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Lynne Wolfe
Trad climber
Driggs, ID
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Topic Author's Original Post - Sep 30, 2007 - 10:48am PT
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See this article from Sunday Sept 30 Boston Globe. One of my heroes- I remember Charles Houston, in describing the '53 K2 expedition, emphasizing the "Spirit of the Expedition."
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/obituaries/articles/2007/09/30/bob_bates_at_96_mountaineer_taught_english_at_phillips_exeter/
Bob Bates, at 96; mountaineer taught English at Phillips Exeter
BOB BATES BOB BATES
By Bryan Marquard, Globe Staff | September 30, 2007
Remote in the Yukon Territory's icy wilderness, Mount Lucania rises 17,150 feet and was the highest unclimbed peak in North America in 1937, so forbidding and inaccessible that Life magazine called it "virtually impregnable."
Bob Bates was 26, and his friend Brad Washburn was 27 when they set off to climb the mountain, only to see their expedition become more daunting when slushy landing conditions on a glacier prevented their bush pilot from returning with the other two team members - and from picking them up after the ascent. They became the first climbers to reach the summit on a cloudless July afternoon, which Dr. Bates recorded in his autobiography, "The Love of Mountains Is Best."
"Below us to the west the slope plunged down so steeply that there seemed to be nothing supporting us," he wrote. "Our summit at first seemed big enough for only one of us at a time, but we carefully flattened the snow a bit. Brad tied his camera to an ice axe with a shoelace and managed to get a picture of the two of us on top."
But to escape the Saint Elias Range, the pair had to spend weeks picking through uncharted territory, fording icy rivers, and subsisting at one point mostly on mushrooms and the occasional squirrel.
One of the "Harvard Five," members of the Harvard Mountaineering Club who were pioneering climbers in the United States, Dr. Bates divided his life between expeditions and teaching English at Phillips Exeter Academy. He died in his sleep Sept. 13 at his home in an Exeter, N.H., retirement community. At 96, Dr. Bates was an honorary president of the American Alpine Club and four decades ago had served as the first Peace Corps director in Nepal.
"Bob was an invaluable member of an expedition," said Dr. Charles Houston of Burlington, Vt., who along with Dr. Bates attempted to reach the summit of K2 in Pakistan, the second-tallest mountain on earth, in 1938 and 1953. "He was a wonderfully cheerful person, always happy, never really seemed downhearted. There was no fame or money in climbing then, so the motivation was very pure: just climb for joy. People went for the pleasure of exploring the unknown, going a little further into the unknown, and experiencing the joy of a new challenge."
Dr. Bates challenged mountains much later in life than most, traveling on an expedition in China at 74. A half-century of travels took him through such countries as Afghanistan, Cambodia, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Nepal, Syria, Turkey, and Vietnam. Through nail-biting situations, his unfailing good humor and pleasant demeanor became the glue that held groups together.
"In a world that somehow thinks civility is a weakness, his life proved Leo Durocher wrong," said Nick Clinch of Palo Alto, Calif., who was on the 1985 China expedition with Dr. Bates. "He proved that nice guys finish first."
"I think his great quality was that he inspired people," said his wife, Gail Oberlin Bates. "He didn't tell them to go out and do things, but through his own life he could make people feel that they could go out and do anything."
Born in Philadelphia, Robert Hicks Bates was 5 when his parents took him on his first hike up a mountain on Mount Desert Island in Maine. Graduating from Phillips Exeter, he went on to Harvard, where as a sophomore he met Bradford Washburn, an encounter that shaped his burgeoning interest in mountaineering.
"I learned to climb the hard way, mainly by doing it," he wrote last year in an autobiographical essay that was published in Himalayan Journal.
And hard it was in the days before lightweight protective gear was developed for the cold weather.
After receiving a master's degree from Harvard in 1935, Dr. Bates joined Washburn on an expedition to map areas of Alaska and the Yukon Territory for the National Geographic Society. In his autobiography Dr. Bates described his apparel: "I was wearing woolen underwear, a heavy wool shirt with a moosehide shirt over it, and caribou skin pants with warm ski pants over them. . . . Down was a thing of the future."
During World War II, Dr. Bates served in the Army and tried out new equipment and clothing that would be used by mountain troops. Along with Washburn and others, he performed some tests on Mount McKinley, becoming part of the third successful ascent of the Alaskan peak. Dr. Bates rose to lieutenant colonel and was awarded a Bronze Star and Legion of Merit for his work.
Just before the war he had decided to teach English at Exeter rather than follow in his father's footsteps as a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. At the prep school, he could devote more time to expeditions than would be possible in a competitive academic career.
The war over, he finished his doctoral work at the University of Pennsylvania in 1947, writing his dissertation on the literature of the mountains. It became a book 53 years later, once interest in mountaineering had grown enough for a publisher to issue it as "Mystery, Beauty, and Danger."
Allowed to take leaves of absence from teaching for expeditions, he went to K2 in 1953 with Houston and a small team of mountaineers. The longtime friends had been to K2 in 1938, but Dr. Bates had not reached the summit. The mountaintop proved elusive again when a member of their team became ill and they turned back after climbing above 25,000 feet.
Houston and Dr. Bates coauthored "K2: The Savage Mountain," a book that recounted a horrible moment as the team ferried their injured friend down steep slopes. A climber slipped and another barely held on as a chain reaction almost sent everyone sliding to their deaths.
"I turned and lunged at the hard ice with the point of my ax, a terrible jerk ripped me from my hold and threw me backward headfirst down the slope," Dr. Bates wrote. " 'This is it!' I thought as I landed heavily on my pack. There was nothing I could do now. We had done our best, but our best wasn't good enough.
"This was the end. . . . On the slope below, no rock jutted on which the rope between us could catch. Only thousands of feet of empty space separated us from the glacier below. It was like falling off a slanting Empire State Building six times as high as the real one," he wrote.
The climbers came to a halt in the nick of time, only to lose their injured friend to an avalanche a short time later.
When the expedition ended, Dr. Bates returned to the United States and married Gail Oberlin in 1954.
Family members said that through the years he never drew attention to his accomplishments, shrugging when someone suggested he had lived an amazing life. "I've had an interesting one," he would say.
"He took such a great interest in other people," said his niece Elizabeth Bates of Philadelphia. "The connection with the other people with whom he climbed, those relationships were just as important to him as whatever it was he was actually doing."
"Like me, they love mountains," Dr. Bates wrote in his autobiography, "and they also agree that in mountains, as in life, being first to do or discover something is twice the fun of being second."
A memorial service will be held at 2 p.m. Oct. 27 in Phillips Church at Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter.
© Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company.
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Dick_Lugar
Trad climber
Indiana
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Wow. What an amazing, full life. Thanks for sharing this.
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Rhodo-Router
Gym climber
Otto, NC
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Those guys were so bad ass.
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Anastasia
Trad climber
California
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I am always so impressed by those before us.
Bob Bates did fully take advantage of his life. He leaves us with a legacy worth remembering. If anyone can achieve a small portion of his success, they have done well.
AF
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Rhodo-Router
Gym climber
Otto, NC
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I just read the recent biography of Charlie Houston, which you all should sit down with. They really knew how to live- lived big, failed big, succeeded big. Inspiring.
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Lynne Wolfe
Trad climber
Driggs, ID
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 1, 2007 - 02:57pm PT
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yes, I agree- when I read someone's obit and say to myself, " I hope I can do half of what he did- make a difference in so many people's lives." then I have been inspired.
It's all about overcoming the scaredy-cat within- isn't it?
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Toker Villain
Big Wall climber
Toquerville, Utah
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Bob was a super guy.
My folks considered sending me to Exeter, so I suppose it was inevitable that we would meet.
I remember his relating the squirrel hunt from Lucania and Steele with great glee.
His deeds stand as an inspiration for all of us with ambitions to experience just a small piece of such an adventurous life.
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