Hulda Crooks Dies At 101; She Was The Oldest Woman To Scale Mts. Whitney, Fuji

Hulda Crooks, nicknamed "Grandma Whitney" for her two dozen climbs up 14,495-foot Mount Whitney between the ages of 66 and 91, has died. She was 101.

Mrs. Crooks, the oldest woman to scale Mount Whitney and 12,388-foot Mount Fuji in Japan, died Sunday in Loma Linda, Calif.

"It's been a great inspiration for me," she told the Los Angeles Times in 1991, four years after her last climb up Mount Whitney, the tallest peak in the continental United States. "When I come down from the mountain, I feel like I can battle in the valley again."

That year, she took a helicopter to the top of Mount Whitney for a special ceremony - the designation of the second peak to the south as Crooks Peak.

Legislation to name the mountain for the climber, sponsored by her friend and climbing companion, Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Calif., took five years to win passage because Congress was reluctant to confer the honor on anyone still living.

Last year, Mrs. Crooks published her memoirs, "Conquering Life's Mountains."

Mrs. Crooks began hiking as solace after the death of her husband, Dr. Samuel Crooks, at the age of 58 in 1950. She climbed 11,502-foot Mount Gorgonio in the San Bernardino Mountains about 20 times before challenging Mount Whitney in 1962.

Six years later, when she was 72, she began jogging and running because, she said "it made climbing so much easier."

At 82, she ran 1,500 meters in 10 minutes, 58 seconds in the Senior Olympics, setting a world record for the 80-to-85 age group. At 95, she continued to walk two miles a day.

Mrs. Crooks became a Seventh-Day Adventist at 18 and adopted the religion's ovo-lacto-vegetarian diet. She credited her longevity not only to exercise and diet, but also to her religious faith. Mountain climbing and running, she once said, were her "high-altitude evangelism" aimed toward inspiring young people.

"When you have faith in a supreme power that you believe is love and kindness and justice and has a care for you, you're not under tensions that people are that don't know where they're going or what's going to happen to them," she said.

"You develop a habit of trusting. Whatever comes to you in life, you feel that it's part of character development. You learn patience, hopefully, and tolerance. I think that to look at things hopefully and develop a spirit of gratitude is very important."