Turn Right at MacHu Picchu 12-Copy Floor Display - Mark Adams [69]
Peck was well aware that she had gotten under Bingham’s skin. Upon learning that she had a rival for the summit of Coropuna, she had written Bingham a teasing letter inquiring if she might fill him in on any details of the mountain that he proposed to climb. Before sending the note, she inserted a clause noting that unlike some people she could name, she had observed Coropuna “from nearer than the railway.” Bingham’s reply was less than gallant: “Under the circumstances do you not think it would be more sportsmanlike, now that this expedition has been definitely announced and approved by the Yale Corporation, for you to postpone your investigation of Coropuna until we had finished our work?”
When he arrived in Arequipa to begin his assault on Coropuna, Bingham was greeted with the deflating news that Peck had succeeded in climbing the peak while he had been fixated on his glacial bone discovery outside of Cusco. One news account reported that Peck, a strong supporter of women’s suffrage, had planted a flag reading VOTES FOR WOMEN at the summit. Yet Peck, who had never shown a reluctance to blow her own horn in the past, was uncharacteristically silent about her triumph. Other than one newspaper story, Bingham couldn’t find any further confirmation of her feat. The reason was simple. Coropuna is a horizontal mountain with multiple peaks. Faced with a choice of summits, Peck had selected the wrong one to climb. “No wonder she doesn’t talk about it much,” Bingham wrote to Alfreda, with no small satisfaction.
Today, most mountaineering outfitters rate the Coropuna climb as moderately difficult and can get a reasonably fit client to the peak and back in a few days. Bingham couldn’t have known this, of course, and so deserves credit for possessing the nerve to attempt to reach what he believed was the highest point in the hemisphere outfitted in metal spikes and a bulky cardigan sweater. The climb was miserable. The deep snow near the top melted each day in the afternoon sun, creating a slushy mess in the clouds, and Bingham was hit hard by altitude sickness. On October 15, after some guesswork as to which of Coropuna’s peaks was the highest, the team reached the top of what appeared to be its tallest summit. Utilizing two specially made aneroid barometers (“each as large as a big alarm clock,” and which gauged altitude based on air pressure) and a hypsometer (a sighting device used to triangulate heights), Bingham made some quick calculations and realized that the peak they stood atop was, in all likelihood, several hundred feet lower than Chile’s Mount Aconcagua.
Bingham’s son Alfred later wrote an entire book to make the not-entirely-convincing case that his father was more interested in climbing Coropuna than in finding Vilcabamba. But while that seems a stretch, it is true that among all the photographs Bingham was careful to pose for at each of his achievements, the snapshot at the summit of Coropuna is unique. Despite the headache and nausea brought on by soroche, the director of the Yale Peruvian Expedition is flashing a tooth-baring grin.
THIRTY
The Old Woman’s Secret
At Espiritu Pampa, continued
Espiritu Pampa felt a bit like summer camp for archaeologists: no girls, no grown-ups, lots of guys disparaging one another’s anatomical shortcomings and punching one another in the arm. John, Javier, Paul and I walked toward the main site down a tunnel hacked through the jungle. As we rounded a bend, Paul grabbed my sleeve and said,