‘I’m not nuts’: Colorado man hopes to push peanut up Pikes Peak with his nose

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — This may seem like a nutty idea, but a Colorado man is convinced he can push a peanut to the top of Pikes Peak -- with his nose.

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“With a good spoon, I won’t have a problem,” Bob Salem, of Colorado Springs, told KRDO-TV.

Salem said he wants to become the first person this century -- and third overall -- to crack into the Pikes Peak peanut club. He told the television station he was doing it to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Manitou Springs. He will be doing it for a charity, Together and Home at Last, which provides housing and supportive services to people facing homelessness.

According to KUSA-TV, someone first pushed a peanut to the summit of Pikes Peak, which is 14,115 feet above sea level, 93 years ago. Salem began his odyssey on Saturday and hopes to finish -- by a nose -- on July 17, the television station reported.

That first peanut-pusher was confirmed in a Sept. 8, 1929, dispatch by United Press that appeared in The San Bernardino Sun. Bill Williams, of Hondo, Texas, “adjusted a wire contraption to his face and set out to win a wager of $500 by pushing a peanut up Pikes Peak with his nose.”

“He got there, too, in 30 days,” according to the story.

An Associated Press feature in the Aug. 20, 1950, edition of the Oakland Tribune expanded on the original feat, noting that Williams, collected on the bet on June 10, 1929.

Williams, a plasterer by trade, turned 21 pairs of gloves “into tatters,” and wore out a pair of specially made kneepads. Williams also used 184 peanuts in his trek to the summit, according to the AP.

An automobile full of women rolled up to watch Williams attempt the feat.

“One of them asked me which was the nut -- me or the goober,” Williams told United Press.

In 1963, 21-year-old Ulysses S. Baxter, “a rock ‘n’ roll singer” from Oklahoma City who was touring as a member of Carlos and the Rocket, duplicated Williams’ feat but completed the task in eight days, finishing on July 17.

The national attention allowed Baxter to record as a solo artist, with songs like “Mother, Congratulate Your Son,” and “Lavender Lace.”

Nearly a century later after Williams first reached the top of Pikes Peak, Salem swears he is no goober.

“I don’t think I’m nuts, no,” Salem told KRDO. “I think I’m eccentrically challenged.”

People interesting in tracking Salem’s progress can go to the OutThere Colorado website.

Information from online newspaper archives was used in compiling this report.

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