November 26, 1998
Author Says Picture Confirms Mt. McKinley Hoax
Graphic
Original Photo and Map
By JOHN TIERNEY
EW
YORK -- In 1906 Dr. Frederick
A. Cook took a photograph that made him famous and ultimately became
perhaps
the most controversial picture in the history of exploration. Now a
historian
has found the original, uncropped version of the picture, and it does
not
look good for Cook.
A cropped version, captioned "The Top of Our Continent,"
was published
in 1908 with Cook's account of how he had braved avalanches and ice
cliffs
to make the first ascent of Mount McKinley, the highest peak in North
America.
Cook described himself and his companion, Edward Barrill, as "near the
limit of human endurance" -- exhausted, freezing, gasping for oxygen --
when they reached the Alaskan summit at 20,320 feet above sea level.
"At last!" Cook wrote. "The soul-stirring task was crowned
with victory.
The top of the continent was under our feet." After describing the
vista
of clouds and peaks spread out below, he exulted in the "most
impressive"
memory taken from the peak: "the final picture which I took of
Barrille"
-- as Cook misspelled the name -- "with the flag lashed to his ax, as
the
Arctic air froze the impression into a relief which no words can tell."
Robert M. Bryce has two words for that image, and they are
Fake Peak.
Bryce, the author of the most exhaustive study of Cook's career, has
analyzed
a newly discovered print made from Cook's negative showing geographical
features in the background that were cropped when Cook published the
photograph.
Bryce concludes that the photograph was taken on a small promontory
15,000
feet below the McKinley summit, at barely 5,000 feet above sea level,
about
the altitude of Denver.
This finding confirms the suspicions of Cook's critics,
who long ago
accused him of faking the McKinley summit picture and identified the
site
known as Fake Peak. But there were so few details visible in the
picture
published by Cook that it was difficult to determine exactly where it
was
taken until Bryce found the full print.
"I don't think Cook ever had any intention of going to the
summit,"
Bryce said. "From all the evidence, it looks as if Cook didn't go any
higher
than 5,000 feet on this McKinley trip. He apparently spotted this
feature
that he thought he could pass off as the summit, and it was easy to
stage
the photograph because Barrill had to climb only a few hundred feet
above
the glacier floor."
Bryce found the photograph in papers of Cook that were
donated recently
to the polar archives at Ohio State University. Bryce, the author of a
1997 book, "Cook and Peary," a 1,100-page account of Cook's rivalry
with
Robert E. Peary, published his analysis of the photograph in the
current
issue of DIO, a journal devoted to the history of science and
exploration.
"People have been arguing about Cook on McKinley for 90
years," said
Dennis Rawlins, the journal's publisher and a historian of the Arctic.
"This is the single biggest find, because it proves positively from
Cook's
own camera that he was lying."
The controversy has endured because it was the McKinley
claim that made
Cook's reputation and eventually ruined his name during his fight with
Robert Peary. Cook's apparent success on McKinley promptly won him
support
for an expedition to the North Pole, from which he returned
triumphantly
in 1909.
More than 100,000 people turned out in Brooklyn for a
parade welcoming
him home. Icicles dripped from a huge triumphal arch above Bushwick
Avenue
adorned with a sign, "We believe in you." Cook had been accused of
faking
his North Pole trip by Robert Peary, who had also just returned with
his
own claim on the Pole, but the public was on Cook's side.
He was seen as the romantic underdog, a charming
Brooklynite who had
climbed McKinley and reached the pole largely on his own. Peary was the
establishment figure, a dour man backed by Manhattan millionaires and
the
National Geographic Society, who had relied on an army of Inuits for
his
Arctic exploration.
But the Peary forces won the public-relations war by
tracking down rumors
about the McKinley climb. The New York Globe & Commercial
Advertiser,
whose publisher was the president of the club of Peary patrons,
published
an affidavit from Barrill explaining the photo hoax and declaring that
he and Cook had never climbed McKinley.
"Smashed is Dr. Cook," declared The Globe. "The
similarities between
the Mount McKinley hoax and the North Pole hoax are readily
discernible."
The New York Times, which had sponsored Peary's expedition, joined in
the
attack on Cook. The news caused The New York Herald, which had
sponsored
Cook's expedition, to mute its support for the doctor, and Peary was
generally
acknowledged as the only one to reach the North Pole.
Today most historians believe that both explorers were
lying. Peary
is thought to have gotten closer to the pole, but not all the way. Cook
is generally thought to have reached neither the pole nor the McKinley
summit.
Explorers have known about Fake Peak since 1910, when an
expedition
found it by following Barrill's directions. But because it has been
impossible
to duplicate Cook's photograph precisely, due to changed snow
conditions
and an earthquake that dislodged some rocks from the promontory, Cook's
defenders continued to maintain that it was not the same place
photographed
by the doctor.
The Cook photograph uncovered by Bryce reveals new
background details
that precisely match those at the site of Fake Peak, such as a nearby
cliff
and a distant peak, Mount Grosvenor. Now even Cook's supporters
acknowledge
that the doctor might not have been telling the truth, although they
are
still not ready to abandon him.
"There's fairly strong evidence that the photograph wasn't
taken at
the summit," said Ted Heckathorn, a member of the Cook Society, a group
with headquarters in Sullivan County, N.Y., that is dedicated to
defending
the explorer's reputation. "But even if it wasn't, that doesn't prove
he
couldn't have climbed to the summit anyway."
Few historians or explorers share that view. "Cook's
account of his
climb is utterly ridiculous," said Bradford Washburn, the retired
director
of the Boston Science Museum, who has mapped Mount McKinley and climbed
it three times, and has published an analysis of Cook's diary and
photographs.
"The tragedy is that he would have been remembered as a good explorer
if
he'd just truthfully reported what he accomplished near McKinley. But
the
Devil took him up on to a mount, and the doctor listened."
