90-Year-Old Woman Strives to Reach Peak of Her Sport

The sun was just peeping over the Sierra Nevada on Sunday morning as 90-year-old Hulda Crooks waved and set briskly out toward the 14,494-foot summit of Mt. Whitney--for the 26th time in as many years.

Outfitted in her favorite old straw hat, a red T-shirt and gray slacks rolled up to the knees and wearing a pair of old garden shoes, the Loma Linda widow immediately set the pace for more than a dozen of her Seventh Day Adventist co-religionist climber-friends who carried supplies, tents and other gear for the four-day trek.

By mid-morning, the party had climbed 2 1/2 miles up the steep, rugged trail, arriving at 9,800-foot Lone Pine Lake, two-thirds of the distance to their first night’s destination at Outpost Camp.

But by mid-afternoon Sunday, the day that had started bright and sunny had turned cloudy. Thunderstorms were threatening the vicinity of the highest peak in the lower 48 states.

If she makes it to the top by Tuesday as planned--and she has only been turned back by weather three times since she first climbed this mountain in 1962--Inyo National Forest Rangers say they are almost certain Hulda Crooks will be the oldest person ever to have reached the summit.

The diminutive, sprightly hiker agreed with a wink, saying that while she had heard that a 90-year-old man had claimed the same distinction several years ago, there was no proof this had happened.

“No one saw him do it,” she said.

In her case, however, verification would not be a problem: Two newspapers and one television network have sent crews along to cover her climb, and before daylight Sunday one of the reporters was already interviewing Crooks as she ate her breakfast of fruit and hot cocoa.

A vegetarian who began mountain climbing and jogging when she was in her 60s, Crooks said she walks at least 3 1/2 miles every day. She said she arrived here at the trailhead four days early to get acclimatized for the climb.

Asked why she climbs the mountain, Crooks said: “Older people tend to feel their lives are over when they reach 65. They think they are all done. But there is a lot of good living after 65 if you have an interest in life.

“Get out of the sedentary life, take care of yourself, get exercise and the right nutrition and have a wholesome outlook,” she said, adding: “You must always have hope for the future.”

Mt. Whitney is on the crest of the Sierra, about 200 miles north of Los Angeles in Sequoia National Park. The 11-mile trail to the summit climbs, switchback by switchback, nearly 6,200 vertical feet from the Whitney Portal trailhead in Inyo National Forest, east of Lone Pine.

The ascent is difficult because it is so steep and physically demanding. Above 10,000 feet most hikers begin to suffer altitude sickness--headaches and nausea--unless they are in good physical shape and have trained for the climb as Crooks has done.

Born to German immigrant parents on a farm in Canada, Crooks said she had led a sedentary life until she met and married Samuel Crooks, a medical student at Loma Linda University where she was an undergraduate.

After graduation, her husband stayed on to teach medicine at Loma Linda, and he encouraged her to follow her wish to climb mountains--a pastime he could not pursue because of a heart ailment.

After her husband’s death in 1950, she said, she began hiking in the Southern California mountains, and has since earned 97 patches that are sewn onto her favorite backpack; each patch representing a different mountain she has climbed.

But she didn’t have the backpack Sunday.

For the first time, she explained, the backpack had been left behind because friends and supporters were kindly carrying all her supplies and equipment up the mountain.

Crooks’ personal physician, Dr. Roy Zutzy, 62, a heart specialist at Loma Linda University Medical School, is one of the climbers accompanying her. He said his friend and patient is “in remarkably good health,” and added that he could see no reason she should not continue climbing for several more years.

Want to Climb Again

She has already said she wants to make at least two more ascents after this one--just to make it a solid 25 successful climbs.

Part of the way up the trail Sunday, Zutzy took Crook’s pulse (an easy 93 beats per minute) and contrasted it with his own (123).

“She’s in better shape than I am,” he said.

Climbing with the party this time is Rep. Jerry Lewis (R--Redlands), who said he was there by invitation, and had lost 30 pounds training for the hike. But even so, he was having a hard time keeping up with the nonagenarian.

“The challenge of this mountain,” Lewis said, “is really the challenge of Mrs. Crooks. . . .”