Mount McKinley

Book Review   *   Fake Peak Serials

The Dishonorable Dr. Cook: Debunking the Notorious McKinley Hoax
by Bradford Washburn and Peter Cherici (The Mountaineers Books, 2001, 192 pages)

Four years ago Brad Washburn advised me that he was writing a book about Dr. Cook that "would knock my socks off." Recently, when this new book finally arrived, I tied my shoelaces with double knots before opening the odd-sized volume. A quick glance at the contents revealed that book's unusual shape was to accommodate the numerous photographs. The text represents Washburn's 60-plus years of research about Dr. Cook's controversial assertion that he reached the summit of Mount McKinley in 1906.
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The "Fake Peak" Serials
1910-1998

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Belmore Browne, 1910 Fake Peak I 1910
American Alpine Journal, 1958 Fake Peak II 1957		As shown in The New York Times Fake Peak III 1998

DIO's Denali Denial & the Media Campaign for a 'Final Solution' to Cook as Discoverer

1 The DIO Genesis & One-sided Media 'Controversy'

by Russell W. Gibbons

On November 22, 1998 this writer received a call from a reporter at The New York Times asking for materials which would support the claims of Frederick A. Cook to the first ascent of Mt. McKinley in September 1906. They were interested, he said, because of the "recent" article in the Baltimore journal, DIO, which had earlier in the year proclaimed that the Cook-McKinley controversy was "closed" because of the research of a contributor, Robert M. Bryce.

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It was the "Final Solution," declared Dennis Rawlins, founder and publisher of the journal, a critic of orthodox history of science with a somewhat mixed track record for accuracy and timing (more on this later). Heading the cheering section in the background was the indefatigable Bradford Washburn, spiritual heir to Cook's critic of his 1906 climb and the creator of "Fake Peak," the 89-year-old thesis that was supposed to have demolished the explorer, but never did.

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Copyright 2005 - The Frederick A. Cook Society