Cook organized an expedition along the lines suggested by Brooks and
set
out in the spring of 1903. The expedition used the
combination of a pack
train and a collapsible boat to move its supplies, but the boat proved
unsuccessful
and the entire expedition followed Brooks’s trail overland to
the Peters
Glacier. Two attempts were made to scale the mountain, the last
reaching
something over 11,000 feet on the Northwest Face.  During
the expedition Cook put to use a number of innovative ideas, including
the
windproof silk tent he had invented with Amundsen in the Antarctic, and
sleeping
bags that could double as panchos.
Instead of returning the way
he came, Cook struck out through unknown territory to the northeast
around
the McKinley group, discovered an unknown pass back across the
mountains
and returned by rafting down the Chulitna River. This first
circumnavigation
of Mount McKinley was not duplicated for 75 years, and made
some significant
discoveries, including Kahiltna Dome and the Bulls River
Pass.
In 1904 Cook presented three
papers at the International
Geographical Conference in Washington, D.C. In 1905 his only
natural
child, Helen, was born, and in 1906 he set out again for Alaska for
another
try at Mount McKinley.
This time he brought along a
shallow-draft powerboat
of his design to move supplies up the Alaskan rivers.
After a fruitless summer of reconnoitering with his pack train, he appeared to
have given up any attempt to climb the mountain
by a new route from the south when he reached the ridge dividing the
Ruth
and Tokositna Glaciers. From
here the mountain
looked impossible, and the party returned to the coast. But
in late August
Cook took Edward Barrill, one of his packers, on what he
said
was a reconnaissance for a future attempt. They went up the
Susitna
River in the Bolshoy, and when they reappeared a
month later, Cook
announced that they had hit upon a totally unknown route up a large
glacier,
found a workable ridge and reached the summit on September 16,
1906.
As proof, he produced a picture of Ed Barrill standing at the summit
holding
an American flag. As a result, Cook was elected the second
president
of the Explorers Club of New York and earned the financial backing of a
millionaire
sportsman, John R. Bradley, for his most cherished ambition, a try at
the
North Pole. |
