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  On August 29, they made their first assault on McKinley’s main peak. They hoped to reach the top in five days and return two or three days later. In order to do so, they cached everything they did not absolutely need, and in his rucksack each man carried ten days worth of food.

  The ascent began easily enough, following an old avalanche path, although to a man the climbers staggered under the weight of the packs. When they paused to stamp footholds and catch their breath, they leaned their backs against the steep slope. Without warning, Shainwald lost his balance and began to slip. Instinctively, Cook went for him and somehow managed to jockey him into a safe position. It was a close call—had Shainwald fallen, he would not have come to a stop for thousands of feet.

  On they went, and up. Having to focus all their energies on the work of the climb, they proceeded in silence. In another few hundred feet, they were halted by a slope ranging from forty to sixty degrees that refused to provide traction. Now came the difficult job of chopping steps in the ice. Equally strenuous was the effort to clear more than a foot of soft snow just to find stable ice into which a step could be cut. Cook led off, using short, powerful strokes to slash the three-inch blade of his crosshead ax into the solid ice, as he had done when he and Amundsen had made the first technical ascent in the Antarctic. Once he had cut a new foothold, he tested it with one foot, while keeping most of his weight on the other foot. In this way, they advanced step by step up the mountain, against a freezing wind and driving snow.

  Everyone took turns clearing the snow and cutting steps—one hundred at a time before giving way to the next man—except for Dunn, who had inexplicably left his ice ax behind that morning. “I hadn’t given [it] a thought,” explained Dunn, who was carrying a willow pole from one of the large camp tents. No one volunteered to trade his trusty ax for a walking stick.

  The setting sun forced the climbers to find a place to make camp for the night. Unable to locate level ground large enough for the silk climbing tent, which could accommodate four men with no room to spare, they were compelled to clear away the snow and cut into the ice to make a suitable flooring. They made tea, ate pemmican, and slept that night at ninety-five hundred feet.

  The following day, they found the slopes even steeper, and their staircase of steps newly cut into the ice turned into more of a step ladder. After they tied themselves together in pairs, Cook led the way up a steep face.

  They camped at nearly eleven thousand feet, again having to chop a floor into the ice for the tent to keep from rolling off their perch in their sleep. Everyone was exhausted and disappointed by the difficulty and slowness of the climb, which was taking twice as long as planned.

  The act of lighting the alcohol burner brought cheer, and warm tea further raised their spirits. Soon, they were joking and laughing. Not long after settling down for the night, someone peeked out of the tent and said breathlessly, “My God, look at that!” Everyone came out of the tent to see the sight that had stirred such a reaction. The usual cloud cover had abruptly cleared—and there, seemingly within touch, stood the great summit (McKinley’s northern peak) they were aiming for, “its glittering spurs piecing a dark purple sky nine thousand feet above us.”

  Scores of avalanches could be seen crashing down the sides of the peak with “trains of rock and ice followed by clouds of vapour and snow.” The reverberating sound was a “chaos of awful noise.” Without a word being uttered, each climber understood that was where they were headed. The frightening scene unfolding before them “made one’s marrow shrink.”

  Back inside the tent, no one slept for the longest while. Bundled as they were in the warmth of their bags, they were not cold, and yet they shivered.

  In the morning, they climbed from the tent to see an entirely different scene. The peak above them shone a vivid blue and seemed less intimidating in the golden light of dawn. Immediately above them, however, they could see a series of rock-and-ice obstructions that appeared impenetrable.

  Dunn immediately announced that no further progress was possible. Cook was not yet prepared to accept defeat. They had food for several more days, and if they could find a safe and sure line of attack, there was still a chance for success. After breakfast, he said to Dunn, “Don’t pack up. Come along.” Dunn refused to join him and began packing up for the descent.

  With Printz, Cook scouted the terrain above. Within a short distance, the ridge upon which they were camped led steeply to a granite cliff that looked climbable, but that was just for starters. Not far away, there was a steep ridge stretching for several thousand feet which appeared impassable.*

  With their way blocked and the season for mountaineering at this latitude closed, it was time to leave. They came down the mountain rapidly, not wanting to be caught by winter at high altitude, and were reunited with the packtrain.

  Rather than returning by the same way they had come, Cook insisted on forging a new route that allowed him to study McKinley’s contour from various angles. They encountered an uncharted 6,000-foot pass that cut the central axis of the Alaskan Range, and crossed over it. As they did, they were the first to look across the range from its heart, seeing both the east and the west horizons.

  The trip back proved as difficult as their ordeal in reaching the mountain. At the end, racing against worsening weather and with their supplies nearly gone, they constructed rafts from cottonwood trees and floated down the Chulitna River. Before boarding the rafts, Cook decided against shooting the “good, faithful animals” they had so relied upon, ordering the release of the seven surviving horses—the rest had either wandered off or been destroyed after breaking a leg or becoming seriously ill. The grass was good here, and it was hoped that when deep snow came the horses could feed by digging under it.

  While rafting down the Chulitna, they came to an impressive glacier, which Cook named Fidele—Marie’s maiden name—and another large one farther south, which he christened Ruth, after his stepdaughter. The northeastern slopes of McKinley drained into both glaciers. To determine whether the mountain might be climbed from this direction, Cook walked up to six thousand feet. What he saw looked promising, but there was no time for further exploring.

  The party floated into what served as civilization—a river trading post at Susitna Station—on September 25, exhausted and near starvation, almost shoeless and their clothes in rags. They had made history as the first to circumnavigate McKinley, an achievement that would not be duplicated for half a century. In three months, they had walked seven hundred miles and traveled three hundred miles by boat and raft, adding greatly to the knowledge of Alaska’s rugged interior.

  “McKinley offers a unique challenge to mountaineers . . . its ascent will prove a tremendous task,” Cook wrote upon his return home. “It is the loftiest mountain in North America, the steepest mountain in the world, and the most frigid of all great mountains. The prospective conqueror of America’s culminating peak will be amply rewarded, but he must be prepared to withstand the tortures of the torrids, the discomforts of the North Pole seeker, combined with the hardships of the Matterhorn ascents multiplied many times over.”

  Cook was already thinking about next time.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  FARTHEST NORTH

  UPON PEARY’S RETURN from the Arctic in 1902, he lost no time in having surgery on his mangled feet, for he realized the truth in Cook’s dire prediction that his handicap was a barrier to future polar work. For his surgeon, Peary selected one of the country’s most eminent physicians, Dr. William W. Keen of Philadelphia. During the Civil War, Keen had served as a field surgeon in the Union Army. In 1883, after undertaking advanced medical studies in Europe, he edited Gray’s Anatomy. Four years later, he performed the first successful removal of a brain tumor in the United States. In 1893, Keen was a member of a top-flight surgical team that secretly operated on President Grover Cleveland—in the salon of a private yacht as it steamed
up Long Island Sound—to remove a cancerous lesion from inside the president’s mouth.*

  After a pair of operations in the Arctic under trying conditions, Peary had been left with his two remaining little toes, which projected beyond the stumps of his missing toes. Dr. Keen evened things off a bit by amputating the last joint of the little toes. He slit the skin at the front of the feet and drew forward tissue from underneath and behind the toes, then stitched together the flaps to make a cushion for the stumps. It was the best that could be done with what remained, and upon this makeshift design Peary would walk in a peculiar shuffle for the rest of his days.

  Peary’s return to his official duties in Washington, D.C., was unheralded. Seemingly forgotten by his fellow naval engineers, even by those with whom he had previously worked, he felt as if he “had wandered back like a lost cat.” Still, owing to his seniority and after passing two promotional examinations, he rapidly advanced to the post of commander in the Civil Engineers’ Corps. His new assignment in November 1902 was in the Bureau of Yards and Docks at the Navy Department. A month later, he was sent abroad to study European types of troop barracks, and he wrote a lengthy report of his findings.

  To his dismay, Peary found that public interest in his polar efforts had waned with his long absences and repeated failures to reach his well-publicized goal. Even some of his ardent supporters in the Peary Arctic Club were discouraged by his expensive, unsuccessful efforts. The response to his new call for funds to mount another attempt on the Pole was tepid at best. Never one to give up easily, he undertook what he referred to sarcastically as one long, continuous “black march” to raise money for his next expedition by lecturing, writing, and otherwise laying siege to anyone presumed to possess ample means.

  In an effort to find financing, Peary wrote letters of solicitation to members of his Arctic club as well as to potential new backers. His tone could be blunt and stern at times, as when he wrote in January 1903 to a member guilty of lukewarm support, “Ever since my return from the North last fall, there has been an undercurrent of dissatisfaction in the Peary Arctic Club at letting the work of the Club drop before the Pole was attained.” Peary’s pitch to the wealthy could also be polished, as when he offered something that all their money could never buy: immortality. “The names of those who made the work possible will be kept through the coming centuries floating forever above the forgotten and submerged debris of our time and day,” he wrote in one letter of solicitation to club members. “The one thing we remember about Ferdinand of Spain is that he sent Columbus to his life-work.”

  The plan Peary presented began with his own commitment to “throw [him]self into the work for two more years, and make a supreme effort which shall crown all past efforts with success,” if he could have “suitable equipment.” At the top of his shopping list was a new ship. Not just any ship, but a “first-class” one of his own design. He wanted a vessel capable of going farther north through the ice-jammed channels between Greenland and Ellesmere and delivering the expedition party to the edge of the frozen Arctic Sea, thereby eliminating the long, exhausting sledge trips previously undertaken to get to that point. With such a head start on his last journey, Peary pointed out, the length of his sledge trip to the north would have taken him beyond the Pole.

  Since no such ship existed, it was necessary, Peary argued, to build one. Nansen’s ship, Fram, had been built for polar service, but as a sailing ship with auxiliary steam power she was largely at the mercy of the winds and currents. Her unique design allowed her to drift safely while stuck in the ice; as the pressures on her wooden hull increased, the vessel lifted above the compression rather than being crushed like an eggshell. There Fram would stay perched until the ice melted or broke apart.

  Peary envisioned a ship that could make her way at will through and around icy barriers. To do so, she would need powerful engines, reinforced hull, and sturdy rudder and screw assemblies that would not be easily damaged.

  The Peary Arctic Club was officially incorporated in April 1904, along with a charter that spelled out the group’s original mission to provide the wherewithal to “aid and assist in forming and maintaining certain expeditions” under Peary’s command “with the object of continuing his explorations.” Before the membership rolls were filled out, they would include the president of Chase Manhattan Bank, the founder of the Great Northern Railway, the chairman of the Erie Railroad, the founder of the Remington Typewriter Company, and other company directors, bank and insurance company presidents, manufacturing and transportation magnates, and lawyers. The club had two immediate goals. The first had nothing to do with building a ship; rather, it aimed at “the altering of public opinion so that existing prejudice against Arctic work would be lessened.” This “work of propaganda was done with the greatest amount of finesse” by Peary’s powerful supporters, and soon magazine and newspaper articles appeared that placed his new Arctic plans “in the most favorable light possible.” Within months, there had been a “complete reversal of the public’s estimate of the value and national prestige to be gained” by the discovery of the North Pole, and Peary was again seen as the man for the job.

  One prominent citizen quick to get aboard the Peary bandwagon was the new president of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt, at forty-two the youngest man to reach this office. Elected vice-president in 1900, Roosevelt had, with the assassination of William McKinley, become president on September 14, 1901, while Peary was in the Arctic. A lifelong advocate of “the strenuous life,” Roosevelt was a hunter and explorer in his own right. In Peary, he saw a man much like himself—rugged, determined, courageous.

  The second goal of the newly rejuvenated Peary Arctic Club provided for the “construction of a vessel that would place Peary and his party at a base on the shores of the Polar Sea.” The price of such a ship was estimated at $100,000.

  With a down payment of half the total amount required in order to begin construction, the banker Morris Jesup put up $25,000. When contributions fell short of the mark, James Colgate, a member of the wealthy New York family, wrote out a check “with characteristic promptitude and generosity” that “rounded out the $50,000.” The Peary Arctic Club entered into a contract with McKay and Dix of Bucksport, Maine, one of the finest shipbuilders in the world. Timber for the vessel was ordered in August 1904.

  That same month, Josephine gave birth to a healthy boy named for his father. A few days later, Peary’s three-year paid leave commenced. With the backing of President Roosevelt, his request had been rapidly granted. For the first time, the Navy described in his leave orders the exact nature of his Arctic mission. “The attainment of the Pole should be your main objective,” wrote Charles H. Darling, assistant secretary of the Navy. “Nothing short will suffice.” However, the government would not be financing any of the undertaking.

  By all accounts, 1904 was a great summer for Peary, with the birth of a son and a ship, another extended leave to pursue his dream, and the completion of a summer cottage on his beloved Eagle Island, in Casco Bay off the coast of Portland, Maine. He had fallen in love with the place, named after the eagles that once nested there, when he first saw it at age seventeen. He had bought the island for $500 with his first earnings shortly after college. With a three-room house now on the island, he would spend summers there with his family as often as possible—recovering from his latest journey or simply escaping the humidity of Washington, D.C. The island became nothing short of a sanctuary for Peary, and throughout his life he thought often of its serenity and woodsy beauty during difficult times.

  In mid-September 1904, the Eighth International Geographic Congress convened in New York City, with representatives from around the world in attendance for two days. Cook delivered three major papers at the conference: one about his circumnavigation of Mount McKinley, another on the Belgica expedition, and a third comparing the environs of the Arctic and the Antarctic, something he alone among the world’s explor
ers was qualified to do. With Peary in the audience, Cook was one of the stars of the event, receiving enthusiastic ovations and extensive coverage in the press.

  Peary had, upon Cook’s return from McKinley, written his fellow explorer and former colleague, “I congratulate you on the work which you did on Mt. McKinley, and am sincerely sorry that you did not attain the tip top. I hope you may tackle it again and win out.”

  For Peary, exploration had become more about winning or losing, and less about any of the scientific disciplines. It was at the last session of the geographic conference that he announced to the world his intention of making a “final” North Pole expedition. Peary’s remarks came at a dinner during which he was presented with an award from the Paris Geographical Society. “Next summer I shall start north again after that on which I have set my heart. Shall I win? God knows. I hope and dream and pray that I may.”

  Once the keel of his new ship was laid in October, Peary brought Josephine and their two children to Bucksport, where they moved into the town’s only hotel. Every morning he went to the shipyard and stayed until nightfall, overseeing the construction down to the smallest detail. When work was completed six months later, final payment to the shipyard came from a $50,000 contribution made by banker George Crocker, a founding member of the Peary Arctic Club.

  Other donations rolled in from contributing members; the list now contained sums from seventy-three of some of the most affluent men in America: $20,000 from Thomas H. Hubbard, a prominent New York civil attorney, trustee of Bowdoin College, and director of Southern Pacific Railroad and Western Union; $5,000 from an anonymous Wall Street banker; $1,000 from candy maker John S. Huyler; and another $25,000 from the always supportive Jesup. Show business even got into the act: two benefit performances at Brighton Beach near Coney Island by a wild west show raised $10,000. Every dollar was needed, because after the new ship was paid off, equipment and supplies would cost another $40,000.