Jim Lytle's story of his ascent to the top of Mount Elbert by Coot was published in the February 1970 issue of Popular Mechanics. Thanks to Thom Schweppe for sending me this article.

Only a vertical half-mile below Mount Elbert's summit - Colorado's tallest peak and second highest in the U.S. outside of Alaska - things were all uphill and down. And so steep in both directions that a restless turn in our sleeping bags would have triggered a kind of human avalanche - hurtling the seven of us downslope with no stopping until we hit timber.

We were camped on a rocky, nearly 30 degree slope on the northeastern flank of the highest of 14 peaks which comprise the awesome Sawatch Range - the nation's "rooftop" - 90 miles southwest of Denver. Upslope a few yards we'd parked and chocked the three tough little four-wheel-drive Coot ATVs ("all terrain vehicles") as windbreaks. They had gotten us this far and would, we were betting, take us clear to Elbert's summit when we made the final assault at daybreak.

But our luck seemed to be running out. Gathering mist threatened rain which might make the mountain slick as glass. And one of our three ATVs, involved in an runaway accident just before dusk, was crippled.

That was only part of the challenge. While we wouldn't be the first to Mount Elbert's summit on four wheels, we were doing it the hard way, via the trackless northeast approach. Scrambling up top from the northeast would prove that our ATVs, billed as "go-anywhere vehicles", were just that.

We had two even more serious purposes. One was to test the first of a new breed of ATV: Coot's 4-by-4, which is both four-wheel drive and four-wheel steer. All four wheels are powered - and steerable. The linkage is mechanical. Turning the front wheels in one direction turns the rears in the opposite. Where the rear wheels of most ATVs merely "follow" in negotiating obstacles or hairpin trail-turns, the 4 by 4's steerable rears "snake" through and around tight spots. Four-wheel steered, the ATV can turn completely around in its own 7 1/2 foot length, and I was driving the first of the new vehicles - Coot's model 444-SS - to come off the production line.

Our third objective was to show that ATVs don't - as some critics have charged - tear up the high country's fragile terrain. Wide-tired and as under-inflated as most ATVs ride - our vehicle carried Coot's standard, nearly 9-inch-wide 8.85 x 15s, inflated to 8 pounds per square inch up front, 6 in the rear - the average ATV's "footfall" is light as any elf's. And significantly lighter than the tread of either man or horse. Low gearing prevents tires from spinning, and with something like 440 square inches of tread on the ground, our ATVs weighed a maximum of 2000 pounds, including four passengers and gear. The vehicle tiptoed upslope exerting less than 5 pounds pressure per square inch distributed equally because of the vehicle's articulating features. A horse and rider, by comparison, exert close to 24 p.s.i, a man - about 7 p.s.i.

We had shoved off on Saturday morning, Aug. 2, 1969, from San Isabel National Forest's Halfmoon Campground (elevation: 9800 feet), huddling Mount Elbert's northeastern approach. I led in the four-wheel steer. Beside me rode the expedition's guide, young Bill Peterson, from nearby Leadville, who'd previously made the summit on foot. Behind tracked Sam Umberger, Coot dealer from Riverton, Wyo. Sam had brought along a standard four-wheel-drive Coot. Riding with him were Dick Kruse, 26, sports photographer from Denver's KBTV and Denver Post photographer Ed Sielsky. Driving tail position - also in standard four-wheel-drive - were mechanic Dave Kittinger and Derrick Dodge, a crack snowmobile-team driver from Ski-Doo West, Inc., Coot's Rocky Mountain distributor.

Before pushing off, we'd roughed out a route and mapped our assault. Moving upslope, cross-country and ever southwestward, we'd climb to 12,000 feet. That would put us just above timberline. Once we'd shaken timber and with the slope steepening (our contour maps showed the north ascent to be more than 60 degrees in places), we'd bed down as best we could for the night. Next morning, early, we'd make our try for the summit.

That first hour, working southwest by compass but with Elbert's bald summit fleetingly in view, we picked our way to 10,500 feet through dense stands of pine and Engelmann spruce.

"Power's holding," Sam told me by walkie-talkie.

Power, which would grow ever more critical the higher we went, was another of the things the climb would test: Whether factory-standard ATVs, as our own, could get up top a nearly three-mile-high summit under their own power.

An engine loses about three percent of its power for every 1000-foot increase in elevation. We were running with Coot's standard 12-hp, air-cooled, single-cylinder Tecumseh engine. Atop Elbert's 14,431-foot summit, the power loss would be more than 42 percent - reducing the engine's output to a mere seven hp.

Anticipating this, we'd fitted two of the vehicles (my four-wheel steer and Dave Kittinger's standard four-wheel drive) with Coot's optional 12-tooth drive sprocket. Switching sprockets increased the gear reduction by better than 25 percent - and power by the same amount to 16 hp effectively. So atop Elbert we'd have nine hp anyway. Other than fueling my four-wheel steer with cooler-burning 90-octane aviation gas, this was the only change we made. Sam hadn't bothered to make any changes at all. Yet here he was, nearing 11,000 feet, and feeling no power pinch.

By now we were running into booby-traps of timber and terrain so precipitous we often had to side-hill a hundred yards laterally to gain a few feet vertically.

"At the rate we're going," Dave shouted from his four-wheel drive, "we'll be a month of Sundays getting up top."

"The 'Sunday'," I replied, "had better be tomorrow." Each vehicle carried only an extra five gallons of gas. We didn't have many hours to squander during this climb.

Trouble was, the trees grew so thick that our Coots, 5 1/3 feet wide at their tires, often couldn't squeeze through. We spent the better part of an hour backing and hawing. That's where my four-wheel steer proved itself. Often, with hardly more than a whisper to spare, I'd kick the rear wheels of my Coot around a tree that had hung-up the others.

The ever steepening grades were something else again. Slip down a mountainside like that, and you might be an hour scrambling back up. Our Coots - with their independently "articulated" fronts and rears - managed to keep their tires planted and their cool better than some of their drivers. At times things were pretty scary. Not that we were in any real danger. We could have always bailed out. That was the reason we didn't wear seat belts or shoulder harnesses. But losing a vehicle to Elbert wasn't in our plans. Over the trickiest falloffs, we'd sometimes "walk" our ATVs: Walk alongside with one hand on the steering wheel, the other working the throttle extension designed for just such hard-going terrain.

A little past 11,000 feet - and nearly the whole way to timberline, at 12,000 feet - we ran into tree trouble of another kind: A crazy quilt of deadfalls. Some of the logs ran to over two feet in diameter. Some deadfalls we simply rode over. Others, too high for riding, we teetered over. The trick was to power the front tires atop the log, then push off with the Coot's powered rears. For a breathless moment, The ATV seemed to teeter, taking the brunt of the punishment on its tough, nearly 1/4-inch-thick steel underbelly. Then it'd nose over, literally sliding over the log until its front wheels caught hold and pulled the rears over.

Suddenly, nearing 12,000 feet, we were out of timber and into the clear. As it was too late to try for the summit before dusk, we decided to camp where we were. Yet there wasn't a flat spot or windbreak anywhere - just an endless upgrade, spotted with boulders as big as our ATVs, and naked to the winds and thunderstorms which breed near Elbert's summit. The only thing in our favor was the temperature, balmy and in the 60s and 70s.

Before sundown we fanned out in an exploration foray toward the summit. We discovered a lingering glacier, its crystal clear melt-off a source of the mighty Arkansas River whose headwaters rise a few miles northeast of Mount Elbert. Just before dark, Dave Kittinger and Derrick Dodge, heading downslope with their ATV to our camping place, slipped the gears momentarily into neutral. The moment's error almost cost them their lives. As their vehicle hurtled down the 45 degree grade toward the timberline, a mile below, Derrick bailed out. Dave, staying with it, grabbed frantically for the brake, saw it was useless and buried himself in the seat cushion. The Coot slammed into a boulder, bounced six feet, flipped over once and landed upright, dropping Dave out. But the damage had been done. The crash stripped a U-joint, putting one wheel out of action. The crippled Coot, now reduced to a three-wheel (instead of four-wheel) drive, limped back to camp. For Dave and Derrick, and their ATV, the try for the summit was over.

Sunday, Aug. 3: The final assault. The Rockies' highest peak lay dead ahead - and half a mile straight up. But to reach it, we'd need to climb at least two miles, maybe three. Surprisingly a rain that had hit our camp about midnight had all but evaporated. If it had slicked the slope, our Coots didn't notice.

Sam, with Bill Peterson, our guide, led in Sam's four-wheel drive. The two photographers and I, in the four wheel steer, tracked close behind. Dave and Derrick headed back downgrade for Halfmoon campground with their crippled vehicle.

For a slow-going hour we worked upgrade. We skirted the bowl, zigged toward the southeast to avoid a particularly steep place, then zagged around toward the southwest - on the compass course for the summit. The weather still held warm -in the mid-60s - and hardly a breeze stirred.

8:30 a.m. We topped a ridge and there it was - not Elbert's summit (which was now away to the northwest), but the foot trail. Our maps had indicated that the trail petered out a mile or so short of the top.

"Can't quite figure it out," Sam said, "but when somebody hands me a trail, I'm not about to say anything but 'thank you'."

Actually, it wasn't much of a trail. In places it was too narrow for our ATVs. And as we worked closer toward the summit - which still wasn't visible - the path grew perilously steep. That's when Sam decided to work south around the summit where things looked easier.

"With this four-wheel steer," I told him confidently, "I'm heading straight up. And I bet I beat you up top."

He grinned and I headed up slope.

9:35 a.m. With the throttle wide open, I bulled the four-wheel steer on a beeline climb for the top. Suddenly - so suddenly it came as a surprise - we were up.

Beside me, Dick Kruse quipped: "This must be the place."

It was the summit, for sure. Beyond our perch, which was scarcely 15 feet wide in places, everything else was strictly down. And along our perch's north side it was straight down - an almost sheer drop of more than 2000 feet.

Two minutes later Sam drove in sight, gunning fast for our summit. Getting up wasn't Sam's problem. Finding a parking place was. There we were, with one of the world's highest peaks all to ourselves - and right away we were caught in a traffic jam.

Atop Elbert's highest spot was a massive rock cairn. It'd been thrown up - a tradition with climbers - by those who, over the years, had preceded us. Nearby was a U.S. Geological Survey "witness post." Its weathered sign cautioned that close by was the official U.S. Government survey marker, marking Mount Elbert's 14,431-foot summit. We found the peak's official "register" housed in a length of capped, waterproof pipe. Each of us logged in - signing his name, the date and the exact time we'd reached the top.

I had one final mission: Raise Colorado's state flag above the summit. I tied the flag, using pullstrings from the parka I'd brought along, to a makeshift flagstaff planted atop the cairn.

Carefully, then, and mindful of the precariousness of our perch, we stood back to take in the scenery. No artist could have painted a mountainscape more awesome. To the north reared Mount Massive, its 14,418-foot summit nearly as high as Mount Elbert's. Far below, to the northeast, was Leadville - looking like a toy town. Seemingly within reach - but really nearly a mile below - shimmered Twin Lakes Reservoir.

We had done what we had set out to do: Climb continental America's second highest peak - by ATV.

Back to Article Index