JACKSON HOLE, WYO – Probably the first thing Fritiof Fryxell is known for is his funny-sounding name. The son of a Swedish-born father, Fryxell couldn’t do much about that.
Friends simply called him “Doc” anyway, for his PhD in geology from the University of Chicago. Fryxell grew up in Rock Island, Illinois weaving his way through various callings: professor, writer, climber, park ranger, military geologist.
But it was his climbing and interpretation of the landscape he scaled, later recounted in several guidebooks, that made Fryxell special.
To put it simply, Fritiof Melvin Fryxell was a natural. He was born to climb from the beginning—April 27, 1900 (to be exact). Wherever life took him for a vocation, his passion was scaling things, the bigger the better. His keen interest in the Teton Range was sparked by railroad guidebooks his father brought home from work in the area.
One of these, The Pacific Tourist, contained a replica of the early WH Jackson photograph of the Grand Teton, as well as an illustration from the Langford 1873 article in Scribner’s Magazine, which described an attempted climb of the Grand. It inspired Fryxell.
In the summer of 1924 he thumbed a ride from Yellowstone to the west side of the Tetons and was awestruck.
Throughout the 1920s, Fryxell spent summers in the Teton mountains, bagging every summit he could—the Grand, the east prong of Mount Owen, Buck Mountain.
In 1929, when Grand Teton Nation Park was established, Fryxell enlisted as one of the park’s first rangers. Together with fellow ranger Phil Smith, the two managed an impressive summer climbing list that included Woodring, Grand Teton, Teewinot, Rockchuck, St. John, Symmetry Spire, Wister, Hunt, and the Middle Teton—all in one month and seven of these first ascents.
The next two summers were equally productive. Fryxell made first ascents on Nez Perce, Bivouac Peak, Mount Owen, Cloudveil Dome, East Horn of Moran, and Storm and Ice Point. After a summer in the Colorado Rockies in 1932, where he climbed a dozen 14,000-ers, Fryxell returned to the Tetons for the following three summers, adding first ascents of Rolling Thunder, Prospectors, and Ranger Peak.
According to an American Alpine Club publication: These climbs, together with extensive canyon hiking and glacier study, were largely exploratory in nature, rather than for the goal of overcoming of sheer difficulties as seems more common now.
But three, at least, of Doc Fryxell’s climbs still rank as significant technical achievements. The first ascent of Mount Owen in 1930 with Underhill, Henderson and Smith was a landmark climb, for the peak remains today as perhaps the most difficult of the Teton peaks. His second ascent, in one day, of the east ridge of the Grand Teton in 1934 with Fred Ayres, with little or no information on the route, still seems a remarkable accomplishment.
But truly impressive in imaginative pioneering was his climb of the north ridge of the Grand Teton with brilliant Robert LM Underhill. In this climb they were perhaps a generation ahead of their time. It was a clear technical step forward, the most difficult alpine ascent yet completed in the United States. It stands today as the classic among a dozen great Teton alpine climbs.
To comprehend fully the accomplishment of Underhill and Fryxell in 1931, let a modem climber try the ascent with their equipment: Underhill used Tricouni nailed boots, while Doc’s smooth-soled work boots had one composition sole and one leather sole. It was an extraordinary climb, and Underhill, in writing of the climb, related that Fryxell “…raced up the rocks of the grandstand in his usual fashion, showing the same dexterity and speed that on our frequent ropeless climbs had regularly left me well in the rear.”
Fryxell was a member of the American Alpine Club for 56 years, elected to honorary membership in 1981. He died December 19, 1986.
A talk on the legendary Fritiof “Doc” Fryxell is scheduled for tonight at 7pm at the Gros Ventre Campground Amphitheater.
