New evidence has been found to support the pioneering ascent up Denali. This fall, the University of Alaska Fairbanks found historic photographs from the 1910 Sourdough Expedition.
These black-and-white images are hardcopy evidence that Alaskans Pete Anderson and Billy Taylor, Charlie McGonagall, and Tom Lloyd, known as The Sourdough Expedition, got their members to Denali’s North Peak at 19,400 feet in April 1910. This feat has been long ridiculed.
Matthew Sturm, UAF geophysics professor, said that “they went”, and that he found the photos. “They went up, but they weren’t good at documenting it,” said Matthew Sturm, UAF geophysics professor.
Sturm claims that he found the photos of the Sourdough expedition in October when he was researching for a different mountaineering book at UAF Rasmuson Library archives. Sturm says that he found the 1911 McKinley climb label in a folder while looking through some materials.
He stated that he felt a “tingling sense of possibility that something good could be made of this,” even though it was a year later than the date in the folder.
Sturm claims that one of the photos in his folder shows two climbers that he recognized immediately.
He said, “I’m an amateur history buff for climbing Alaska and the Yukon and I thought — whoa! That’s Charlie McGonagall from the Sourdough climb”
Sturm claims he worked with the University of Alaska Fairbanks archive staff and Museum of the North staff in order to confirm the identities of the pictured Sourdough climbers. He says that he compared the photos with modern mountain images to determine where they were taken.
He said, “We could position them quite high along the route.” He said, “We could place them quite high on the route.”
Sturm said that the photos are yet another evidence that Denali’s North peak was climbed by the Sourdough expedition. It is a spruce flag pole, which the climbers set up just below the summit. Members of the 1913 Hudson Stuck expedition also reported seeing it. They were the first to reach Denali’s highest south peak.
He said, “I believe it moves it from the shadowy, maybe that did or not happen, right into mainstream.” “It happened.”
Sturm claims that the photos of the Sourdough Expedition were donated to UAF archives in 1980s by the daughter a Fairbanks newspaper editor from the early 19 hundreds who was friends with Sourdough expedition climber Billy Taylor.
He said that she had donated lots of stuff to the archives and that they logged it in. It would have required an expert to identify what it was.
Sturm claims that it is still a mystery as to why expedition members didn’t use the photos to support their claim for summit status. Sturm is planning to write an article about the photos for a mountaineering journal.
