Dec 7, 2021
Simple Yet Sacred
An Avalanche Tragedy Memorial And Its Story Quietly Beckon
On the WWU campus in Bellingham, WA, a quiet memorial honors six students and alumni who lost their lives in a tragic Mt. Baker avalanche on July 22, 1939. Since I have briskly hiked past this spot for years, unaware of its significance, I naturally wonder how many others have overlooked the meaning behind this deliberate collection of stones.
The memorial sits in a peaceful, partially shaded corner of campus, between Edens Hall and the north end of WWU's oldest building, Old Main. Though a well-used trail leaves campus nearby to enter the sun-dappled forest of Sehome Hill Arboretum, the memorial is easy to miss. When I did stop to notice that it was more than just old, stone landscaping, I got a glimpse of the incident that had stricken that group of twenty-five young climbers so long ago and the story of the memorial that followed. I gathered Information regarding this tragedy from a brief outline of the accident on a WWU page, WWU's archived copies of the campus newspaper, the WWCollegiate, and the informative National Forest document "Report On The Mt. Baker Avalanche Rescue Work" authored in 1939 by William N. Parke.
For the record, I am a fair-weather day hiker, not an experienced mountain climber. When I began writing this article, I was oblivious to the horrible realities of avalanches. Since then, I have developed a great appreciation of their deadliness than my naive, picture-postcard notions had allowed me. Before I dive into the tragic event that took place, I would like to share with the reader a flurried overview of the danger of avalanches.
Avalanches
For those who don't know what a suddenly moving slope of snow can do to a person, put your useless seat belt on. A deceivingly unstable mountain snowfield can be as pretty as frosting and peaceful — until it is not. Once in motion, it becomes a harrowing experience. Reading the testimonials of avalanche survivors, it is not a gentle, fluffy sleigh ride through clouds of happy snow that safely deliver you on top of a soft pillow. Nor is it a Warren Miller film invincibly skiing nimble trails over soft-serve ice cream or whatever other wintery platitudes one could use.
Avalanches fall under seven categories: Slab avalanches, Loose Snow avalanches, Icefall avalanches, Cornice Fall Avalanches, Wet Avalanches, Glide Avalanches, and Slush Avalanches. Since the six climbers lost their lives in the first and deadliest type — a slab avalanche — I will focus on this classification alone.
While many lucky souls do escape or survive, National Geographic states that avalanches kill 150 people a year worldwide. Humans cause ninety percent of them. An avalanche can start with a startling "boom," a thunderous "crack," or maybe even just a feathery "wump" or "whoosh" as it sloughs off of a mountain as a shattering, fracturing plate the size of half a football field or bigger. The speed of avalanches is astounding. Achieving 20 mph within three seconds to 80 mph in six seconds, avalanches can reach up to 200 mph, striking anything in its path with the impact of a freight train. It snaps trees like so many proverbial matchsticks, and like a magician of disaster, it can explode a house before it even reaches it with the force of the compressed air that rushes invisibly ahead of it. Many caught in an avalanche are killed by being crushed against trees and boulders or thrown off cliffs. Others helplessly trapped in this deadly cascade can be pounded by a riot of rocks and ice, have snow forced down their throats, and their body contorted into unhappy positions. Since the human body is three times denser than the avalanche that carries it, victims sink fast. When the blink of this eternity finally stops, a person can find themselves in a dangerous predicament with one or more of the following: Their clothing ripped and shredded; Their face and head bludgeoned; Buried alive at dangerous depths in a pitch-black world; Upside down; Hypothermia; Internal injuries; Or terrifyingly immobilized in snow so concrete-like even their lungs cannot expand. These latter three — hypothermia, internal injuries, and suffocation — are the most common killers after an avalanche. In such a frightening situation as that, I shudder when I imagine the terrifying panic of ticking seconds a conscious but helpless victim must feel.
Opinions regarding the average length of time a person has left after being buried vary between experts and situations. Some ski patrollers are trained to expect a corpse only eleven minutes after such an event. According to an NPR avalanche article titled "The Beast Born of Snow," other rescue statistics have found 93 percent of the people found were alive after 15 minutes, with the survival rate dropping fast to 10–20 percent after 45 minutes. When rescuers don't know where or how deeply buried a victim is can significantly complicate efforts to rescue them in time.
Now, imagine a time before so much that we now take for granted was available. In 1939, avalanche research and recreational avalanche awareness were in their infancy, and ski patrols, high-altitude rescue helicopters, daily avalanche risk reports, cell phones, plowed mountain roads, and on-person avalanche survival gear like emergency beacons or avalanche airbags all did not exist.
With all this in mind, it is incredible that nineteen of these pummeled students managed to survive this nightmarish brush with the "white death." It also helps explain the overwhelming circumstances that likely took the lives of the remaining six.
What follows is an account of that sobering event.
The Accident
Continuing an annual tradition started by students of Western Washington College of Education twenty years before, twenty-five young climbers set out on that beautiful, sunny July day to scale the peak of Mt. Baker. As I have mentioned, general knowledge of avalanche awareness was nothing like it is today, so the climbers had no hazardous concerns to factor into the familiar ascent ahead of them. However, unknown to them at the time, high-risk conditions were awaiting them. Recent Weather Bureau reports recorded multiple storms over Mt. Baker during the first half of July, depositing much new snow. Sunshine and hot temperatures, having started several days before the climb, continued to weaken the snowfield on the day of the accident. When the party left the area of Kulshan Cabin, they were behind schedule, which would later place them in the zone of the accident during the warmest time of the day.
At 1:30 p.m, disaster struck. While scaling the last section of the steep face of the Roman Wall, the avalanche began with a swishing sound followed by the sensation of "standing on a moving carpet." As it swept all twenty-five climbers a half-mile down the mountain, one of the climbers yelled "DIG IN!" but when members tried to slow themselves in the moving snow, their alpenstocks and ice axes bent underneath them due to the force of the slide. The report describes members crawling and swimming in the current in a skilled attempt to remain on top of the slide. But, from the perspective of a few of the survivors, victims sunk under then bobbed up again, "as though they were pieces of driftwood being carried over rapids." Six members of the climbing party were thrown off a cliff and into the throat of a crevasse.
The Rescue and Search
When it was over, fifteen battered members of the party regrouped at Black Butte Saddle while three other survivors began desperately searching for the remaining seven missing climbers. It is a good thing they did. Elizabeth Beers was soon found alive adding a nineteenth person to the list of survivors, but it was too late for Alice James who, when they found her in a 100-foot crevasse, could not be revived. At 8:00 p.m., six and a half hours after the ordeal, two unnamed hikers from the group finally reached the Glacier Ranger Station residence of William Parke to report the accident along with the names of those still unaccounted for. Parke immediately organized a search party that eventually included park rangers, Mountaineers, boys of the Civil Conservation Corps (CCC), and even Western Washington College (WWC) president himself, Dr. Charles H. Fisher. Gathering the required equipment, Parke and ten other men set off on foot, in the dark of night, for Kulshan Cabin. They arrived at the cabin at 3:00 a.m. While searchers discovered the body of Julias Dornblut, Jr. on the following day, the hunt for the remaining four victims continued. More help arrived on the third day of the search when Max Eckenberg, a well-known and experienced Forest Service mountaineer, arrived, leading a group of ten more individuals hired to help locate the bodies. The expanse of the slide was reported to have been about 20 square acres and had come to rest at a depth of fifty feet over a deep crevasse mentioned above. Eckenberg directed the team to search during the cooler mornings to avoid tangling with another avalanche during the more unstable, warmer hours. As searchers gingerly poked and dug in the snow for several more days, they only found a few small pieces of equipment and clothing. On the sixth day, leaders called off the search. However, smaller groups of volunteers returned to search throughout the summer when conditions were more favorable. Still, the bodies of Vene Fisher, Maynard Howat, Beulah Lindberg, and Hope Weitman were never located.
A Memorial Coalesces
The backstory of the memorial begins immediately after the accident. Many thanks to Paul Cocke, Director of University Communications, Tony Kurtz at WWU University Archives, Jeff Jewell, at the Photo Archives at the Whatcom Museum, and David Schlitt, the Special Collections Manager at Western Libraries Heritage Resources, Western Washington University, all of whom were most helpful regarding invaluable snippets of scattered, archived history and images.
Though the event occurred during the quiet summer quarter, the college was in shock from this loss. On July 28, 1939, around the time officials called off the search, the campus newspaper, the WWCollegiate, produced front-page coverage of the accident with photos of several of the victims, reporting that President C. H. Fisher had canceled a regular assembly to hold in its place a special assembly for student services for the victims. Student Body President Ralph H. Neil was also reported to have appointed a committee to discuss with faculty possibilities for creating a campus memorial in honor of those lost.
I wonder how deeply this tragedy must have affected the staff at the WWCollegiate. Julias Dornblut, Jr., one of the climbers killed, was that very summer, a leading colleague of theirs, acting as Editor and Manager of WWCollegiate itself.
As the summer weeks unfolded, students canvassed the campus and found that support for the construction of a monument to honor the victims was "splendid" and "overwhelming." That fall, in an issue of the WWCollegiate dated October 13, 1939, a small impassioned editorial posited not only a monument honoring their lost fellow students be funded and erected as soon as possible but also that donations should be raised immediately for the construction of a student union building as a "living memorial" to the victims as well. The article mentions that, since the Western Washington College budgets were already burdened with other priorities, all action and financial support of these ideas would have to come from the student body alone. Considering the fiscally tight Great Depression and unraveling world events of the coming months and years ahead, it is impressive that the memorial managed to make it through that brutal filter of history to come to any fruition. But as you will soon see, despite a robust beginning, its completion became listless and delayed, logistically hampered by historic circumstances beyond anyone's control.
By the spring of 1940, a Mount Baker Memorial Committee had been organized with the approval of the College Board of Trustees. The March 1, 1940, edition of the WWCollegiate reports that after "four months of deliberation," the general idea of centrally-placed basaltic rocks in an open, circular grass enclosure, with a backdrop of trees and alpine shrubs, had been tentatively agreed upon. Initial plans of the site were drawn up by J.P. Jones of Bebb and Jones Architectural Firm in Seattle. At that time, the firm of Bebb and Jones was designing Western Washington College's Campus School Building scheduled to be completed in 1943. This building, after later additions, was renamed Miller Hall.
By the summer of 1940, the committee received donations from friends and family to fund the memorial's construction, knowing that they could raise more money from the student body later if needed. Seeking a memorial design from an accredited landscape architect, the committee called for submissions.
In the July 3, 1940 edition of the WWCollegiate, the paper mentions that Seattle landscape architect Nobel [sic]Hoggson had drawn up exacting site plans with large basalt columns for the memorial's central feature. Since a New York architect and interior designer named Noble F. Hoggson, Sr., died in 1939, I assume the paper can only be referring to his son, Seattle Landscape Architect Noble Hoggson Jr. Hoggson was quite successful in the Seattle area. He worked as a consultant at the University of Washington Arboretum from 1932–33 and was the original landscape architect at the Art Institute of Seattle from 1933–34. His other notable achievements include the following: Working as the landscape architect for both Mount Rainier National Park and Lassen Volcanic National Park (1933–36); His involvement at the Garrett House, Shoreline WA, (1936) and Seattle's Sand Point Naval Air Station Housing Project (1943); Maurice Dunn House, Shoreline, WA, (1948–49); His own home, the Noble F. Hoggson Jr. House, Shoreline Wa, (1966), and the Claude Bekins House, Shoreline Wa (1966–69). Hoggson also worked at the Bloedel Reserve on Bainbridge, WA, from 1966-69. He died shortly after in 1970.
On July 12, 1940, nearly a year since the accident, the WWCollegiate reports that the Memorial Committee discussed the site's typography, necessary retaining walls, and the type and size of basaltic rock they wanted to be installed. It was paramount to the committee that the memorial was a cohesive part of the campus yet clearly built in the memory of those lives lost on the mountain. In addition to evergreen trees, other shrubs like Rhododendrons, heathers, and mountain [phlox] were to be planted as a backdrop for the sunny, "alpine" memorial. Reading the minutes of a College Board of Trustees meeting on July 17, 1940, the plans and site for the monument "were inspected and approved." On July 19, the paper reports that the Mount Baker Memorial Committee had officially approved Noble Hoggson's rocky, nature-inspired design, followed by final, unanimous approval by the College Board of Trustees. The committee then sought contracts for excavating the knoll at the site, including the possibility of utilizing free labor from the still-active Civil Conservation Core (CCC). However, since the CCC typically focused on projects on public lands, a special request had to be submitted to the CCC headquarters in Portland, OR.
That spring and summer of 1940, the effort towards a memorial was swift and unified.
Construction Begins
On August 2, 1940, the WWCollegiate reported that the excavation work had commenced and would take two weeks. Since the committee did not later mention any expenditures regarding this excavation, the CCC may have approved — pro bono — the Maple Falls CCC camp to tackle this unusual public service task. The article further states the selection of rock and building the memorial's centerpiece would soon follow. Dudley Pratt, a renowned American sculptor and faculty member at the University of Washington, would graciously assume this supervisory role, selecting basalt columns from the still active CCC rock quarry at Heather Meadows. Pratt was well known in that era for civic and private sculptural contributions around the Pacific Northwest — including three sculpted figures above the entrance of Bellingham City Hall — and his students included sculptors and artists like Jean Johanson and George Tsutakawa.
Paper Meets Hard Reality
As Dudley Pratt set to work that fall, it is interesting to note that he offered the committee — and perhaps Hoggson — an alternate design for the centerpiece. As indicated by his September 1940 drawing above, this idea involved a much taller basalt column, maybe 12 to 14 feet high. Why Pratt had drawn up such a noticeable departure from Hoggson's approved design of two months earlier is not known. Tony Kurtz, at WWU Archives, found this as curious as I did. But I offer one possibility. Kurtz mentioned that Pratt had difficulty finding suitable basalt to achieve Hoggson's concept. If this was the case, Pratt might have drawn, as a compromise, this taller design requiring the smaller pillar basalt available at the quarry while still delivering the desired statement of Hoggson's centerpiece. It is easy to see the contrast between the two designs, and I wonder what Hoggson felt about Pratt's suggestion. I do not know whether collaboration between the two was close or distant, warm or challenging. But, judging by the centerpiece we see today, both Pratt's and Hoggson's designs seem to have been left somewhat on the drawing board, resulting in a significantly reduced centerpiece from what the committee and designers initially desired. While certainly not reflecting the tempered grandiosity of either idea, Pratt's thoughtfully stacked basalt at the site had at least the flavor of both of its creative parents.
Exactly why the fantastic reduction in scale from what the planners envisioned fascinates me. Without any other information regarding how much time it took Pratt or whether or not he had the assistance of a few worker bees, I let what we do know to guide us toward at least one possibility. I imagine that Pratt was already a busy UW professor during a fall quarter in full swing. During the construction of the centerpiece, he may have been squeezed by chilly, dank conditions, short days, logistics, personal time constraints, and budgetary limits. Furthermore, in an era before the four-laned beltway of Interstate-5 was constructed, he had a tedious, long commute from Seattle and the added journey on a slow, unimproved road to the Heather Meadows quarry during his involvement. These pressures, coupled with the clock ticking away his windows of opportunity to finish before winter, may have ultimately forced Pratt to wisely steer for a more achievable, less-is-more, rustic minimalism without a base of stones. If this is how it played out, such a decision could be the only reason why he ever finished the focal point by that December. Imagine what a relief this was not only to the committee but also to Pratt as he removed his cold, wet gloves for the last time and returned to his life of sculpture and teaching in Seattle.
Whatever the explanation for the drastic design changes, by December 6, 1940, the WWCollegiate published Hoggson's pen and ink conceptual of the memorial with the title "Work Goes On." Matter-of-factly stating that the monument was almost finished, the paper mentions that the committee had successfully raised additional funds from friends, alumni, and the student body. Developments to come were laid out for the reader: A curved outer wall would serve as a rock bench for resting, and a grass path would lead into the center. With the Pratt's centerpiece of basalt columns now set in place, S. A. Howat, father of Maynard Howat, one of the six taken by the avalanche, would cover the cost of a single bronze plaque listing all the victim's names.
Progress Slows
A little more than a wintery month passed since that short December article. Based upon a report in the WWCollegiate, published January 10, 1941, I sense that some among the student body had grown weary with the memorial site languishing in its incompletion and were anxious to see it finished. After all, it had been a year and a half since the accident. To give students a better understanding of the circumstances regarding the delays, the campus paper nobly — and neutrally — stepped in to rake out some facts from the Mount Baker Memorial Committee. The article listed the memorial's expenditures to date, the names of those hired to help, and the developments thus far. Aside from Hoggson and Pratt's involvement, the article mentions George Dack, Head Gardener for WWC, and a Don Dack as having built both a "drywall" and "retainer wall in front." These walls might be referring to the angled, concave retaining wall holding back the Sehome Hill directly behind the centerpiece and the steeply sloped, convex retaining wall on the front side below the circular memorial. These were both built by the stacking of broken chunks of unmortared concrete, hence the term "drywall." The paper went on to say that plans had been halted for the winter until proper basaltic rock for a series of benches could both be selected and transported from the Heather Meadow's quarry after the spring thaw.
Unfortunately, neither of these intentions occurred that spring or early summer of 1941. By then two years since the accident, the vexed WWCollegiate gets understandably firm. In the August 8, 1941 edition, seven months after the paper's gentle January report, the newspaper diplomatically nips at the heels of the languishing situation without blaming anyone involved. The photo of Hoggson's winning memorial illustration is once again presented as a visual reminder of said priorities, with the unmistakable, stern-toned title, "There Is Work To Be Done." Beneath the picture is an editorial caption lamenting the sad state of the unfinished memorial, ending with the following strong statement and suggestion: "Until proper identification and publicity is given it, this memorial is as buried as those whose memories it stands for. Let's speed along this worthy service."
A week later, on August 15, 1941, the WWCollegiate published a response written by the project's Faculty Committee Chairman, H. C. Ruckmick. Empathetic towards critics about the lack of progress, the industrial arts professor heading the committee described a more detailed account of the delays. According to Ruckmick, broken concrete was initially considered for the semi-circular bench-wall. But the committee felt this was out of line with the alpine feel desired. When the committee voted in October 1940 to use basalt instead, there was already too much snow at the Heather Meadows CCC quarry to select the rustic pillars of basalt preferred. When the snow melted enough in June of 1941, other hurdles arose. With the abandonment of the Maple Falls CCC camp in mid-June, the trucks and drivers of the CCC camp available to the committee the previous summer evaporated. In the meantime, the Forest Service needed all their trucks for "fire supplies." But, as Ruckmick assured his readers, help was on the way. Four or five unnamed students had volunteered to hand-select 175 rock pillars that coming weekend using a freshly available Forestry truck. Even Dr. Haggard, the new president of Western Washington College, was named as having every intention to find help in permanently placing the stones once they arrived at the memorial. With these developments afoot, Chairman Ruckmick concluded that there was every reason to believe that the project would wrap up in the fall and that he, along with everyone else, was eager to see the memorial finished once and for all.
On November 14, 1941, a WWCollegiate column titled "The Mt. Baker Memorial Near Completion" declared the remaining basalt had indeed been selected, delivered, and set in place. All that remained to finish the memorial was only the now-desired six nameplates for each climber lost. These were to be installed along the now-built bench wall, not the center mound. Mr. Ruckmick expressed his hope for a dedication in the spring of 1942 when the young plants and grass had a chance to grow out a bit. But world events continued to conspire against the memorial. The United States' entry into WWII may have postponed the dedication, and by the summer of 1944, as the war raged on, one senses the dwindling momentum dogged by lousy timing. Alpine shrubbery was still missing, and no plaques were affixed to the retaining wall or the center mound. As the fate of the Free World fluttered in tatters from its resolute flagpole, who had the time or materials? Beyond the alarming newspaper headlines, theater newsreels, and international radio announcements, WWII was busily affecting every level of society in the United States. Planting shrubs around a four-year-old tragedy perhaps was not seen as a priority. And what about the metal desired for six nameplates? I can only imagine how hard it would have been to procure even the smallest amount of highly-prized molten bronze during our national war effort. Like many other resources, metals were strictly rationed or simply unavailable — aside from the dishonorable, unsavory black market — to anything outside the parameters of winning a world war. A half-page WWCollegiate article dated July 14, 1944, hinted at just that. "Whenever you pass that memorial, today and any other day, but today especially, just mutter a prayer for the six students, whose names will be placed on separate plaques as soon as the war ceases." Next to this coverage, the paper again trots out that same, tired image of Hoggson's half-realized concept mired in the mud of time. A caption beneath the image further states that aside from the yet-to-be-installed nameplates, "this memorial lacks only the addition of mountain shrubbery…" and ends on the rosy note that [Hoggson's] plans were "…now almost completely fulfilled."
That was the summer of 1944, on the accident's fifth anniversary, and the memorial was still unfinished. The even-handed editorial mentioned above, with its sunny, patient approach toward the incomplete, overdue monument, is an about-face from the paper of just a few years before. To me, this indicates two possibilities: A nation two and a half years into a resource-intensive, casualty-hungry world war had put things into perspective, and five years is a long time on a college campus. With all those graduations — and later military enlistments— since 1939, the entire student body might not only have shrunk but been replaced with a new generation of students — including the paper's writers. The grief regarding those lost and frustrations once swirling around the unfinished memorial perhaps faded in that vacuum. I scanned the next fifteen years of the WWCollegiate for even the briefest mention of the memorial's completion or dedication, but in the gold-pan of my cursory research, no sparkles caught my eye. I'd wager that with more time and a good comb, a blurb about a dedication could be in any number of editions of that newspaper. But, like a whisper in the cacophony of exploding battlefields and burning cities, the loss of the avalanche victims may have been understandably overshadowed by the more recent, higher number of lives lost from WWII and the respective memorials that must have followed.
I can only guess that the installation of the memorial's long-overdue plaque and dedication quietly occurred during the late 1940s or the 1950s.
As It Stands
Today, the memorial still sits nicely placed as it was so many years ago, with the mortarless, broken-concrete retaining walls behind and below. Conifers loom tall at the rear, and shade-tolerant ferns and mosses adorn a rock enclosure connected by a set of steps on either end. I notice Azaeleas below, but the Rhododendrons, Heather, and Mountain Plox outlined in the original plans are not evident. Perhaps they eventually died as the site grew more shaded or were never planted in the first place. Next to one end is a five-inch thick stump cut close to the ground. It could be the remnant of an Arborvitae, a Yew, or a mature Rhododendron.
Hoggson's rocky centerpiece, executed by the capable hands of Pratt's sculptural instincts, lives on unaltered. The geometric stones of this three-foot-tall centerpiece morph from their deeply embedded, prone positions in the soil and aim vertically for the heavens. The result evokes a miniature, rugged mountain and the poignant metaphor of spirits of the fallen rising to meet the afterlife. The composition almost looks as though nature itself could have stood the columns by only cooling an upward, twisting artery of lava. An additional bench-wall of approximately 300 upright basalt columns firmly anchored in the earth defines the outer, curved perimeter. The long-awaited, small, bronze plaque with an aged, turquoise patina is mounted firmly to the front of the memorial. Installed at some unknown time after the memorial's construction, it lists all six lost in the accident and is, amazingly, unmarred by vandals.
At the bottom is written this poetic blessing: "You Will Be Forever Climbing Upward Now." The entire memorial reminds me of the ancient and desolate ceremonial sites of Northern Europe.
Beyond the outer ring of the memorial, there are two other features worth noting: A rock-walled nook next to the trail where one would assume a stand-alone bench should be, and a semi-circular patio below lined with a similarly built rock wall. Since these walls have a sharp, mid-century modern feel and contain a non-pillar type of basalt, they may not be original. Never mentioned in the memorial's original plans or during its construction, I noticed upon further inspection that the walls were also created using mortar and exist outside the memorial's small enclosure. Considering all this, including the challenges of building even the simple, little memorial, I conclude that the university may have added the walls and lower patio after WWII.
Who would have known that behind the completion of this unassuming memorial, all the troubling logistics, delays, frustrations, and unlucky timing? Only due to multi-agency cooperation, the dedication of all those involved, and of course, a college newspaper that kept nudging the momentum as long as it possibly could, do we have this lasting memorial. It remains at this hour a peaceful place to honor the emotional and physical ordeal for all who survived or perished in the accident, their loved ones left behind, and the small college that grieved that loss.
But the serenity of this memorial is even more poignant as I write this in the context of 2021. It serves as a reminder that any moment can be our last and to live our lives to our fullest as these climbers did, to always be courageous enough despite the risks and fears to challenge ourselves to grow. From deep in the past, we are all led to strive ahead by those surviving members who, I have read, were right back at it that following year and successfully reached the summit of Mt. Baker. Only a year after the accident, I can only imagine what was going through their minds as they climbed and then gazed out at the rest of their lives from that mountain's peak. Their undaunted perseverance inspires us today, and those who lost their lives only the year before could very well have been there in spirit and chaperoned their fellow climbers with pride.
