How David Brower and the 10th Mountain Division transformed climbing at Camp Hale—laying the foundation for America’s postwar mountaineering movement.
Featuring all-original research, this revelatory episode reveals how David Brower helped revolutionize American climbing from within the ranks of the (future) 10th Mountain Division. At Camp Hale, through his authorship of the Rock Climbing chapter in the Proposed Manual for Military Mountaineering, Brower introduced innovations such as dynamic belays, solid anchors, standardized climbing classifications and communication systems to the American GI—who, after the war, would introduce them to the American public. More than any other individual, Brower’s contributions helped democratize climbing, transforming it from a pursuit of the elite few to the skillset of the military mountaineer. In the process, he helped lay the groundwork for the postwar climbing that followed.
The story also examines the extraordinary new recruits who made up the 86th Mountain Infantry Regiment and the parallel development of the 10th Cavalry Reconnaissance Troop and the Mountain Training Group. Never before had such a concentration of mountaineering talent been gathered in one place, united by a single goal: to teach America’s first mountain soldiers how to climb, ski, and fight in alpine terrain.
Working side by side in the thin air of Colorado’s Pando Valley—testing techniques, trading insights, and fusing distinct regional traditions into a coherent system—they forged the modern foundations of American mountaineering.
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Highlights include:
• David Brower’s Rock Climbing chapter and its influence on military and civilian climbing
• The influx of the remarkable new soldiers of the 86th Mountain Infantry Regiment
• The evolution of the 10th Cavalry Reconnaissance Troop and Mountain Training Group
• How the Camp Hale experiment helped shape postwar American outdoor culture
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