Who is this geezer, and what is he best known for climbing?

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BooDawg

Social climber

Paradise Island

Topic Author's Reply - Feb 10, 2010 - 05:44am PT

Sheesh! Great information and photos about Wilson! Thanks to everyone for such a wealth of knowledge. Way more than I knew about him! I haven't read Royal's book, but his description of Wilson's drowning is essentially what I gleaned from talking with those who were on that trip. The 1969 trip down Westw#ter and Cataract Canyons where I met him was organized by Frank Hoover a Sierra Club guy who worked at UCLA, was a Bruin Mountaineer, and owned his own river boats which were not available commercially as they are today. I think these were discarded airplane life rafts. (They had expiration dates, even if they were never used.) I remember talking about climbing with Wilson during evenings camping on the river, but we never made plans to climb together and lost touch soon after the trip.

I wanted badly to go down Grand Canyon in 1970, but Hoover’s group had done that in ’68, so they opted for the Middle Fork on which Wilson went. I chose to climb that summer and then went down the Grand with Hoover’s boats in ’71 with Guido among others. If anyone were interested in learning more about the events surrounding Don’s drowning, the participants on that trip could probably be found through Hoover, if he’s still alive, or my brother, Philip, or Gail Wilts who were all on the ’69 trip with us. Probably the USFS or other land managing agency would have a full report.

I’m including a 4 more pictures here. One shows Don at the oars of one of Hoover’s dilapidated boats. Another shows him holding what I remember as a spade-footed toad with his girlfriend on the trip. Two others are of Gail Wilts, Chuck Wilts’ older daughter who frequented Yosemite and may still reside on the East Side.

According to Guido’s Castle Rock Spire thread, Wilson did the 4th ascent of CRS with Mark Powell in Oct. of ‘55.

hashbro

Trad climber

Mental Physics........

Feb 10, 2010 - 09:56pm PT

that is NOT me!

Fritz

Trad climber

Hagerman, ID

Feb 10, 2010 - 10:46pm PT

BooDaug:

So----I am still left with my question of where did the fatal Middle Fork Salmon drowning occur?

Despite its reputation, drownings are fairly rare in the Middle Fork, and almost always happen in very high water.

I contacted an old friend and Middle Fork Outfitter, and got referred to Al Bukowsky: who is putting together an “oral history” of Middle Fork Salmon Guides and Outfitters.

Al’s response:

Ray,
The drowning happened on the third week of June 22, 1970. I may be off a day or two but that is pretty darn close. On the Main Salmon and the Middle Fork: something like 9 people died that day. Wilson was one of them, just as you describe. Bad idea, with a rope around yourself.

Tom Brokaw was a cub reporter for the Los Angeles Times and was on the river with Gene Teague, Everett Spaulding (who later died walking into a prop of a back country plane) and some others.
They flipped boats in Weber Rapid and two people drowned. One, a friend of Brokaw's and Gene Teague the guide who's body they never found.

Brokaw wrote an article for the Times...I use to have a copy of it but have misplaced it. I think it was called something like " River of No Return, Some it Gives Up Some it Don't.

That was a couple of years before I started on the Middle Fork but my sweep boat driver was camped at Sheep Creek when all of it happened, with a small group of people in drift boats. They flew the guests out at the Flying B and then waited a couple of days and when the river did not rise, nor go down much they boated out empty.

Let me check one of my old sources that I have interviewed and see if anyone can recall where Wilson met his demise.

Al

From Ray/Fritz: The date that Don Wilson died was the “big day” in the history of Middle Fork Salmon boating fatalities. Nothing like it has occurred since.

Not to preach on the subject, but as a “cold water protective clothing” pundit: the water was very high and very cold. Either people should not have been boating at those water levels, or they should have been wearing more protective clothing. At the time: best cold water clothing choice was neoprene, now it is dry suits.

Neither clothing choice would probably have saved Don Wilson.

As Royal Robins points out in his book: his mistake was using a rope to swim a river.

I also turned up this Memorial from Stanford.

http://histsoc.stanford.edu/pdfmem/WilsonDM.pdf

MEMORIAL RESOLUTION
DONALD M. WILSON
(1933 – 1970)

To most of Don Wilson's friends, it will seem inappropriate to begin an account of him with the kind of historical biography one finds in curriculum vitae.

There are those whom the past interests, but Don was not one of them; he lived mostly in the present, and thought mostly about the future.

For the record, he was born in Seattle in 1933, lived later
in Los Angeles, and began his education at USC and UCLA. After finishing his doctoral studies at the latter institution with T. H. Bullock in 1958, he went to the Zoophysiological Institute in Copenhagen, where he performed a series of experiments on insect flight that are now universally regarded as classics.

He was the first to show that the pattern for such a delicate, complicated action was an inherent part of the central nervous system's wiring.

He held faculty positions at Yale and at the University of
California, Berkeley, before coming to Stanford as Professor of Biology in 1967.

Don Wilson's scientific work seemed to blend, more fully than it does in many people, with the rest of him. His life style was manifested equally in his intellectual efforts, his avocations, and his world outlook. It was characterized by attraction for challenge, by a refusal to compromise or to accept anything inferior, and by tremendous determination to see things through.

Performance, to him, was the significant parameter of existence -- whether it involved the carefully planned ascent of a desert rock pinnacle,
the preparation of an experiment, or an attempt to reshape society.

His focus upon outcomes instead of intentions, coupled with his deep concern for the poor and the exploited, made him a proponent of radical social change.

His pleas were neither strident nor self-serving, and they did not neglect individual decency.

He personified a kind of lean, stripped-down clarity of thought and purpose.

It was reflected in his prose, which was spare and to the point; in his impatience with sophistry and decoration; and in the beauty and simplicity of his experiments.

If it sometimes led him into a disregard of nuance, he would have held that to be a small price to pay for decisiveness and self sufficiency.

He placed his standards high and applied them rigidly; but somehow he avoided presenting them as challenges, and instead urged and encouraged others to meet them.

His students were strongly motivated to do that, and as a result they were unusually successful.

But Don Wilson challenged himself, boldly and repeatedly.

Danger, as much as simplicity and clarity, was a thread through his life.

In the 1950s he was an accomplished climber who was involved in a number of first ascents in California and the desert Southwest; more recently he had taken up the equally challenging sport of running whitewater
rivers.

Death overtook him in this latter activity on June 23, 1970, on the middle
fork of the Salmon River in Idaho.

It caught him in characteristic attitude: doing something difficult and risky with courage and competence.

Donald Kennedy, Chairman
Julian M. Davidson
Philip C. Hanawalt