Mount Harvard

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Mount Harvard
Elevation	14,420 ft (4,395 m)
Location	Colorado, USA
Range	Sawatch Range
Prominence	2,360 ft (719 m)^[1]
Coordinates	38°55′27″N, 106°19′14″W
Topo map	USGS Mount Harvard
First ascent	August 19, 1869 (first recorded)
Easiest route	Hike

Mount Harvard is a fourteener in the U.S. state of Colorado. It is the third highest mountain in Colorado, and also the fourth highest mountain in the Contiguous United States. It is located in the Collegiate Peaks, part of the central Sawatch Range of Chaffee County, approximately 10 miles (16 km) northwest of the town of Buena Vista. The Harvard Crimson, flagship newspaper of the mountain's namesake university, wrote that:

"despite its height, climbing up Mt. Harvard is hardly a death-defying experience. 'It's an undistinguished lump on a fairly undistinguished range; it just happens to be very high,' says John C. Reed of the U.S. Geological Survey in Denver. Reed, who has climbed the mountain once, describes it only as 'a long walk' of about three or four miles. Nor is the view from the mountain especially scenic, compared with Colorado's other 54 mountains above 14,000 feet. 'In terms of being spectacular, Mt. Harvard would not be really high on the list,' Reed says."^[2]

[edit] History

Mount Harvard was named in 1869 by members of the first Harvard Mining School class, while on expedition with professor Josiah Dwight Whitney, the namesake of Mount Whitney. The same group named the peak next to Harvard Mount Yale, after Whitney's alma mater. The group climbed Yale first, and estimated that it was over 14,000 feet in height. On August 19 1869, the first recorded ascent of Harvard was made by expedition members S. F. Sharpless and William M. Davis. Harvard and Yale were the first 14,000 foot mountains in the Sawatch range to be named after universities. Later, nearby mountains were named for Princeton, Columbia, and Oxford, leading to the name "Collegiate Peaks" for this part of the Sawatch Range.

[edit] The Pole

In 1962, three Harvard men attempted to erect a fourteen foot metal pole on the top of Harvard, with a sign that read "Mt. Harvard, 14,434. This sign erected at an altitude of 14,434 making it the second highest point in the contiguous United States." Before they could reach the top of the mountain darkness set in, and the group was forced to abandon the pole a few hundred yards short of the summit. The next year, two Harvard men (Tim Wirth, who later represented Colorado's Second Congressional District, and his brother John), along with a Cornell graduate carried the pole the extra distance, and completed the task. The pole sat on the mountain for roughly twenty years, until it disappeared at some time in the 1980's, most likely as part of an effort to clean up Colorado's Fourteeners.