New Year’s Eve Can Be a Blast Atop Pikes Peak

For more than 60 years, members of one of the world’s most exclusive clubs have taken the celebration of New Year’s Eve to heights seldom reached.

While others flock to hotel banquets or crowd Times Square, the hardy souls of the AdAmAn Club of Colorado Springs shoulder 40-pound backpacks and climb to the summit of Pikes Peak to set off a fireworks display.

The annual observance is no party: the 14,100-foot Pikes Peak, one of Colorado’s most dramatic mountains, is difficult enough to climb in the summer. In the winter it can become downright dangerous because of huge snowdrifts and wind-chill temperatures dropping to 80 below.

The club, whose original five members first climbed Pikes Peak on Dec. 31, 1922, derives its name from the custom of adding one new member each year. That’s a practical decision--the mountain’s Spartan facilities necessarily limit the climb to about 30 members and guests.

Back when brothers Fred and Ed Morath and their friends Willis Magee, Harry Standley and Fred Barr started the club, it was difficult to find one new member each year. Now, with the advent of warmer clothing and lighter equipment, there is a long waiting list for membership and guests, and it takes years to get accepted for a climb.

Only Activity

The Pikes Peak ascent, which takes two days, is the club’s only activity all year. Most members are professionals from Colorado and all are men. One of the guests last year was a woman--the first woman to make the annual climb.

The AdAmAn Club also has honorary members, including explorers like Roald Amundsen and Richard Byrd and international climber Sir Edmund Hillary.

Although they only get together once a year, the club is a close-knit group. Some are members of the same family.

Bill Lindeman, a 29-year-old architect, got involved because his father and two brothers were members. Lindeman started climbing as a guest in 1973 and became a club member 10 years later.

“The reason I wanted to belong is that it is just fun to do,” Lindeman says. “It’s not a question of hardship. We’re accused of being a macho club, but that is not the case. Once a year we get together with a group of men we like and have a nice climb and try to do something for the city of Colorado Springs.”

With Pikes Peak rising virtually alone out of the plains and towering over Colorado Springs, the city’s residents take a keen interest in the AdAmAn ascent and have their own parts to play in the holiday ritual.

Mirror Messages

On the second day of the climb, as the members near the timberline, they use mirrors to send flashes of light toward the city. Some residents and family members use their own mirrors to flash a return signal.

There also are live radio broadcasts from the summit and television footage is taped for showing on New Year’s Day.

Instead of popping champagne corks (no alcoholic beverages are brought along), the club sets off five explosives at 9 p.m. on New Year’s Eve from the summit, in honor of the original “frozen five.” At midnight, if the weather is clear enough, they ignite a fireworks display for the city below.

Later in the night, the group leaves the mountain by four-wheel-drive vehicles, providing the vehicles have been able to negotiate the dirt road to the top. Otherwise, they hike out the next day.

“You couldn’t have hired anyone to go with us back when I started with the club because it was so difficult,” says Jim Bates, 70, a photographer who joined in 1954 and is now the club historian.

“Now it’s so popular we have a long standby list, and we’re only able to take one or two new guests each year,” he reports.

Coal Miner’s Road

The climbers follow a 16-mile trail up the mountain that was built by Fred Barr, a coal miner, over a five-year period using dynamite, a crowbar and a wheelbarrow. Halfway through the ascent they camp in small cabins heated by wood stoves. On the second day, those members in the best condition reach the summit before darkness and begin preparing for the celebration.

Asked what was the coldest temperature he has experienced on the climb, Lindeman says he doesn’t remember, adding that the “big joke among the members is that it takes just under one year to forget how cold it was.”

But the coldest time he ever spent on Pikes Peak, Lindeman reports, was in 1973 when he pulled off a glove to adjust his equipment and, after less than one minute, his hand became so cold he couldn’t get his glove back on.

“That was nasty cold that year,” he says. “It was so cold the engine blocks on the Jeeps froze.”