Pike Expedition
On November 15, Pike recorded the first sight of the distant mountain he called "Grand Peak". It has since been called Pikes Peak in his honor. Pike tried to climb the peak, hoping to get a view of the surrounding area to record on maps, the 14,000-foot summit. Pike's group ascended a lesser summit nearby—likely Mount Miller, which was named for Theodore Miller, one of the soldiers who accompanied Pike. With winter threatening, Pike pressed onward up the Arkansas, and on December 7 the party reached Royal Gorge, a spectacular canyon on the Arkansas at the base of the Rocky Mountains.
James Eccles
Pic Eccles at the foot of the Innominata ridge on Mont Blanc is named after him, as is the Eccles bivouac hut below Pic Eccles's summit. Col Eccles on the Brenva side of Mont Blanc is also named after him.
Eccles was one of the first British mountaineers to make ascents of the higher peaks of the Rockies. On 7 August 1878, in a party of eight including surveyor Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden, topographer A. D. Wilson and Eccles's favourite guide, Michel Payot, Eccles made the second ascent of Fremont Peak (once mistakenly considered the highest peak in the Rockies); he also climbed Wind River Peak in the Wind River Range while accompanying the Hayden Survey, together with A. D. Wilson and Payot. Eccles offers the following description of Wilson:
Eccles attempted to make the first ascent of Grand Teton (an ascent was claimed in 1872 by Nathaniel P. Langford and James Stevenson, but was probably of The Enclosure, a side peak of Grand Teton) in 1878 with Wilson, his assistant Harry Yount, and Payot. Eccles and Payot were unfortunately held up by the disappearance of two mules, and so were unable to accompany Wilson and Yount.