Icy Crags Hold No Red Flags Before Eager Mountaineers

Without a pretentious office, practically devoid of publicity, and just about unheard of by a good portion of the College, the Mountaineering Club and its devoted coterie of alpinists can call itself the most unique group in the University. For as the members will tell you, theirs is one of the few groups in U. S. colleges devoted to the hazardous sport.

Twenty-three years have passed since Henry S. Hall '19, founded the Club, and, but for some wartime doldrums, they have been eventful, successful years, marred only by one tragic accident last summer when Charles Shiverick II '50 was buried under an avalanche.

Since the Club's first year, members have taken part in annual climbing jaunts up mountain peaks, across glaciers, and down erevices throughout the world. HMC representatives made up half the party which in 1936 reached the top of Nanda Devl, the highest peak yet scaled by man.

Unsuccessful stabs at conquering stratospheric crags have also found College participants out in full force. A peak in the Himalayas known only as "K2," but the second highest in the world, withstood all the efforts of Harvard mountaineers, in 1939, as it has all other aspiring climbers.

Conquered Mt. St. Kllas

Most recent expedition to what the appetites of the Club's over upward-looking group of mountaineers was last summer's successful ascent of three-mile-high Mount St. Elias, in Alaska, the fourth highest peak in North America. On the same campaign the HMC's eight-man party under William L. Putnam '45, added twenty-one more first ascents to the Club's long list of accomplishments fifteen of them in four days of climbing.

Although the Mountaineering Club's rolls include a lengthy list of graduate members, most of the active climbers are still in the College. In preparation for their yearly altitude tests, the Club spends its summers polishing up rock climbing and rope techniques, and teaching the fundamentals to newcomers.

During the winter months, the Club uses a cabin on Mount Washington as a base for ice-climbing and skiing operations. And, at frequent intervals, the members dig out their maps and ferret out new heights to conquer.