Electric Winter (Portrait)

As you drive north along the Yellowstone River towards Gardiner, Montana, it is hard to not miss the picturesque jagged mountain known as Electric Peak that rises nearly 5,800 vertical feet from the valley bottom. I was curious of how it received its name. Below is what I discovered: . In July of 1871, Geographer Henry Gannett, part of Ferdinand Hayden’s expedition through the unsurveyed territory that would become Yellowstone, summited the tallest peak in the Gardiner Valley, to collect elevation and survey data. As the climbing party neared the summit, a large thunderstorm threatened nearby. A member of the climbing party, Albert Peal recalled the experience: . “When we were within about 500 feet of the top a storm came up, and we were enveloped in clouds. The ascent here was very difficult, as the fragments of rock were very sharp, and most of them loose, sliding from beneath us as we climbed over them. Mr. Gannett succeeded in attaining the highest point and depositing his instruments, when he was in the midst of an electrical cloud, and his feeling not being of the most agreeable sort he retreated. As he neared us we observed that his hair was standing on end, as though he were on an electrical stool, and we could hear a series of snapping sounds, as though he were receiving the charges of a number of electrical frictional machines. Mr. A. E. Brown next tried to go up, but received a shock which deterred him. The cloud now began to settle about us, and we descended some 500 feet, and waited until the storm passed over. About 4 o’clock in the afternoon we succeeded in reaching the top, and Mr. Gannett found the altitude of the peak to be 10,992 feet above the sea. We named it Electric Peak.”