Trident Peak
Three Tines More Fun.
Published 9-6-2022 | Last updated 12-31-2021
60.397, -149.075
[Unofficial name, no GNIS Entry]
Not many stories have been told about this peak, which overlooks Ptarmigan Lake and Upper Paradise Lake well off the beaten track of the travel corridors from Resurrection Bay to Kenai up the Russian River, or to the head of Turnagain Arm along the shores of Kenai Lake and Trail Creek. Its most accessible western side is steep and glaciated, and the eastern flank is just one valley over from the icefields forming the backbone of the Kenai Peninsula.
It would be foolish to believe the Dena'ina never explored the area during one thousand years of settlement on the Kenai Peninsula,[1][2] but any Dene name for Trident Peak or other geographic features deep in the Paradise Valley might be especially hard to rediscover. Along with the practical reasons for low traffic described above, if secondhand accounts are accurate then at least by the post-Contact period the Dena’ina “would not go into this valley, as it was taboo to them.”[3]
Prospectors had no such qualms, and it would also be foolish to believe that they did not examine every accessible inch of the Kenai Peninsula as well. Poetically, though, no gold was to be found in Paradise Valley, and therefore the miners did not frequent it either. Trident Peak is off the edge of the 1910 Sleem Map of Kenai Mining District and Moose Pass Regions,[4] drafted at the end of the Cook Inlet gold rush, and any records of a historic name for this landmark have yet to be found.
The first proposed name came via the mountaineer and naturalist J. Vin Hoeman. Hoeman delighted in crafting thematic networks of names for unnamed geographic features and proposed many names related to taxonomy such as Salix Peak (after the genus of willows) in Hatcher Pass. His idea for this feature was Lagopus, the name of the genus including ptarmigans based on its location at the head of Ptarmigan Creek, but the ethos of the Alaskan mountaineering community is that the privilege of naming a peak falls to the first recorded party to summit.[5][6] Hoeman died in a Himalayan avalanche at the age of 32 before he had a chance to tackle this particular mountain,[7] so Lagopus remained a thought in his meticulous card catalogue of notes and dreams.
Therefore, although there may have been earlier names, the first one currently known was offered by Bob Spurr and Chuck McLaughlin, who made the first recorded ascent of the peak on July 1, 1969. While ascending they found that “three obvious gendarmes competed for the title of ‘The Summit’ and none of the three appeared easy; hence, the name ‘Trident.’”[8] Their assessment that the middle point was the highest has been confirmed by the few parties which have followed them and, like a good trident, the name has stuck.
With gratitude to Steve Gruhn for his deep knowledge of the Grace and John Vincent Hoeman Papers.
Sources
[6] Steve Gruhn, in discussion with the author. November 2021.