Scrapbook of famed climber named Colorado’s most treasured artifact

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(Photo: Courtesy of the American Alpine Club library)
<p>Pages from the journals and scrapbook of Albert Ellingwood, a pioneering Colorado mountain climber.</p>
Photo: Ellingwood scrapbook and journals
Pages from Ellingwood's scrapbook and journals.

The group started with dozens of artifacts, winnowed the list to 17 and asked the public vote online to determine the winner.

Voters faced a wide array of choices that included a carcass of the state's last-known grizzly bear and a 5000-year-old sandal.

The runners-up in the vote include the state's oldest operating locomotive and frontiersman Kit Caron's will.

Albert Ellingwood was known for being the first person to climb some of the most challenging peaks in Colorado and by 1925 became one of the first to climb all of Colorado's 14ers, the name given to the peaks that are at least 14,000 feet in elevation.

Ellingwood learned many of his climbing techniques from European climbers while he was a Rhodes scholar at Oxford University. His journal and photographs are the most complete record known of those early years on Colorado's high peaks.

See below for a list of the winning artifacts:

* Albert Ellingwood’s journal and scrapbook: Alpine Club, Golden