bright blue sky on the ridge line of the highest point of the southeast ridge which was still a couple of hundred feet above me.

I kept my eye on this pole as something of a curiosity as I climbed the remainder of the slide path to the plateau where I turned and faced the southeast ridge where the pole was now a definite cross which according to a 1932 reference "a wooden cross, eight or ten feet high, stands on a point of Dora, and Heinie Cappel, a local rancher, claims he put it there." The Mt. Powell 1933 15M quadrangle map shows this highest point of the southeast ridge where the cross is located as Point 12,119.

I descended to the point and found a stout and weathered wooden pole of the height mentioned solidly anchored in the rocks with the cross piece held in place with rusted strands and a newer strand of baling wire. I have no doubt that this is the point of Dora Mountain where Heinie Cappel placed his cross as this point is visible in the lower Black Creek valley. It might be a stretch to think this was Heinie's original cross from eighty-four years ago but perhaps one that has been replaced over the years. But I was satisfied that I had found the site of Heinie Cappel's cross on Dora Mountain.

SEARCHING FOR PARKA ROCK "AIGUILLE"
I had high hopes after detouring to Dora's summit that the point on the southeast ridge below Heinie Cappel's cross location might be Parka Rock. I had wanted to definitely locate and climb Parka Rock because the eighty-one interval between the 1935 ascent and my potential ascent in 2016 would be the longest documented interval between a first and second ascent in Colorado.

The longest known previous interval of a Colorado summit register without climbs is fifty years between 1934 and 1984 found by Bob Martin and Mike Garratt on Wolcott Peak. The register on Guyselmann Mountain placed in 1935 and found in 1995 had an interval of sixty years without being signed but I had climbed it twice during that period and possibly others too. The longest known interval between signed climbs on a register in American mountaineering is ninety-one years dating from 1873 and found in 1964 on a pinnacle near Angora Mountain in California. I discuss these registers in more detail in my trip report "Hay Camp Creek and A Way to Guyselmann Mountain."

I descended past the point of the cross on the southeast ridge and then scrambled the right side of the descending ridge to the knuckles of rock with the thumb point of rock poking above. It looked like something of an "aiguille" to me.

Bob described his climb of his "swell pointed aiguille" as such. "I had to step on Fred, lying flat, to get up. Fred didn't want to go up. I had to put on my gym shoes to get down."

But from what I was seeing of my "aiguille" before me didn't match Bob's short description of his climb. It would have taken something of a shoulder stand to reach a sloping ledge of inches above a serious drop off. From the ledge if one could reach it were minuscule holds to a pocket above for a stance to touch the tiniest of tops.

As a consolation I climbed two of the knuckles of rock adjacent to my "aiguille" but I could see no need for someone lying flat to get up these. I had to conclude that after much effort that I hadn't located Parka Rock nor the "swell pointed aiguille" as I couldn't convince myself that my "aiguille" was the one Bob had climbed.

Bob continues their climbing adventure. "Fred and I went up farther, rock climbing and then found that he had lost one of his gloves. Went back for it but couldn't find it."

Then it was time for their descent. "Dropped down to a lake we had seen on the side of Dora. (Doig Lake) We dangled our feet in the water. Ate lunch there. Talked to our echoes. Came down . . . & back to camp."

Now it was time for my descent and my continuing anatomy of a Gore Range bushwhack down the tortuous wrap around of the glacial aprons hidden in the timber of the lower southeast ridge. I went down the initial slopes from the ridge into the timber where gullies led to the tops of cliffs and then laterally moving left or right to find other connecting gullies between the cliffs. In one place I used a fallen tree as handholds down a break in the cliffs.

When I heard the loud sounds of the rushing water of Black Creek below it was both refreshing to know the end was near but also ominous because the creek was running fast between its pinched banks. I wrestled a log out of the bank and threw it partway across the creek. It caught on some rocks and sank just as my hopes of getting across the creek did. But I had no choice but to balance myself across the submerged log to shallower water.

I had one more obstacle to overcome as the creek crossing dumped me into one of those annoying trickle creek side drainages where the vegetation was as thick as those aspen saplings on the ascent. I made some final thrashings up the hillside where I knew the trail was buried in the bottom of the vegetation.

I had put in a thirteen hour day to find Heinie Cappel's cross and an unsuccessful search for Bob Blair's Parka Rock and "swell pointed aiguille." But my greatest satisfaction was being able to say "well-done Bob and Fred whatever you climbed that day in 1935 on your climbing adventure on Dora Mountain." Their adventure gave me a great climbing adventure of my own. So I will put Parka Rock for another day in my Cold Case Peak File along with the likes of the "Loose Goose Pinnacle" on Red Peak and "Ikey Mountain" in the South Rock Creek valley.

And I will remember something of Bob Blair and Fred Nagel and Heinie Cappel in the following.

BOB BLAIR joined the Junior Group of the Colorado Mountain Club in 1932 and became an avid mountaineer and skier. He probably led his first 14,000-foot peak climb being that of Humboldt during the 1932 Junior Annual Summer Outing. In 1933 he attended the Colorado Mountain Club's Annual Summer Outing at Snowmass Lake where he undoubtedly gained experience in climbing the fourteen thousand foot peaks of the outing. In that same year he was elected President of the Junior Group of the C. M. C.

By 1934 Bob had gained enough mountaineering experience that he was part of some notable climbs on the Annual Summer Outing to the Blue Lakes region of Mount Sneffles. He and two others made a survey of possible routes up Dallas Peak before turning back at the col immediately east of the summit. A day or so later Bob and another climbed S3 for a first ascent and then followed along the southwest ridge to T0 for a second ascent. The pair then concluded their day's activities by traversing along the east ridge for a first ascent of West Dallas Peak. Later in the outing a first ascent of S6 was made by Bob and two others when they joined a party of four on top.

The 1935 Gore Range Outing saw Bob and Fred Nagel with two others make the first ascents of Peaks D and E. In addition to those ascents and Parka Rock of Dora Mountain, Bob also climbed Little Powell, Mount Powell, Peak L, Peak G and a second ascent of Peak F with others. When Bob sent me his diary of that outing in 1992 he wrote "I was 18 then and interested in climbing, girls and food."

Bob had used a small rope in climbing Peak G and possibly gained some technical climbing experience in the following years for he is listed as the Equipment Director for the first Colorado Mountain Club School of Mountaineering at the 1939 Annual Summer Outing in Rocky Mountain National Park.

After being accepted for flight training with the Army Air Corps, Bob while climbing with the Colorado Mountain Club in September of 1940 fell while rock climbing on North Maroon Peak and was hospitalized with a fractured pelvis. His evacuation was one of the earliest large scale organized mountain rescues in the state. The rescue details were written up in the Club's magazine "Trail and Timberline" and in "Popular Mechanics" magazine.

Bob recovered from his injuries and like many of the Colorado Mountain Club Juniors who climbed in the 1930's, Robert Blair served during World War II as a Captain in the Army Air Force as a bomber pilot in the Aleutians, Formosa and the Philippines. And like many of those who served and returned I find no further record of Bob Blair climbing with the Colorado Mountain Club.

Bob had graduated from the University of Colorado in 1938 with a degree in geology and after the war became an exploration geologist. Robert Blair passed away in Durango, Colorado in 2009 at the age of 92.

FRED NAGEL joined the Juniors of the Colorado Mountain Club in 1935. I wrote of him in a previous trip report, "Peak K and the 1935 Black Creek Tribute Trip of 2015."

I was never able to find more about local rancher HEINIE CAPPEL other than the reference to the cross that he placed on a point of Dora Mountain and which I located at the top of the southeast ridge.

Comments or Questions

Jay521

Nice - as usual...
9/26/2016 11:01am

Another good one, Mr. G

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