the explorers journal the climate change issue - The Explorers Club

58
Ex Post Facto
tales from The Explorers Club archives
I t ’ s A l l A b o u t
Pecking Order
by Clare Flemming, M.S.
“I decided in my teens that I
would do what one woman could
do to show that women had as
much brains as men and could
do things as well if she gave them
her undivided attention.”
~~A. S. Peck
Determination can be everything
in exploration. Nowhere
is this more evident than in the
research collections of The
Explorers Club. For there, among
the records of numerous firsts in
exploration, is a file, within which
is a paper trail documenting
a seminal exchange between
famed Victorian mountaineer,
Annie Smith Peck, and the powers
that be at the Peary Arctic
Club of New York , more than a
century ago.
Born in 1850, Peck was
educated in classics at
Rhode Island College and the
University of Michigan, prior to
landing a professorship at Smith
College. Shortly thereafter, she
found herself drawn to mountaineering.
Venturing out on her
own, she summited a number
of peaks, including Mexico’s
5,700-meter Pico de Orizaba,
radically breaking with tradition
by climbing in pants. She soon
realized that she could make her
living as a mountaineer and lecturer,
and left her post to engage
in climbing—and its associated
fundraising—full time.
In June, 1899 Peck penned a
letter to Herbert Bridgman, secretary
of the Peary Arctic Club,
in hopes of joining one of Robert
Peary’s early polar expeditions:
I had the pleasure yesterday
of meeting Mr. [Russell] Porter
who told me of the expedition to
Greenland this season and gave
me your address. I thought that
if possible I should like to take
this trip if it is not too expensive.
Of course I am used to roughing
it and traveling quite independently,
and I think I should
not bother any body as some
women might. Three gentlemen
attempted the ascent of Orizaba
[Mexico] with me, but only one of
them reached the summit.
Very truly yours,
Annie S. Peck
Despite the fact that Peary
had previously included his wife
Josephine on his expedition to
Greenland, and certainly relied
on numerous Inuit women for
his numerous Arctic needs,
Bridgman made it clear in his
telegraphed response that Peck
was not welcome:
“Peary Arctic Club cannot accept
women in hunting party.”
And so—bother or no bother—
Miss Peck was not to be a part
of that or any of Peary’s expeditions.
Instead she set her
sights on the majestic Andes
and would become, in 1908,
the first person to summit the
6,768-meter Peruvian peak,
Huascarán. The following
year, she planted a suffragette
pennant on top of 6,400-meter
Coropuna, also in Peru.
To this day Peck retains the
honor of being the only woman
to make a first ascent on a
major world peak. Annie Peck
died in 1935 at the age of 85 in
Brooklyn, New York.
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