On Dec. 31, 1990, Dan Stuart stood with the AdAmAn Club atop Pikes Peak for the first time. He watched the sun set against a purple sky and cast the mountain’s shadow over the plains, before a full moon rose and the stars twinkled with the city below. Here, among the snow at 14,115 feet, a white glow splashed across the smiling faces of companions.

Stuart remembered this recently in a book. “Those who were on the summit that evening will long remember those spectacular sights,” he wrote.

Now president of the AdAmAn Club, Stuart is preparing for his 31st New Year’s Eve ascent. And whatever the atmosphere brings, this one is promising to be most memorable.

100 years of AdAmAn: A timeline of New Year’s Eve fireworks on Pikes Peak

The club is celebrating its 100th year with mountaintop fireworks at 9 p.m. and midnight — shows expected to be bigger than usual. As always, visibility will depend on Mother Nature. And as always, the AdAmAn Club is determined to ring in the new year in a bold, dramatic way no other community in the world can claim.

For a century now, generations of Colorado Springs families have looked high in the sky to these brave hikers negotiating the tundra in the dead of winter. They are brave or crazy, by their own admission.

How to credit the longevity?

“Well,” Stuart quips, “I think a total lack of common sense.”

It’s an audacious history of fun, foibles and fanfare captured in a new book Stuart helped put together, along with other longtime members of the club.

100 years of AdAmAn: A snapshot of the journey to New Year’s Eve fireworks on Pikes Peak

It’s “an improbable thing,” reads the introduction to “AdAmAn: One Hundred Years of Ice, Wind and Fire.” An improbable thing that “has continued to be a cherished tradition, helping define the spirit of our region.”

And that of a broader state, reads Gov. Jared Polis’ proclamation declaring Dec. 31 AdAmAn Day.

The club “personifies the state of Colorado’s spirit of adventure,” the proclamation states, “and its people’s determination to persevere in overcoming adversity.”

“One Hundred Years of Ice, Wind and Fire” covers a colorful cast of AdAmAn characters spanning the decades. From the days of Babe Ruth and Prohibition, through world wars and the Great Depression, through Chuck Berry and the race to space and the Beatles and the civil rights movement, in all times good and bad, in all turns of the elements, the AdAmAn Club has aimed to provide a bright, ambitious start to the new year.

Maybe it’s craziness to thank. Or maybe it’s eternal hope, says club historian Donald Sanborn.

“When you start with bad conditions, then you tend to think all it can do is get better from there,” he says.

On Dec. 31, 1922, bad conditions met the “Frozen Five,” the legendary originators of the club. Mountaineer brothers Fred and Ed Morath enlisted trail maestro Fred Barr, photographer Harry Standley and cigar-smoking soldier-turned-accountant Willis Magee to embark on the New Year’s Eve mission.

In the “watch party” coordinated with The Colorado Springs Gazette-Telegraph, they reportedly carried 175 pounds of rockets, flares, powder and provisions up the peak, where they were said to encounter 15-foot snowdrifts, subzero temperatures and brutal gusts that almost blew Magee off a cliff. They arrived, mercifully, to the mountaintop’s old weather station — the Summit House site that would provide critical refuge for years to come.

Flares were lit, coinciding with others from The Gazette’s rooftop. The city electrician dimmed the street lights. And, as the paper had hoped, 1923 was “usher(ed) into the Pikes Peak region in the most novel and unique manner in its history.”

Despite the hardship, the Frozen Five were set on a return the next New Year’s Eve. And again, they were met by fierce opposition. Canteens froze, forcing them to drink gritty snowmelt, which made some sick.

The idea had been hatched to add a man to the climb each year, hence the name AdAmAn (Fred Morath stylized the As as tall peaks). For many first-time guests, it would be “a baptism by blizzard,” recalled one organizer later.

No-quit attitude defines new member of Pikes Peak’s AdAmAn Club

Starting in 1925 with First Methodist Church’s George McDonald, men of the cloth were at least partly superstitious choices. With prayer, weather was said to be good that year.

A later story in the 1950s involved Father William Shannon, who reportedly slipped and fell 100 feet down an icy slope. A partner descended to the rescue.

“Where is your religion now, Father?” the partner asked.

Replied the priest: “In the seat of my pants.”

By then, thanks to advances in newspaper syndication and radio broadcasting, the AdAmAn Club had become a nationwide sensation, bringing more fame to the peak called America’s Mountain. In more than one instance in the 1940s, the Air Force was consulted to fly planes over the peak to transmit a “blaze by blaze” report to the country.

As much as the physical feat itself, the growing group’s camaraderie was becoming known, strengthened by trail humor, games and campfires at Barr Camp. Read one report:

“The warmth of friendship among the cold-weather members is almost enough to melt the ice upon which the foundation stones of the Summit House perpetually rest.”

Outside the Summit House, climbers had, perhaps miraculously, avoided disaster by lighting fireworks by hand. They would incorporate a modern, remote-launching system after a letter by a club president in 1967: “We need to talk about ways not to kill each other with our bombs. Also, other lesser things.”

That they kept prevailing against the elements seemed similarly miraculous. That was until 2010. For the first and only time in recorded history, the group turned back in the bitter cold and whiteout.

“I was thinking I’m gonna either lose some fingers and toes best case, or worst case I’m gonna die,” recalls Sanborn, who was president that year.

After several cases of frostbite, the group combated 100-mph winds the next year. The show went on.

The show keeps going on, just as Fred Morath predicted many years ago. Clubs come and go, he recognized — “but the AdAmAn Club won’t die out, it may run a hundred years.”

That may be due to a lack of common sense, Stuart says. And also to the foresight of Morath and his fellow Frozen Five.

“The wisdom of adding one person a year means that we have to be focused on getting strong people in the club to carry on the tradition,” Stuart says.

100 years of AdAmAn fireworks on Pikes Peak: By the numbers

People come and go — the harsh cost of friendship.

Fallen club members are remembered along the trail. They are remembered on the summit, especially on those most memorable of nights, like when the moon is full and high.

They are, in a way, immortalized by their place in the old, cherished tradition. And by a poem:

We hear, before their echoes fade, triumphant boots on summit made. Forever young, forever strong, their laughter lingers, like a song.

We see them, as deep loss we rue, on peaks beyond, begun anew. Above us all, bright stars agleam, still climbing as high as they can dream.