My attainment of the Pole

by Frederick Albert Cook

To Dr. Cook's Friends:

Professor Parker says "regretfully" that Dr. Cook's evidence as to the ascent of Mt. McKinley was unconvincing.

I was located in the foothills of Mt. McKinley, and had been for about a year, when Dr. Cook, Professor H. C. Parker, Mr. Porter, the topographer of the party, and Mr. Miller, Fred Printz and the rest of the party, landed at the head-waters of the Yentna River, in the foothills of Mt. McKinley.

I met Professor Parker and the rest of the party, and saw a great deal of them while they were up there, as I had three mining camps in the foothills from which they made their try for the top of the mountain. I let Dr. Cook have one of my Indian hunters, who knew every foot of the country around there, for a guide. Dr. Cook also had some of his caches in my camps, leaving supplies which he did not take along with his pack-trains. Some of Dr. Cook's party were in our camps nearly every day or so, and consequently I became very well posted in regard to Dr. Cook's affairs, and very well acquainted with him. Dr. Parker should be the last one to say anything about mountain-climbing or anything else connected with the expedition, or anything where it takes a man and pluck to accomplish results—good results; as he showed himself to be the rankest kind of a tenderfoot while in the foothills of Mt. McKinley, and was the laughing stock of the country. Mt. McKinley and the country around there was too rough for him. He got "cold feet," and started back for the States, before he had even seen much of the country around there.

Looking over my memoranda, I find that Dr. Cook had given up his attempt to climb Mt. McKinley for the time being, and had sent Printz and Miller on a hunting expedition, and the rest of the party was scattered out to hunt up something new.

At that time I came into Youngstown, and the boys were getting ready to strike out on their different routes, and Dr. Cook was going down to Tyonic, in Cook's Inlet, with his launch, to meet a friend, Mr. Disston, who expected to go on a hunting trip with him. The friend did not arrive, so Dr. Cook returned to the head-waters of the Yentna River, to Youngstown, arriving there on Monday, August 27. On Sunday, August 28, he started down to the Sushitna River. I went down with him as far as the Sushitna Station, and he told me he was going to run up the river and strike Fish Creek, which ran up on another side of Mt. McKinley, and see what the chances were to make the top of the continent from that side. He made it. I was one of the last to see him start on the ascent, and one of the first to see him when he returned after he had made the ascent.

Dr. Cook proved to be a man in every respect, as unselfish as he was courageous, always giving the other fellow a thought before thinking of himself.

Upon his arrival from the ascent of the mountain, although tired and worn and in a bad physical condition himself, he gave his unlimited attention to a party of prospectors who had been picked up from a wreck in the river, and brought into camp in an almost dying condition just before his arrival. He spent hours working over these men, and did not give himself a thought until they were properly cared for.

Evidence? No man who has known Dr. Cook, been with him, worked with him, and learned by personal experience of his courage, energy and perseverance, would ask for evidence beyond his word.

Dr. Cook is one of the most daring men, and can stand more hardships than any man I have ever met, and I believe I have met some of the most able men of the world when it comes to roughing it over the trails in Alaska and the North.