“A Vertical Angle”
The First Technical Climbs of Lone Peak, 1958
Throughout the 20th century, the granite cliffs of Lone Peak tempted climbers peering up from the valley floor. The Wasatch Mountain Club (WMC) made frequent trips to the summit, typically approaching from the west via Pete’s Staircase (named after WMC member O’Dell Peterson) and traversing Collins Highway. But it wasn’t until 1958 that the first technical climbing routes were established. First proposed by Wasatch legend Harold Goodro, three other WMC members — Cal Giddings, Alexis Kelner, and Dick Bell — were the first to place pitons in Lone Peak’s alpine granite. As one newspaper put it, they found a new “vertical angle” on the mountain.
In May, 1958, Bell, Giddings, and Kelner used a recently discovered trail to drive Kelner’s jeep higher up the mountain and shorten the notoriously tiresome approach. The trio climbed the South Summit Wall using a mix of aid and free climbing, establishing the peak’s first technical route, dubbed the Bell-Giddings-Kelner. In a trip report after their climb, Giddings said:
This climb on Lone is one of the best I have ever made. The entire west wall is a well-fractured, solid granite with climbs equal to those I have seen anywhere. I think that most of us are passing up some real mountaineering opportunities in our own backyard.
Later that summer, Bell, Giddings, and Kelner returned to forge a route on the West Face directly below the Summit Wall. At the bottom of the wall, they saw a “very doubtful but necessary link” — an exposed traverse around a pillar, connecting the crack system to the final chimney. With Bell on belay, Giddings made his way through the traverse with sparse piton protection and loose blocks hanging overhead. With relief, Giddings found that the traverse (or “rotten pitch,” as he called it) was indeed feasible, and they named the climb after this pitch — The Merciful Traverse. After a grueling 11-hour climb, the three summited at dusk. Giddings snapped a few photos with his Leica camera, and the Deseret News ran an article about their two new routes.
While Bell, Giddings, and Kelner were the first to test the technical climbing in Lone Peak, others quickly followed. Another Salt Lake climber, Tom Spencer,¹ came up the following year to add a few more routes, as did some Alpenbock members. In the following decades, many climbers would add to the granite cliffs of Lone Peak, but the mark Giddings and Kelner left on the Cirque didn’t end with their two routes.
Giddings and Kelner became key figures behind Lone Peak’s wilderness designation. Continuing to climb and ski tour in Lone Peak throughout the 1960s, the two feared development creeping into Lone Peak, especially with the development of Solitude Ski Resort in nearby Big Cottonwood Canyon (BCC). In 1965, they suggested that the Forest Service use the recently passed Wilderness Act to protect Lone Peak. Their efforts paid off 13 years later when the mountain became Utah’s first designated wilderness area.
[1] Tom Spencer and Ron Perla made the first ascent of Mt Robson’s Emporer Rdige in Canada in 1961.
