Summit Diplomacy: US-Soviet Mountaineering Exchanges, 1974–1989

Abstract

Mountaineers played an unlikely role in facilitating diplomatic relations and cultural exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. From 1974 to 1989, American and Soviet climbers engaged in a series of mountaineering exchanges in the US and USSR. Scholars have examined how sport, particularly the Olympic Games, was utilized as a means of soft power during this era. However, mountaineering provides a unique and different opportunity for exploring cultural exchange and subversive trade. During these exchanges, climbers from both sides of the Iron Curtain became entangled in a network of bartering and person-to-person diplomacy, bringing Soviets and Americans together to conquer both stereotypes and summits. The success of the exchange programmes exposed American climbers to new forms of alpine knowledge and equipment and fostered new friendships and climbing partnerships. Amidst the various cultural exchange initiatives throughout the Cold War, mountaineers effectively transformed mountain ranges into arenas of diplomacy and exchange. Thus, mountaineering offered an avenue for people to relate to one another through recreation and nature, bringing alpine encounters into the dismantling of Cold War animosity.

Keywords:

• Cold War
• détente
• mountaineering
• citizen diplomacy
• sport

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Simo Mikkonen and Pia Koivunen, ‘Introduction: Beyond the Divide’, in Beyond the Divide: Entangled Histories of Cold War Europe, ed. Simo Mikkonen and Pia Koivunen (New York, NY: Berghahn Books, 2015), 3.

2 Norman E. Saul, ‘The Program That Shattered the Iron Curtain: The Lacy-Zarubin (Eisenhower-Khrushchev) Agreement of January 1958’, in New Perspectives on Russian-American Relations, ed. William Benton Whisenhunt and Norman E. Saul (London: Routledge, 2015).

3 James Cameron, ‘Moscow, 1972’, in Transcending the Cold War: Summits, Statecraft, and the Dissolution of Bipolarity in Europe, 1970–1990, ed. Kristina Spohr and David Reynolds (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 68; For a more expansive look at détente, see Keith L. Nelson, The Making of Détente: Soviet-American Relations in the Shadow of Vietnam (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019).

4 Vladimir Shatayev, Degrees of Difficulty, trans. Deborah Piranian (Seattle: Mountaineers Books, 1987), xi; John Herbers, ‘Nixon, In Minsk, Calls For Amity’, The New York Times, July 2, 1974, 73; ‘Moscow Summit …’, The New York Times, June 6, 1974, 36; Christopher S. Wren, ‘Soviet to Let Americans Climb Its 3rd Tallest Peak’, The New York Times, December 23, 1973, 2.

5 Craig Martinson, ‘Climbing with the Soviets: Goodwill on the Mountainsides’, Star Tribune, December 4, 1977, 406; Shatayev, Degrees of Difficulty, xi.

6 ‘Mount Elbrus in Soviet Is Scaled by U.S. Team’, The New York Times, June 27, 1970, 25; Wren, ‘Soviet to Let Americans Climb Its 3rd Tallest Peak’, 2.

7 John Roskelley et al., ‘USA-USSR Pamirs Expedition’, American Alpine Journal 20, no. 5 (1975): 68.

8 Maurice Isserman, Stewart Weaver, and Dee Molenaar, Fallen Giants: A History of Himalayan Mountaineering from the Age of Empire to the Age of Extremes (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), x.

9 Mikkonen and Koivunen, ‘Introduction: Beyond the Divide’, 6.

10 Matthias Neumann, ‘“Peace and Friendship”: Overcoming the Cold War in the Children’s World of the Pioneer Camp Artek’, Diplomatic History 46, no. 3 (2022): 505.

11 For ‘unraveling the Cold War’ see: Yale Richmond, Cultural Exchange and the Cold War: Raising the Iron Curtain (State College: Penn State University Press, 2003).

12 Anton A. Fedyashin, ‘Andropov’s Gamble: Samantha Smith and Soviet Soft Power’, The Journal of Russian-American Studies 4, no. 1 (2020): 1–23; Matthias Neumann, ‘Children Diplomacy During the Late Cold War: Samantha Smith’s Visit of the “Evil Empire”’, History 104, no. 360 (2019): 275–308; Margaret Peacock, ‘Samantha Smith in the Land of the Bolsheviks: Peace and the Politics of Childhood in the Late Cold War’, Diplomatic History 43, no. 3 (2019): 418–44.

13 See: Neumann, ‘“Peace and Friendship”’; David Foglesong, ‘How American and Soviet Women Transcended the Cold War’, Diplomatic History 46, no. 3 (2022): 527–48; Alexis Peri, ‘Spreading Intimacy and Influence: Women’s Correspondence across the Iron Curtain’, Diplomatic History 46, no. 3 (2022): 466–85; Christine Varga-Harris, ‘Soviet Women and Internationalism in Socialist Travel Itineraries in the 1950s and 1960s’, Diplomatic History 46, no. 3 (2022): 486–504; Pia Koivunen, Performing Peace and Friendship: The World Youth Festivals and Soviet Cultural Diplomacy, vol. 9, Rethinking the Cold War (Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2022).

14 Richmond, Cultural Exchange and the Cold War, xiv.

15 Yale Richmond, U.S.-Soviet Cultural Exchanges, 1958-1986: Who Wins? (Boulder: Westview Press, 1987), 2.

16 Dwight D. Eisenhower, Waging Peace, 1956-1961: The White House Years (Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday, 1965), 410.

17 J. D. Parks, Culture, Conflict, and Coexistence: American-Soviet Cultural Relations, 1917-1958 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1983), 21–22.

18 Frederick C. Barghoorn, ‘Soviet Cultural Diplomacy since Stalin’, The Russian Review 17, no. 1 (1958): 41–55.

19 Rósa Magnúsdóttir, Enemy Number One: The United States of America in Soviet Ideology and Propaganda, 1945-1959 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 84.

20 Jon Swan, ‘We Have Met the “Enemy” and Found Them Human - Tourisme Engage’, The New York Times, 6 June 1971, sec. 10, 489.

21 James Marshall, ‘International Affairs: Citizen Diplomacy’, The American Political Science Review 43, no. 1 (1949): 85. The article made an impression on US politicians, who added it to the Congressional Record in full that same year, see: ‘Citizen Diplomacy: Extension of Remarks of Hon. James E. Murray of Montana in the US Senate’, in 95th Congressional Record, Part 13, vol. 95, 1949, 2359–60.

22 Stephen D. Kertesz, ‘Diplomacy in the Atomic Age: Part I’, The Review of Politics 21, no. 1 (1959): 186.

23 For more details see: Malcolm Slesser, Red Peak: A Personal Account of the British-Soviet Pamir Expedition (New York: Coward-McCann, 1964).

24 In particular see: Eva Maurer, Wege zum Pik Stalin: Sowjetische Alpinisten 1928 - 1953 [Paths to Pik Stalin: Soviet Alpinists, 1928-1953] (Zürich: Chronos, 2010). Two other major contributions are: Maurice Isserman, Stewart Weaver, and Dee Molenaar, Fallen Giants: A History of Himalayan Mountaineering from the Age of Empire to the Age of Extremes (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008) and; Joseph E. Taylor, Pilgrims of the Vertical: Yosemite Rock Climbers and Nature at Risk (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010).

25 Heather L. Dichter, ‘Sport and Politics’, in Routledge Handbook of Sport History, ed. Murray G. Phillips, Douglas Booth, and Carly Adams (London: Routledge, 2021), 136; see also: Heather L. Dichter, ‘The Diplomatic Turn: The New Relationship between Sport and Politics’, The International Journal of the History of Sport 38, no. 2–3 (2021): 247–63; for a broader study of sport and geopolitics, see the collection: Heather L. Dichter and Andrew L. Johns, Diplomatic Games: Sport, Statecraft, and International Relations since 1945 (Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky, 2014).

26 Robert Edelman and Christopher Young, ‘Explaining Cold War Sport’, in The Whole World Was Watching: Sport in the Cold War, ed. Robert Edelman and Christopher Young (Redwood City: Stanford University Press, 2019), 4.

27 Toby C. Rider, Cold War Games: Propaganda, the Olympics, and U.S. Foreign Policy (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2016), 2; see also Stephen Wagg and David L. Andrews, East Plays West: Sport and the Cold War (London: Routledge, 2007).

28 Carolin Roeder, ‘European Mountaineers Between East and West: A Transnational History of Alpinism in the Twentieth Century’ (PhD diss., Harvard University 2017), 19.

29 Pia Koivunen defines ‘ego-documents’ as diaries, memoirs, travelogs, and letters. The source material for this article is primarily ego-documents produced by American climbers, which informed an analysis that strongly focuses on the American perspective of these exchanges. Outside of a few Soviet newspapers and letters from Soviet Mountaineering Federation officials written in Russian, the majority of sources in this article come from American materials and are written in English. While providing insight into these interactions, it is important to note that much of the Soviet perspective is pulled from newspaper interviews and quotes in American sources, which can carry an inherent American bias. Additionally, oral history provides another source for this article. Koivunen provides an excellent assessment of the use of ego-documents and oral history on pages 5–7 of Performing Peace and Friendship.

30 Petra Goedde, ‘A “People” Approach to U.S.-Soviet Relations’, Diplomatic History 46, no. 3 (2022): 463.

31 Ken Olsen, ‘They Come from All over to Risk Their Lives on “Roof of the World”’, The Miami Herald, 4 November 1985, 19.

32 Arlene Blum, ‘The Tragic Mountain’, Women Sports, February 1975, 30.

33 Brniak Marek, ‘Abalakov’s Comments on Soviet Alpinism,’ Climbing, April 1975, 19.

34 Robert W. Craig, Storm and Sorrow in the High Pamirs (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1980), 18.

35 Martinson, ‘Climbing with the Soviets: Goodwill on the Mountainsides’, 406.

36 Taylor, Pilgrims of the Vertical, 253.

37 Eva Maurer, ‘Gender in Détente and Disaster: Women Climbers in the Soviet International Pamir Camp 1974’, The International Journal of the History of Sport 37, no. 9 (2020): 3; Maurer, Wege zum Pik Stalin Sowjetische Alpinisten 1928 - 1953, 71–72.

38 For the elite roots of mountaineering in the US see: Taylor, Pilgrims of the Vertical, 25–50; John Flynn, David P. Carter, Leandra H Hernández, and Garrett Hutson, ‘Examining Attitudes towards Inclusion and Social Justice among U.S. Climbers: Analysis and Findings from a National Survey’, Leisure Studies, https://doi.org/10.1080/02614367.2023.2256028. For Soviet mountaineering see Eva Maurer, ‘An Academic Escape to the Periphery? The Social and Cultural Milieu of Soviet Mountaineering from the 1920s to the 1960s’, in Euphoria and Exhaustion. Modern Sport in Soviet Culture and Society, ed. Nikolaus Katzer, Sandra Budy, Alexandra Köhring, and Manfred Zeller (Frankfurt: Campus, 2011), 160; Maurer, Wege zum Pik Stalin, Sowjetische Alpinisten 1928 - 1953.

39 Maurer, ‘Cold War, “Thaw” and “Everlasting Friendship”’, 485–86.

40 Maurer, ‘An Academic Escape to the Periphery?’, 161.

41 Ibid., 168.

42 Ibid., 172.

43 Robert Andrews, ‘Summit Meeting: U.S., Soviet Climbers Share Mountain’, The News Tribune, October 13, 1985, 15.

44 Alex Bertulis, ‘C.C.C.P. Spells “Friendship”’, Off Belay, February 1976, 19.

45 A. Polyakov, ‘The Pamirs International Camp Welcomes Alpine Climbers’, Moscow News, June 1, 1974, No. 21 edition, sec. Sport.

46 American Alpine Club Announcement on Pamir Camp, February 1, 1974, John Evans Papers, Series 4, Folder 3, American Alpine Club Library, Golden, Colorado, USA (hereafter AAC).

47 See: Robert H. Bates, ed., K2: The Savage Mountain (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1954).

48 American Alpine Club Announcement on Pamir Camp, AAC.

49 Bill Stall, ‘US Mountaineering Team Invited on Russ Expedition Next Summer’, Greeley Daily Tribune, December 29, 1973, sec. Outdoors, 14.

50 American Alpine Club Newsletter, ‘The American Expedition to the USSR/Pamirs 1974’, December 26, 1973, John Evans Papers, Series 4, Folder 2, AAC.

51 Roskelley et al., ‘USA-USSR Pamirs Expedition’, 80; Meeting Minutes of the American Alpine Club Meeting with the Soviet Mountaineering Federation Moscow, April 2, 1974, John Evans Papers, Series 4, Folder 2, AAC.

52 Ronnie Richards, ‘International Meet to Transalai Pamir, July/August 1974: Some Impressions of Soviet Mountaineering Attitudes’, The Alpine Journal: A Record of Mountain Adventure and Scientific Observation, August 1975, 89.

53 Pieter Crow, ‘Vitaly Mikhailovich Abalakov, 1906-1986’, American Alpine Journal 29, no. 61 (1987): 349.

54 Craig, Storm and Sorrow in the High Pamirs, 20.

55 The AAC secured funding from Eddie Bauer Outfitters, who agreed to pay up to $25,000.

56 Craig, Storm and Sorrow in the High Pamirs, 34.

57 American Alpine Club Newsletter, ‘The American Expedition to the USSR/Pamirs 1974’, AAC.

58 For a more detailed examination of gender dynamics during the 1974 expedition, see: Eva Maurer, ‘Gender in Détente and Disaster: Women Climbers in the Soviet International Pamir Camp 1974’, The International Journal of the History of Sport 37, no. 9 (2020): 748–70.

59 Despite the AAC’s careful attention paid to gender diversity on the first expedition, it apparently dissipated after 1974. All the subsequent climbers on AAC exchanges were men, although women did participate in private expeditions and through the Seattle-Tashkent Exchanges.

60 Craig, Storm and Sorrow in the High Pamirs, 143.

61 Ibid.

62 Ibid., 55.

63 Arlene Blum, Breaking Trail: A Climbing Life (New York: Scribner, 2005), 161.

64 Craig, Storm and Sorrow in the High Pamirs, 143.

65 Blum, Breaking Trail, 161.

66 John Evan’s Letter to His Wife from Pamir Base Camp, July 17, 1974, reprinted in The Pamirs: 1974 USA-USSR Pamirs Expedition Climbing Journal of John Evans.

67 Blum, Breaking Trail, 162.

68 Maurer, ‘Gender in Détente and Disaster’, 10.

69 Newsletter, Peter Schoening to expedition members, ‘Newsletter No. 3’, February 22, 1974, John Evans Papers, Series 4, Folder 3, AAC.

70 Letter, Peter Schoening to expedition members detailing his meetings in Moscow, April 8, 1974, John Evans Papers, Series 4, Folder 2, AAC; Schoening, ‘Meeting Minutes: American Alpine Club Meeting with the Mountaineering Federation of the USSR in Moscow’, AAC.

71 Ibid.

72 Allen North, ‘Taking a Peak at Lenin’, Summit, December 1974, 1.

73 J.H. Hechtel, ‘Pamir Camp 1975’, Summit, December 1975, 20.

74 Soviet names are used for the mountain peaks, as that is how they appear in most of the archival records.

75 Blum, Breaking Trail, 156; Blum, ‘The Tragic Mountain’, 28.

76 Brochure for Pamir Camp 1974 (USSR Mountaineering Federation, 1974), Union Internationale des Associations d’Alpinisme, Berne, Switzerland; Christopher S. Wren, ‘A Mountaineer’s Journal: How U.S. Team in Soviet Battled Storms and Death’, The New York Times, August 16, 1974, sec. Archives.

77 Wren, ‘A Mountaineer’s Journal’, 1.

78 Bob Anderson, ‘Ogden Climber Returns to Campus Daily Routine’, The Ogden Standard-Examiner, August 27, 1974, 13.

79 M. J. Harris, ‘Russian Climbing Equipment’, Alpine Journal, 1959, 91.

80 Craig Martinson, ‘Climbing with the Soviets: Goodwill on the Mountainsides’, 403.

81 Melinda Sowerby, ‘Climbing Enriches Life of Philosophy Professor’, The Signpost, October 18, 1974.

82 Alex Bertulis, ‘C.C.C.P. Spells “Friendship”’, Off Belay, February 1976, 22; Interview with George Lowe, December 12, 2022, by Tallie Casucci with questions provided by the author, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA, notes in possession of author.

83 Alex Bertulis, ‘A Soviet First Ascent in The North Cascades’, American Alpine Journal 20, no. 2 (1976): 343.

84 Blum, ‘The Tragic Mountain’.

85 Craig, Storm and Sorrow in the High Pamirs; Vladimir Shatayev, Degrees of Difficulty. Arlene Blum also wrote an account of the tragedy in the 1975 edition of Women Sports in an article entitled ‘The Tragic Mountain’.

86 Maurer, ‘Gender in Détente and Disaster’.

87 David Foglesong, ‘How to End a Cold War’, Concept: Philosophy, Religion, Culture 4, no. 1 (7 July 2020): 51.

88 ‘U.S. Climber Dies on a Soviet Peak: Moscow Gets Word That He Perished in Snowslide’, The New York Times, July 27, 1974, 7.

89 Diary of Jon Gary Ullin, 1974, John Evans Papers, Series 4, Folder 5, AAC.

90 Ibid.

91 Interview with Jeff Lowe, May 8, 2009, Everett L. Cooley Oral History Project: Outdoor Recreation Oral History Project, American West Center & Marriott Library Special Collections, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA (hereafter AWC).

92 Photograph of Memorial for Jon Gary Ullin, 1974, John Evans Papers, Series 4, Folder 5, AAC.

93 ‘Severnyy Shtorm’ [Northern Storm], Sportivnaya zhizn’ Rossii [Sports Life in Russia], 1977, 32, Seattle-Tashkent Sister City Association records, Box 4, folder 23, University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections, Seattle, Washington, USA (hereafter UW).

94 Letter, From Peter Schoening and Robert Craig Inviting Soviet Mountaineers to the US, August 1974, John Evans Papers, Series 4, Folder 5, AAC.

95 Ibid.

96 Letter, A. Borovikov to Peter Schoening and Robert Craig, October 12, 1974, John Evans Papers, Series 4, Folder 5, AAC.

97 Letter, Peter Schoening and Robert Craig to M. Anufrikov, Secretary General, Mountaineering Federation of the USSR, October 16, 1974, John Evans Papers, Series 4, Folder 5, AAC.

98 Letter, Eugene Gippenreiter to Robert Craig, November 12, 1974, John Evans Papers, Series 4, Folder 5, AAC.

99 Martinson, ‘Climbing with the Soviets: Goodwill on the Mountainsides’, 406; Pamirs Expedition Newsletter, written by Pete Schoening, May 30, 1975, John Evans Papers, Series 4, Folder 5, AAC.

100 Jim Mitchell, ‘Selection of Soviet Team/Soviet Mountaineering Program’, Summit, October 1975, 4.

101 Theodore Shabad, ‘Soviet Climbers Train in Shawangunks’, The New York Times, August 20, 1975, 35.

102 Mitchell, ‘Selection of Soviet Team/Soviet Mountaineering Program’, 5.

103 Bertulis, ‘C.C.C.P. Spells “Friendship”’, 19.

104 Mitchell, ‘Selection of Soviet Team/Soviet Mountaineering Program’, 5.

105 Bertulis, ‘C.C.C.P. Spells “Friendship”’, 23.

106 Hechtel, ‘Pamir Camp 1975’, 20.

107 Shabad, ‘Soviet Climbers Train in Shawangunks’, 35.

108 Jim Mitchell, ‘Soviet Climbers Visit’, Summit, October 1975, 1.

109 Bertulis, ‘A Soviet First Ascent in The North Cascades’, 340.

110 Mitchell, ‘Soviet Climbers Visit’, 1; ‘Russians Climb Mt. Rainier’, The New York Times, September 8, 1975, 37.

111 Alex Bertulis, ‘Climbing Notes: The Southwest Peak of Bonanza (9320), North Face’, The Mountaineer Annual, 1975.

112 Mike Warburton, ‘Détente on the Salathé Wall’, Summit, October 1975, 2. A ‘rack’ commonly refers to the assortment of equipment, including pitons, screws, and chocks, that a climber carries on a route.

113 Mike Warburton, ‘The Friendship Route’, Summit, February 1977, 31.

114 Warburton, ‘The Friendship Route’, 28. ‘Bivouac’ refers to an often-unplanned temporary camp used in high mountains.

115 Interview with Jeff Lowe.

116 Sylvester, ‘From Russia, With Luck’, American Alpine Journal 22, no. 1 (1979): 62.

117 For more on gender equality in Soviet mountaineering see Eva Maurer, ‘Al’pinizm as Mass Sport and Elite Recreation: Soviet Mountaineering Camps under Stalin’, in Turizm: The Russian and East European Tourist under Capitalism and Socialism, ed. Anne E. Gorsuch and Diane P. Koenker (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2018), 156–57.

118 This is most likely attributed to the male dominated hierarchy of climbing organizations.

119 Isherwood was well aware of the misogyny present in climbing and had been pushing for gender representation in mountaineering for years. In 1970, alongside Arlene Blum, she was part of the first all-women summit of Mount Denali. While not an official expedition team sponsored by the American Alpine Club, Isherwood’s team received limited support from the AAC. ‘Law Student Invited to Climb Russian Peak’, The Virginia Gazette, 26 April 1978, 3; Dana Isherwood, ‘Pik Kommunizma’, American Alpine Journal 22, no. 2 (1980): 658.

120 Michele Vink, ‘Mountain Climber Wants to Hit Heights’, Longview Daily News, 13 July 1978, 11; James Conaway, ‘Those Who Dared’, Washington Post, 9 January 1983, 14.

121 Interview with Sallie Greenwood, member of 1978 expedition, and leader in 1983, 15 November 2023, Zoom, by author. Notes in possession of the author.

122 Christopher A.G. Jones, ‘With the Soviets’, American Alpine Journal 21, no. 1 (1977): 48.

123 Gary Bocarde, ‘International Climbing Camps in the Pamirs’, Climbing, May 1987, 88.

124 Rob Kelly, ‘The Pamir International Camps: A Guide for Future Participants’, Summit, January 1979, 24.

125 Bocarde, ‘International Climbing Camps in the Pamirs’, 88.

126 Bertulis, ‘C.C.C.P. Spells “Friendship”’, 24.

127 Ibid., 21.

128 Ibid.

129 For the importance of Jardine’s invention for climbing see Taylor, Pilgrims of the Vertical, 203.

130 Greg Lowe was the brother of Jeff Lowe and the cousin of George Lowe, both of whom were expedition members on the 1974 and 1976 Pamir exchanges, and surely knew of the Abalakov cam through his relatives.

131 Bob Dill, ‘Abalakov Cams’, Off Belay, February 1978.

132 Martinson, ‘Climbing with the Soviets: Goodwill on the Mountainsides’, 403; Newsletter from The Soviet Mountaineering Federation, 1976, Andres Bolinder Collection, Box 6, AAC; Ruth D. Mendenhall, ‘Basecamp: Soviet-American Mountaineering Exchange’, Climbing, December 1976; Alex Bertulis, ‘In Russian “Belay On” Is “Strohofka Gatovai”’, Off Belay 30 (December 1976): 28.

133 Alex Bertulis, ‘In Russian “Belay On” Is “Strohofka Gatovai”’, 10.

134 Interview with George Lowe.

135 Ibid.

136 Jones, ‘With the Soviets’, 46.

137 Bertulis, ‘In Russian “Belay On” Is “Strohofka Gatovai”’, 13.

138 Newsletter, Mary Lou Schoening to Families and Friends of the Pamir Expedition, August 1, 1974, John Evans Papers, Series 4, Folder 5, AAC; Interview with George Lowe.

139 Interview with George Lowe.

140 Seabury Blair, ‘Power Hiking in the Canadian Rockies’, Kitsap Sun, September 24, 1990, 24.

141 ‘Mountain-Climbing Season’, Moscow News, October 31, 1978, No. 29 edition, sec. Sport; ‘Alpiniad “Pamir 78”’, Moscow News, 25 July 1978, No. 11 edition, sec. Sport.

142 Alex Bertulis, ‘Soviet Climbing in the Cascades’, American Alpine Journal 21, no. 2 (1978); Martinson, ‘Climbing with the Soviets: Goodwill on the Mountainsides’, 403.

143 Known at the time as Mount McKinley. In 2016, the National Park Service officially changed the name of the peak to Mount Denali.

144 ‘Severnyy Shtorm’ [Northern Storm], Sportivnaya zhizn’ Rossii [Sports Life in Russia], 1977, 32.

145 Alex Bertulis, ‘Climbing Notes: 1977 Summary of Soviet Climbing in the Cascades’, The Mountaineer Annual, 1978, 99.

146 Ruth D. Mendenhall, ‘SCREE: Hosts & Helpers Needed to Entertain Visiting Russian and Polish Climbers’, Summit, January 1979; Ruth D. Mendenhall, ‘A.A.C. Foreign Climbing Exchanges’, Off Belay (April 1979): 35.

147 ‘Severnyy Shtorm’ [Northern Storm], 32.

148 Letter, Alex Bertulis to Rosanne Royer, 27 May 1987, Seattle-Tashkent Sister City Association records, Box 4, folder 23, UW.

149 Richmond, Cultural Exchange and the Cold War, 20.

150 Krige, ‘Regulating International Knowledge Exchange’, 260.

151 For example, see: Natalie Koch, ‘Sport and Soft Authoritarian Nation-Building’, Political Geography 32 (January 2013): 42–51.; James Riordan, Sport, Politics, and Communism (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1991); G. Caldwell, ‘International Sport and National Identity’, International Social Science Journal 34, no. 2 (1982): 173–83; Barbara Keys, ‘Soviet Sport and Transnational Mass Culture in the 1930s’, Journal of Contemporary History 38, no. 3 (2003): 413–34.

152 For a more in-depth look at Olympic boycotts see Jenifer Parks, Red Sport, Red Tape: The Olympic Games, the Soviet Sports Bureaucracy, and the Cold War, 1952-1980 (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2017), 143–74.

153 Parks, Red Sport, Red Tape, 163.

154 Frith Maier’s report on the history of the Seattle-Tashkent Sister City Affiliation, 1987, UW.

155 Rich Landers, ‘Local Climbers Challenged Pamirs’, The Spokesman-Review, November 3, 1985, sec. Outdoors, 12.

156 By 1984, the total cost of a trip to the Pamirs ran about $1,400, an amount roughly equal to a climbing permit in Nepal at the time.

157 William Garner, ‘High Road to “Victory”’, National Geographic, August 1986, 256–258.

158 Interview with Greenwood. Greenwood notes that during the early 1980s, while the American expeditions to the Pamirs were primarily focused on climbing objectives, they still offered chances to interact with Soviet alpinists.

159 Hank Shaw, ‘Honeymoon at the Roof of the World’, Democrat and Chronicle, June 10, 1984, sec. People, 1.

160 T.W. McGary, ‘From Valley, With Love; 2 Nearly Best Soviet Peak’ 12, The Los Angeles Times, September 16, 1984, 722.

161 Interview with Greenwood.

162 ‘Treasures of the North: Sovietskaya Sibir’, Moscow News, 29 November 1975, No.47 edition, sec. Round-up of Soviet Press.

163 Garner, ‘High Road to “Victory”’, 258; Randall M. Starrett, ‘Snow Leopards on Pik Pobedy’, American Alpine Journal 28, no. 60 (1986): 21.

164 Garner, ‘High Road to “Victory”’, 258.

165 Ibid., 262.

166 McGary, ‘From Valley, With Love; 2 Nearly Best Soviet Peak’, 12.

167 Garner, ‘High Road to “Victory”’, 722.

168 Robert Andrews, ‘Summit Meeting: U.S., Soviet Climbers Share Mountain’, The News Tribune, 13 October 1985, 15.

169 Robert Andrews, ‘Two Americans Back from Mountain-Top Summit with Soviets’, AP News, October 12, 1985. Two copies of the note were left in the shell, one written in English and one in Russian.

170 Andrews, ‘Two Americans Back from Mountain-Top Summit with Soviets’; Gary Lee, ‘A Soviet Summit, Attained’, Washington Post, August 30, 1985, E3.

171 Andrews, ‘Two Americans Back from Mountain-Top Summit with Soviets’.

172 National Park Service, ‘Annual Report: 1986’ (Denali National Park & Preserve Alaska: National Park Service, 1986).

173 ‘Alaska Welcomes Soviet Climbing Team’, Tyler Morning Telegraph, May 22, 1986, 30.

174 Neumann, ‘Children Diplomacy During the Late Cold War: Samantha Smith’s Visit of the “Evil Empire”’, 281; see also Margaret Peacock, Innocent Weapons: The Soviet and American Politics of Childhood in the Cold War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014).

175 Jeff Berliner, ‘Siberian Storm Grounds Soviet Climbers in Small Alaskan Town’, United Press International, May 9, 1986.

176 William Garner and Randall M. Starrett, ‘Soviet-American Exchange on Mount McKinley’, American Alpine Journal 29, no. 61 (1987): 148–50.

177 Donald J. Goodman, ‘A.A.C., Cascade Section’, American Alpine Journal 29, no. 61 (1987): 335.

178 Fett, ‘U.S. People-to-People Programs’.

179 President Reagan’s Address to a Joint Session of Congress on the Geneva Summit, (United States Department of State Bureau of Public Affairs, 21 November 1985), Max Green Collection, Box 28, US-Soviet Relations, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Simi Valley, California, USA.

180 For a detailed account of Samantha Smith’s role in Cold War diplomacy see: Matthias Neumann, ‘Children Diplomacy During the Late Cold War: Samantha Smith’s Visit of the “Evil Empire”’, History 104, no. 360 (2019): 275-308.

181 Foglesong, ‘How American and Soviet Women Transcended the Cold War’, 533.

182 Ibid., 544.

183 For more details see: David Scott Foglesong, ‘When the Russians Really Were Coming: Citizen Diplomacy and the End of Cold War Enmity in America’, Cold War History 20, no. 4 (2020): 419–40.

184 Jeff Berliner, ‘U.S.-Soviet Team to Climb Highest Mountain in North America’, United Press International, May 7, 1986.

185 Joseph G. Hummel, ‘The Sister City and Citizen Diplomacy’, International Educational and Cultural Exchange 6, no. 2 (1970): 22.

186 Richmond, Cultural Exchange and the Cold War, 120.

187 Interview with Frith Maier, November 3, 2022, Zoom, by author. Notes in possession of the author.

188 Letter, Frith Maier to Shukurulla Mirsayidov’, 1986, Seattle-Tashkent Sister City Association records, Box 4, folder 23, University, UW.

189 Letter, Charles Royer to Shukurulla Mirsayidov, December 4, 1987, Seattle-Tashkent Sister City Association records, Box 4, folder 23, University, UW.

190 Newsletter, Ploughshares Announcing Alpine Exchange, April 18, 1986, Seattle-Tashkent Sister City Association records, Box 4, folder 23, University, UW; ‘Ploughshares: A Group with Peace at Its Core’, The Bellingham Herald, April 29, 1984, 6A.

191 Sibylle Hecthel, ‘Fanskiye Gory and Turkestanski Ranges’, American Alpine Journal 30, no. 62 (1988): 289; John Rasmus, ‘Glasnost Extends to Soviet Backcountry’, Green Bay Press-Gazette, April 8, 1990, 92.

192 T. Golubkina and Y. Efimov, ‘Vmeste - Na Vershiny’ [Together - To the Summits], Vecherniy Tashkent [Evening Tashkent], July 13, 1987, Seattle-Tashkent Sister City Association records, Box 4, folder 23, University, UW.

193 Frith Maier’s report, ‘Treasure in the Turkenstan Range: An Account of the First Joint Seattle-Tashkent Climbing Expedition in the Mountains of Central Asia’, 1987, 8, Seattle-Tashkent Sister City Association records, Box 4, folder 23, University, UW.

194 Ibid.

195 Ibid.

196 Alongside Maier the other two women on the team were accomplished climbers. Sibylle Hecthel had been an accomplished big wall climber since the 1970 and was on the first all-woman team to climb El Capitan in Yosemite. Carla Fisher had first ascents in the Canadian Rockies and climbed on several international expeditions.

197 T. Golubkina and Y. Efimov, ‘Vmeste - Na Vershiny’ [Together - To the Summits].

198 Interview with Maier.

199 Letter, Charles Royer to Shukurulla Mirsayidov, December 4, 1987, Seattle-Tashkent Sister City Association records, Box 4, folder 23, University, UW.

200 Zhirnova returned to the US in 1989 to participate in a series of climbing competitions in Utah and Idaho, see Patrick Christian, ‘Human Flies on the Wall’, The Daily Herald, July 4, 1989, 7.

201 Pamphlet announcing the 1987 Climber Exchange, 1987, Seattle-Tashkent Sister City Association records, Box 4, folder 23, University, UW.

202 Letter, Alexis Bertulis to Rosanne Royer, 1987, Seattle-Tashkent Sister City Association records, Box 4, folder 23, University, UW.

203 Letter, James F. Henriot to Rosanne Royer, July 16, 1987, Seattle-Tashkent Sister City Association records, Box 4, folder 23, University, UW.

204 Report, ‘Single Sister Cities Project for 1987’, July 1988, Seattle-Tashkent Sister City Association records, Box 4, folder 23, University, UW.

205 ‘Russian Climbers Coming to Town’, Leavenworth Echo, June 29, 1988, Seattle-Tashkent Sister City Association records, Box 4, folder 23, University, UW.

206 Burr Snider, ‘A True Summit Meeting’, The San Francisco Examiner, May 31, 1989, 21.

207 Letter, Frith Maier to Hal Green, Chair of the Cultural Exchanges Committee, January 31, 1989, Seattle-Tashkent Sister City Association records, Box 4, folder 23, University, UW.

208 Interview with Maier.

209 Snider, ‘A True Summit Meeting’, 21.

210 Interview with Maier.

211 Letter, Jeff Lowe to Michael Monastyrsky, March 30, 1988, Jeff Lowe Papers USU_COLL MSS 563, Box 11, Folder 7, Special Collections and Archives, Utah State University Merrill-Cazier Library, Logan, Utah, USA.

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Notes on contributors

John Flynn

John Flynn is the Assistant Director of the American West Center and PhD candidate at the University of Utah. He researches the environmental history of the American West, public lands, and outdoor recreation during the Cold War.