ME AND JOHN WESLEY POWELL WHEN THE MAJOR AND I WENT WEST AND CLIMBED TO THE SUMMIT OF MOUNT POWELL

Mount Powell, 13,580

by gore galore

I have a fascination with the adventurers and explorers of the early American West such that in those unguarded moments of mine I sometimes think of myself as one of them and that is how I made the acquaintance years ago of Major John Wesley Powell.

Major Powell as may be known was a Civil War veteran who lost his right arm at the battle of Shiloh in 1862 and then as most everyone knows gained enduring fame by boating the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon in 1869 and into the pages of western American history.

The Major as he was often called made two scientific exploring expeditions to the territory of Colorado in 1867 and 1868 during which time the genesis of exploring the Colorado River began to take shape. A little-known fact from these expeditions is that by 1868 Major Powell had climbed ten of the higher peaks of the Rocky Mountains.

A lesser-known fact hardly remembered in western American history is my association in the mountain climbing of those expeditions when it was me and John Wesley Powell in a time long ago when the Major and I went west and climbed to the summit of Mount Powell.

And the story goes something like the following.

ILLINOIS WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY

In 1865 Major Powell accepted a professorship of geology at Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington, Illinois. Some one hundred years later I was accepted as a student enrolled at Illinois Wesleyan University.

At that time, I would be hard pressed to say that I had ever heard of the name of John Wesley Powell or that I even knew much about the American West and its geography other than I could recite the state capitols excepting of course which Dakota had Bismarck or Pierre.

Midway through his second year of teaching, the restless Professor Powell left Wesleyan for a position at nearby Illinois State Normal University with bigger plans to increase the collections of the Illinois Natural History Museum with an expedition to the Rocky Mountains.

I left Wesleyan after two years for Iowa perhaps displaying the same restlessness as Professor Powell for something bigger or perhaps in youthful enthusiasm it was because Iowa had a bigger football team than Wesleyan at least on paper if not on the field.

In 1867 Professor Powell secured enough financial support from various sources to fund his scientific expedition to the “Parks” in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado territory. His party was made up of friends, relatives and college students numbering twelve persons' total. It was probably the first field trip undertaken by an American university.

Professor Powell managed to collect his natural history specimens while getting his expedition down the Front Range where they climbed Pikes Peak and through South Park following the South Platte River climbing Mount Lincoln at its source and then to Middle Park and returning to Denver.

At Iowa I had no such professor as Professor Powell, nor did I study scientific subjects that might require an adventuresome field trip. I stayed home that summer and worked a construction job.

The following year in 1868 Major Powell secured appropriations for a much more ambitious scientific expedition of the Colorado River under the banner of “The Rocky Mountain Scientific Exploring Expedition.” Powell's climbs on this expedition of Longs Peak and Mount Powell were but a part of the larger plan of preparations to follow the Colorado River through uncharted land to its lower reaches.

I spent another summer working construction, but the time was drawing closer as I made preparations when I would move westward across uncharted land to exactly where I did not know.

GOING WEST

I had no such legislative or institutional appropriations as John Wesley Powell did when I went west other than some savings from construction work and the fact that gas was 30 cents a gallon in those days.

I loaded my possessions consisting of a change of clothes and some odds and ends in the back seat of my car. Among those odds and ends that I distinctly remember to this day was my manual Smith Corona typewriter, an adjustable desk lamp and a metal waste basket imprinted with various banners on the outside.

My manual typewriter had seen its best days as the middle bar of the letter “e” was worn such that it no longer imprinted itself on paper and the key for the letter “t” no longer worked.

There are a lot of words in the English language with the letter's “e” and “t” in them such that in my last year of schooling I would type my term papers by day and spend the nights inking in the missing letter “t” and the middle bar of the letter “e” with the hope my professors would be oblivious as to what they might see.

I have no idea why I brought my broken typewriter with me other than perhaps I thought of myself as an aspiring trip report writer climbing mountains by day and churning out trip reports by night while reading words with missing letters by the light of my adjustable desk lamp and seeing the futility of it for the rejects they were as I wadded them into paper balls and tossed them into my waiting metal waste basket.

I would have brought my favorite cast iron frying pan westward with me too except for a moment that I will never be able to explain to anyone when I used it to drain the oil from my car in preparation for my trip. That evening or the following one after a thorough scrubbing, I watched in abject horror as I cooked a hamburger and saw the oily residue percolate and bubble from the metal pores of the pan into an oily juice that sauteed my hamburger such that I threw away the frying pan and hamburger forever.

COLORADO

I drove across the unknown of the Great Plains just as Professor Powell first crossed the same, one hundred and four years earlier. I landed in Colorado Springs at the foot of Pikes Peak which Major Powell's party climbed in 1867 after an arduous approach across the Rampart Range in which their wagons at one point had to be unloaded and dismantled to pass a huge rocky stretch and then reassembled on the other side.

I looked upon Pikes Peak not so much as a mountain to climb but rather as a tourist top to visit. Finally, the day came when I drove the Pikes Peak Road after having the clutch in my car dismantled and then reassembled with new parts.

I stopped at the summit parking area and walked to the summit sign and had someone snap a picture. I considered this act the culmination of a marvelous driving experience to the top of Pikes Peak not so much like Major Powell's but at least I had been there.

A couple of years later when mountain climbing, and fourteeners had taken hold of me I traveled across South Park and climbed to the summit of Mount Lincoln high above the source of the South Platte River just as Major Powell did in 1867.

Later I would follow Powell again by climbing to the summit of Longs Peak where Major Powell accompanied by William Byers of the “Rocky Mountain News” and several others made the ascent in 1868. It was from this summit that Byers pointed out to Powell the mountains to the west as “Gore's range.”

MOUNT POWELL'S HISTORIC SUMMIT REGISTER

I made my first climb of Mount Powell in 1980 following the route of three sentences from Piney Lake found in the Ormes' “Guide to the Colorado Mountains” of the time. I had no thought as to how Major Powell might have climbed the mountain other than I had made the summit as he did in 1868.

I would have attached no particular significance to my ascent except in a moment of curiosity I found a reference in a magazine article that the Colorado Mountain Club on their annual outing of 1935 to the Gore Range had found the tin can and the record it contained by Major Powell and brought it down from the summit and deposited it with the Colorado State Historical Society in Denver.

Noticing the quizzical look on the librarian's face indicated that mine was no ordinary request as we descended to the basement of the State Historical Society in 1981. Row upon row of shelving of pioneer clothing and dusty artifacts greeted our Dewey decimal search for a tin can.

Suddenly at the end of one row the librarian swiftly grabbed a stool, stepped up, reached to the top shelf and in one fell swoop brought down a rusted tin can and placed it in my hands. It was one of those rusty tin cans with holes that you might expect to find in a long-ago abandoned campsite.

The fragile paper inside the can was tightly curled like that of the leaves of a cigar such that it couldn't be removed without damaging. I had the feeling as I held the tin can and its contents that I had now made the formal acquaintance with Major John Wesley Powell and like others who then knew him well, I too could address him as the Major. I had a picture made of the tin can.

I related my experience to a fellow CMC member who arranged a grant for preservation of the tin can and its contents. The work was completed in 1985 and on my return trip to the State Historical Society I could make out the name of “JW Powell” on the now flattened paper.

I had some photos made of the three sheets of paper which is probably the oldest existing summit register in Colorado.

MOUNT POWELL CLIMBS

My interest in Mount Powell and the Major grew over the following years as I made numerous climbs of the mountain and gained more familiarity with the Major through books and magazine articles.

The accumulated printed information led me to explore the mountain over the next several years by climbing seven different routes with some additional variations. Among these were the historic routes of the 1873 Hayden Survey from Piney Lake in the river valley, the 1931 U.S.G.S. route on the northeast face snowfields, the Carl and Bob Melzer traverse of Mount Powell to Eagles Nest in 1942 and the unique climbs of the northeast face cirque glacier, the east couloir snow route, a route on the southwest face and the West Gully route the significance of which I would learn of much later.

Of the original climbs of 1868, 1873, 1913 and 1931 entered in Major Powell's register, I have yet to follow Percy Hagerman's route up Black Creek from Black Lake in 1913 and it is one that I may never do.

And of these many routes I still had at the time yet to locate the original route that Major Powell used to climb his namesake mountain in 1868.

MAJOR POWELL'S ROUTE

By 1985 my research travels from some correspondence led me to the Illinois State Normal University library where Major Powell had been a professor while undertaking his Colorado expeditions.

In the microfilm holdings of the library I found the “Chicago Tribune” newspaper article of October 26, 1868 by Ned E. Farrell who accompanied the Major on the first ascent of the mountain to be named “Powell Mountain” on September 26, 1868.

I attached such great importance to this finding that I copied the article in long hand on four and one quarter pages of a yellow legal pad, the copy of which I still have today.

Major Powell had previously seen “his peak” from Mount Bross outside of Hot Sulphur Springs. I could see for myself from that same summit what the Major saw in the arch of the Cataract Creek valley as it curved around the north side of Eagles Nest leading up valley toward Mount Powell.

I now knew that the only reasonable route from the upper Cataract Creek valley was the West Gully route that I had climbed in 1982. The Major and Farrell climbed the route underfoot in slippery snow conditions “passing many places where a single mistep or a slip of the foot would be certain death.” I had climbed the route of their ascent a week earlier in time of September 19 in a much later year with cumulus clouds overhead.

ORMES' “GUIDE TO THE COLORADO MOUNTAINS” BOOK

In 1991 I was contacted by the Colorado Mountain Club's editorial committee to provide some route information for the Gore Range for the fully revised 9^th edition of the “Guide to the Colorado Mountains” to be published in 1992.

Among the routes I suggested was the Mount Powell West Gully route with an approach from Piney Lake as I climbed it in 1982. The notation is found on page 111 of the guide. I sometimes think I should have called it the Powell route.

Although I had climbed the West Gully route there was the lingering thought that I should climb it using the Cataract Creek valley approach as Major Powell did in 1868. Many years later on another September day in 2014 I followed the modern day trails of the Cataract Creek valley to a camp below Mirror Lake.

The morning was overcast and I was met with a dense fog in the west gully such that at its top I could see nothing but the rocks underfoot. I took a compass bearing for the summit and the eventual height of rocks suggested I was on the summit but I couldn't tell for certain.

I was fortunate to find the small cairn that indicated the top of the gully for the descent out of the fog and into the valley. I began to question whether I had made the summit and the thought long remained with me until some day I could return.

Several years later in 2021 after an abortive attempt from Elliott Ridge I made my original 1982 approach of the West Gully route from Piney Lake and Game Pass. It was a fine September day as I followed the route now on page 154 of the later 10^th edition of the guide to the summit and had the satisfaction of knowing that I did indeed make the summit of the height of rocks in the fog on that other September day of 2014.

Ned Farrell had written in his “Chicago Tribune” dispatch that from the summit “We had one of the finest views the eye of man ever witnessed, far surpassing, says the Major, that from any of the other mountains of the great Rocky range.”

It is the same view I have witnessed in the numerous times I have climbed the mountain except for that foggy September day of 2014. I had now come full circle with Major John Wesley Powell for I could do no more in my mountain climbing association with the Major.

AFTERWARD

After his ascent of Mount Powell the Major and Farrell returned to the valley and met the remainder of their party at Gore's Pass moving on to winter quarters further west in the White River country where in the following year of 1869 Major Powell and his party boated down the Colorado River and into the pages of western American history.

After my ascent of Mount Powell I returned home realizing that I am now facing my 48^th winter in the Colorado high country which is a long time to make a go of it all the while slowly sinking into obscurity. But whenever I feel that sinking sensation I can look back in western American history in days long ago when it was me and John Wesley Powell when the Major and I went west and climbed to the summit of Mount Powell.