Harvard Mountaineering Club

Publication Year: 1965.

Harvard Mountaineering Club. The summer of 1964 saw H.M.C. members mountaineering in a dozen ranges in at least three continents. Undergraduates took part in five different expeditions in the Western Hemisphere. One of them, Hank Abrons, joined Graham Matthews and others to climb several peaks in the Cordillera Blanca, and Abrons was one of the four who succeeded on a new route up Chacraraju, possibly the hardest climb yet done in the Andes (see article in this Journal). Don Jensen and Dave Roberts made up a two-man expedition which was stopped on an attempt to climb the very difficult east ridge of Mount Deborah in Alaska, though they did make one first ascent (see note in this Journal). Chris and Lydia Goetze, Tom Knott, and Larry Muir also climbed in the Hayes Range, reaching the summits of its two highest unclimbed peaks and several others (see note in this Journal). Harry and Sharon Francis, Richard Goody, John and Alice Humphreys, and Steve Pomerance climbed in the Cordillera Blanca, and Goody and Pomerance made the second ascent of Aguja Nevado Chico (see note). Ed Bern- baum, in the Ecuadorian Andes, made the first ascent of South Antizana (see note).

In addition, Pomerance and Robin Hartshorne toured the Alps, climbing the Matterhorn, Mont Blanc, and Monte Rosa. Paul Rich, John Riely, and Art Shurcliffe spent two weeks climbing in the Canadian Rockies, and other members were active in the Wind Rivers, the Sierra Nevada, the Tetons, the Cascades, and the Colorado Needles.

During the school year the H.M.C. flourished, as evidenced both by week-end climbing and by Cambridge activity. The annual traverse of the Presidential Range in February met with its greatest success ever, as 14 members covered the route in a record three days. In the next two months all the gullies in Huntington Ravine were climbed, Damnation Gully once in an hour and forty minutes. The spring rock climbing was superb, and both then and in the fall some apparently new routes were done on New England cliffs. Shortly after Christmas, Matt Hale and Pete Carman made what is probably the second winter ascent of the regular route on Cathedral Ledges, encountering several ice pitches; and two other members climbed several peaks in an unusually snowy Colorado.

Attendance at meetings has been consistently high, and there seems to be no danger that the coming generations of the H.M.C. will lose the enthusiasm of its present members.

David S. Roberts, President