THOMAS WORTHINGTON WHITTREDGE (1820-1910)
Longs Peak (4,346 m - 14, 259 ft)
United States of America (Colorado)
In Longs Peak (Colorado), oil on canvas, c1870, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
The mountain
Longs Peak (4,346 m - 14, 259 ft) is a high and prominent mountain summit in the northern Front Range of the Rocky Mountains of North America. This fourteener is located in the Rocky Mountain National Park Wilderness, 9.6 miles (15.5 km) southwest by south (bearing 209°) of the town of Estes Park, Colorado, United States. Longs Peak is the northernmost fourteener in the Rocky Mountains and the highest point in Boulder County and Rocky Mountain National Park. The mountain was named in honor of explorer Stephen Harriman Long and is featured on the Colorado state quarter. Longs Peak can be prominently seen from Longmont, Colorado, as well as from most of the northern Front Range Urban Corridor, being is one of the most prominent mountains in Colorado, rising 9,000 feet (2,700 m) above the western edge of the Great Plains. The peak is named for Major Stephen Long, who is said to be the first to spot the great mountains on behalf of the U.S. Government on June 30, 1820. Together with the nearby Mount Meeker, the two are sometimes referred to as the Twin Peaks (not to be confused with a nearby lower mountain called Twin Sisters). As the only fourteener in Rocky Mountain National Park, the peak has long been of interest to climbers. The easiest route is not "technical" during the summer season. It was probably first used by pre-Columbian indigenous people collecting eagle feathers.
The first recorded ascent was in August 23, 1868 by the
surveying party of John Wesley Powell via the south side. The East Face
of the mountain is 1,675 feet steep and is surmounted by a 1,000 feet
steep sheer cliff known as "The Diamond" (so-named because of its shape,
approximately that of a cut diamond seen from the side and inverted -
see image at right). The oldest person to summit Longs Peak was Rev.
William "Col. Billy" Butler, who climbed it on September 2, 1926, his
85th birthday. In 1932, Clerin “Zumie” Zumwalt summited Longs Peak 53
times.
Longs Peak has one remaining glacier named Mills Glacier. The
glacier is located around 12,800 feet (3,900 m) at the base of the
Eastern Face, just above Chasm Lake. A permanent snowfield, called The
Dove, is located north of Longs Peak. Longs Peak is one of fewer than 50
mountains in Colorado that have a glacier.
The painter
Thomas Worthington Whittredge
was an American artist of the Hudson River School. Whittredge was a
highly regarded artist of his time, and was friends with several leading
Hudson River School artists including Albert Bierstadt and Sanford Robinson Gifford. He traveled widely and excelled at landscape painting,
many examples of which are now in major museums. He served as president
of the National Academy of Design from 1874 to 1875 and was a member of
the selection committees for the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial
Exposition and the 1878 Paris Exposition, both important venues for
artists of the day. Whittredge journeyed across the Great Plains to
the Rocky Mountains in 1865 with Sanford Gifford and John Frederick
Kensett. The trip resulted in some of Whittredge's most important
works—unusually oblong, sparse landscapes that captured the stark beauty
and linear horizon of the Plains. Whittredge later wrote in his
autobiography, "I had never seen the plains or anything like them. They
impressed me deeply. I cared more for them than for the mountains...
Whoever crossed the plains at that period, notwithstanding its herds of
buffalo and flocks of antelope, its wild horses, deer and fleet rabbits,
could hardly fail to be impressed with its vastness and silence and the
appearance everywhere of an innocent, primitive existence."
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2021 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau
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