Foremothers: The Story Behind the Four Women Who Helped Found the American Alpine Club

[American Alpine Club]

Fuller, Miss Fay
Peary, Mrs. Robert E.
Peck, Miss Annie S.A.M.
Workman, Mrs. Fanny Bullock, F.R.S.G.S.
Their names were written in ink, part of the list of founding members of the American Alpine Club in the AAC bylaws and register book. These four women answered Angelo Heliprins' call to establish an “Alpine Society.” The American Alpine Club was established in 1902, but would not get its name until 1905.
The founding members determined that dues were to be five dollars a year, about $186.90 in today's money. This early version of the Club was interested in projecting a reputation of mountain expertise: members had to apply for membership with a resume of mountain climbing or an explorational expedition they had participated in. Those without a sufficiently impressive resume would not be accepted as members. All the founders had lists of their ascents and exploratory expeditions underneath their names to drive the point home that this was a club of high mountain achievers.
It was no small feat that these women were invited to participate in founding an alpine club at the turn of the 20th century. After all, women weren’t allowed in the British Alpine Club until 1974, forcing women to create their own alpine or climbing clubs.
But Fay Fuller, Josephine Peary, Annie Peck, and Fanny Bullock Workman were forces to be reckoned with, each in their own way. They helped steer the American Alpine Club from its beginnings and pushed boundaries in mountain climbing and Arctic exploration, all well before the 19th Amendment, ratified in 1920, gave women the right to vote. Each year, their new accomplishments were published in the bylaws and register book under their name, and some were even invited to speak during the AAC Annual Gathering about their expeditions.
Ultimately, these four women are foremothers to American climbing and exploration. Their stories are shaped by their historical context, but the meaning of their mountain achievements is timeless.
Miss Edwina Fay Fuller was the first woman to summit Mt. Rainier in 1890. Fuller also climbed other glaciated peaks in the Cascades: Mt. Hood, Mt. Adams, Mt. Pitt (now Mt. McLoughlin, which still had a glacier until the early 20th century), and Sahale Mountain. She was described as self-reliant and dogged.
Fay Fuller’s ascent of Rainier nearly ostracized her from Tacoma society—not because she was mountaineering but because of what she wore and who she traveled with.
Her party of five, all men except for her—scandalous for the time—woke up on August 10, 1890, at half past four and began their arduous journey toward the summit. In a 1950 feature article about Fuller in Tacoma’s newspaper, The News Tribune, she said, “I was very nearly ostracized in Tacoma because of that trip—a lone woman and four men climbing a mountain, and in that immodest costume.”
Her “immodest costume,” an ankle-length bloomer suit covered with a long coatdress, was made of thick blue flannel. She also covered her face in charcoal and cream to prevent a sunburn (unfortunately, it didn’t work). Fuller was determined to reach the summit on this attempt, her second up Mt. Tahoma or Tacoma, now Mt. Rainier.
Fuller and her group climbed the Gibraltar Ledges, a Grade II Alpine Ice 1/2 with moderate snow climbing and significant rockfall hazard. Today, the most popular route on Rainier is Disappointment Cleaver, a mix of snowfields, steep switchbacks, and crevassed glaciers, but no technical climbing. Fuller and her team navigated the difficult and exposed terrain of there route with little prior experience and with gear we wouldn’t dare use today, successfully summiting Rainier.
Len Longmire, their guide—though he had never been to the summit—recalled that one of the group members offered Fuller a hand at an especially dangerous place. “No thanks,” she replied, “I want to get up there under my own power or not at all.”
That night, under the stars, the team slept in one of many craters on the stratovolcano, listening to avalanches raging down the mountain. The team continued down safely the next morning, leaving a sardine can containing their names, a tin cup, and a flask filled with brandy as proof of their adventure.
Fuller went on to summit the mountain once more with the Mazamas in 1894.
Her asc...

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Foremothers: The Story Behind the Four Women Who Helped Found the American Alpine Club — American Alpine Club

By Sierra McGivney, research supported by the AAC Library Originally Published in Guidebook XVI Fuller, Miss Fay Peary, Mrs. Robert E. Peck, Miss Annie S.A.M. Workman, Mrs. Fanny Bullock, F.R.S.G.S. Their names were written in ink, part of the list of founding members of the American Alpi

American Alpine Club (americanalpineclub.org)