Recalling the first climb of Mount Holy Cross
 By Karen Sharpe
The Mount of the Holy Cross in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains is as desolate as it is beautiful. From the peak of neighboring Notch Mountain, the vision of the snow-filled cross for which it is named is iconographic.
Revered by the Ute Indians for its majesty and isolation, the mountain was later immortalized by Longfellow in his poems “Evangeline” and “The Cross of Snow”—in the early 1900s, it was said to harbor faith-healing properties.
But, at 14,005 feet, the mountain is not a gentle one, having claimed the lives of some who attempted to climb it—one as recently as last year. Its elevation alone is enough to weaken those not acclimated to such conditions, and, in winter, the risks for hikers are abundant.
Forty years ago, on Jan. 2, 1966, a team of Holy Cross students made history by completing the first recorded winter ascent of the mountain—marking its peak with a Holy Cross banner and a bronze plaque.
In the summer of 1965, John Worthley, then traveling the country before his final year at Holy Cross, learned of the Mount of the Holy Cross in a story in the Denver Post. The Mount is part of the Sawatch Range of mountains in the Rockies, which also include the official collegiate peaks of Harvard, Princeton, Yale and Columbia.
After traveling to Vail and getting a look at the peak, Worthley “decided then and there that we, the Class of 1966, should climb it.
“It was as senior class president—not as an individual—that I got the class council to agree to offer $1,966 to the first Crusader to scale our mountain,” he explains.
After separating the ambitious from the experienced, a team of hikers from the class was chosen to attempt the climb: Peter Will, Ed Drinan, Pat McDermott—as well as Peter Kenney ’68. They were joined by photographer and guide Jerry Sinkovec of Vail, Colo.
“I bit at it immediately,” recalls Will, who had been climbing in the White Mountains a few times. “I had been struggling with organic chemistry—the ‘must do’ course to get in to medical school,” he explains. “Anything else sounded great—and the mountain represented adversity to me. I always thought there wasn’t anything I couldn’t do, and this was the first really insurmountable wall I had run up against.
“It was beginning to dawn on me that being a physician in small-town Colorado just may not happen for me after all,” Will continues. “I wasn’t aware yet that life will bring you many insurmountable challenges, but the real test is in knowing yourself well enough to pick your battles.”
The team began the climb on Dec. 31, 1965 and hit adversity almost immediately: Following a snowmobile ride to the trailhead, the Crusaders discovered they had faulty snowshoes for the conditions—and were only able to move about three-quarters of a mile in waist-to-chest high snow before setting up camp.
Travel the next day improved, but Kenney became ill with a fever. Pushing on, the group hoped to make it to an abandoned miner’s camp near the East Cross Creek—despite setting off a small avalanche along the way. Once there, Kenney agreed to stay put and wait for the others to return following their descent.
With Kenney settled, the four remaining men continued the trek, but not without more drama: about an hour after leaving the camp, Drinan fell through the snow into a hidden portion of the East Cross Creek.
Temperatures were sub-zero and a soaking like that in those conditions could be fatal. The men stopped and set up their cookstoves; Sinkovec and McDermott shared their clothing with Drinan until his dried out—while Will pushed on, breaking trail to a high ridge where he started setting up camp.
“It was a team effort,” recalls Will, “and even though we were all strong, individualistic-type people, we pulled together well.”
The next day, Jan. 2, dawned sunny but frigid, and the group left camp early. All had barely slept. With winds ranging from 20-to-100 miles per hour and temperatures forcing them to stop every 20 feet or so to warm frostbitten areas on their faces, they pressed forward, finally reaching the summit at 2 p.m.
“The summit was spectacular,” Will says. “The elated feeling was beyond words—and the view was clear, with other mountain ranges over 50 miles away easily visible.”
Along with the banner and plaque, each member left a memento, including a photo, a scarf and a rosary.
Following a safe descent, the climbers were met by Rev. Tom Stone of nearby Minturn “in a Snowcat at trail’s end—with a bottle of whiskey and dispensation for missing the Holy Day’s services,” Will says.
Kenney was brought down the mountain in a helicopter provided by the Vail ski patrol.
The team’s feat is memorialized in the book, Colorado’s Fourteeners, although the actual time of arrival at the summit was recorded incorrectly, Will notes.
Even though they bore each other through such diversity, after graduation, the hikers all went their separate ways—and, in the 40 years since, have rarely crossed paths.
Now a Colorado periodontist, Will has since climbed the Mount of the Holy Cross twice—once with family members and once with his wife and members of the Colorado Holy Cross alumni club.
Worthley, who became a priest, had returned to the Mount in the summer of 1967 and made the climb to retrieve the banner and the plaque. Both items were returned to Holy Cross, along with a painting donated by a Denver artist.
“The painting has hung at Holy Cross ever since, and, at our 40th class reunion this past June we all got a look at it,” notes Fr. Worthley.
Though Will says he has since stopped climbing mountains, he treasures the experience and memories—keeping many photos, news clippings and a journal of the event.
Still a traveler, Fr. Worthley has been assigned to China since 2003 to help Mother Teresa’s sisters establish a presence there and to facilitate diplomatic relations discussions between the Vatican and Beijing.
He is also still a bit of a gamer, offering up a new challenge:
“The venerable Class of ’66 challenges the Class of 2007 to climb our Mount this year!”
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