Alaskan legends share their memoirs

Bradford Washburn's résumé reads like the who's who of Alaskan climbing: first ascents of Mount Crillon, Lucania, Marcus Baker, Bertha, and Hayes; first ascent of the West Buttress on Mount McKinley; and the first crossing of the St. Elias Range in winter.

His wife, Barbara, isn't far behind — she joined Bradford on the first ascents of Mount Bertha and Mount Hayes. She was also the first woman to climb Mount McKinley. No one quite matches the Washburns in Alaska history. Maybe because of that, Epicenter Press recently published a pair of books written by the Washburns, his-and-hers accounts of some of their most famous expeditions.

REASON TO CLIMB

"It's very, very simple," Bradford said. "Back in the 1920s, I had terrible hay fever and the only place I could get away from it was on mountains — it's as simple as that. I've been climbing ever since.

"Everybody is trying to come up with a real philosophical remark but it's a place where I don't get hay fever. I loved to be in the big mountains. I've been climbing mountains ever since I was a kid in the Alps back in 1926."

Bradford was born in Boston on June 7, 1910. He first began climbing in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, then took to the French Alps. With guides, he ascended Mont Blanc, the Matterhorn and several other well-known peaks.

In the winter of 1927, at the age of 16, Bradford attended the annual American Alpine Club meeting in New York. He heard Allen Carpe lecture on an attempt on Mount Fairweather in Southeast Alaska. From then on, Bradford knew he had to get to Alaska.

"He insisted that the guides criticize his every move so he would be prepared for Alaska," Lew Freedman wrote in the introduction to Bradford's diaries.

Bradford made his first trip to Alaska in 1932, as a reconnaissance of Mount Crillon in Southeast Alaska. In 1933, he led a climbing expedition to Crillon, but turned back because of foul weather. In 1934, Bradford led the first ascent of 12,728-foot Mount Crillon. They lead a long list of Washburn's Alaska climbs.

In 1935, Bradford led National Geographic's three-month Canadian-Yukon expedition. The expedition was the first to cross the St. Elias Range in winter. In 1936, Bradford led a series of photographic flights for the National Geographic Society. His large-format black and white photos were the first ever taken of Mount McKinley, and are still among the most breathtaking.

In 1937, Bradford and Bob Bates made the first ascent of 17,150-foot Mount Lucania in the St. Elias Range, the tallest unclimbed peak in North America at the time. On the same trip, they also made the second ascent of 16,600-foot Mount Steele.

The next year, Bradford led the first ascent of 13,250-foot Mount Marcus Baker, the tallest mountain in the Chugach Range, which is infamous for terrible weather. Also in 1938, Bradford and Terris Moore — a bush pilot and president of the University of Alaska Fairbanks — made the first ascent of 16,200-foot Mount Sanford.

In 1940, Bradford and his new wife, Barbara, made the first ascent of 10,182-foot Mount Bertha in the Alaska Coast Range, and the next year, they made the first ascent of 13,740-foot Mount Hayes in the Alaska Range.

During World War II, Bradford was assigned to a U.S. Army Test Expedition on Mount McKinley.

He and 17 other men spent three months on Mount McKinley testing radios, tents, sleeping bags, clothing, and food. Seven men, including Bradford, climbed to the summit in 1942, completing the third-ever ascent of the mountain.

In 1947, Bradford and Barbara climbed Mount McKinley via the Muldrow Glacier. The expedition took three months. The Washburns began mapping Mount McKinley and conducted cosmic ray research at 18,000 feet. Barbara became the first woman to climb Mount McKinley on the expedition.

Through aerial photography, Bradford discovered the easiest route up the mountain was via the Kahlitna Glacier and the West Buttress.

In 1951, at age 41, Bradford led an eight-man team on the first ascent of the West Buttress.

Bradford made his final first ascent of an Alaskan peak in 1955, when he climbed Mount Dickey in the Ruth Amphitheater of the Alaska Range to complete his survey work of Mount McKinley.

In 1965, Bradford led a mapping expedition and first ascent of Mount Kennedy in Canada's Yukon Territory. In 1971 and 1972, both Washburns mapped the Grand Canyon. In 1986-88, they mapped New Hampshire's Presidential Range.

Throughout their travels, one place has remained close to their hearts — the Last Frontier. During the last 70 years, Bradford has made nearly 70 trips to Alaska.

MOUNT MCKINLEY

Bradford Washburn is probably most famous for his 1951 first ascent of the West Buttress on Mount McKinley. Since that inaugural climb, more than 12,000 climbers have attempted Mount McKinley via the West Buttress.

Bradford has climbed Mount McKinley three times — once with the U.S. Army; a second time with his wife, Barbara, who became the first woman to summit; and a third time at age 41 to pioneer the West Buttress route. In 1960, Bradford published the first comprehensive map of the mountain.

Mount McKinley was first successfully summited in 1913, on Bradford's third birthday. Episcopal archdeacon of the Yukon, Hudson Stuck, led the party. However, it wasn't until Bradford established the West Buttress route — which is much quicker and easier than the traditional Muldrow Glacier route — that climbing Mount McKinley became common.

Today Bradford's advice for climbers is simple: "If you get into difficulty, turn around and go back. Ninety percent of the trouble on Mount McKinley today is by people trying to climb that mountain in two weeks instead of three or three and a half or something like that. They don't know when to turn back or they're afraid to turn back too soon because they'll lose their job. They're trying to climb an enormous mountain in no time at all and they're getting in big trouble."

July 10 is the 50th anniversary of Bradford's first ascent of the West Buttress. Both he and Barbara will be in Talkeetna to celebrate.

CLIMBING CHANGES

Unlike modern alpine-style expeditions in which climbers carry everything they will need on their backs, the Washburns laid siege to the mountain. They spent months conducting scientific and cartographic research. Often, reaching the summit was secondary.

Because they spent so much time on the mountain, the Washburns' base camp was well-provisioned. It was a wall tent with a wooden floor, and they had a radio, Victrola, mosquito netting, and a screen door on hinges. The Washburns periodically had supplies dropped to them by parachute or free fall from a C-47. When they needed to move camp, they transported their equipment across glaciers by dog sled — something unheard of today.

Barbara's description of the clothing in which she climbed Mount Hayes illustrates just how different things were. "It was 11 degrees and there was an icy wind, but I was dressed for it," she wrote in her journal. "I was wearing a boys parka that I had bought back home, with some bunny fur that I had sewed onto the edge. I also wore long winter underwear, wool pants, and two wool shirts."

Climbers today wear polyester, Gore-Tex and plastic rather than leather boots.

Because the Washburns were making the maps of an area, Bradford and Barbara often had nothing against which to check their own route-finding. Often, they navigated solely by Bradford's aerial photographs and observations he made from his photographic flights.

MAPPING PROJECTS

Working with Swiss cartographers, Bradford has mapped Mount McKinley, New England's Presidential Range, the Grand Canyon, and Mount Everest. The Grand Canyon and Mount Everest maps, done in the 1970s and 1980s, respectively, were financed by the National Geographic Society.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Although most of Bradford's 10,000 photographs were scientific in nature — an aid to mapmaking — they also have an artistic value. Something about the black and white large-format images speaks to the grandeur of the landscapes he was photographing.

Ansel Adams recognized this and wrote, "the photographs look almost inevitable, perfectly composed. These are not simply documents of McKinley's wilderness; we sense in each one the presence of an individual, highly intelligent eye. The photographs are the result of the explorer's consistent energy of mind and spirit — and so they truly mean something. Add to this the fact that Brad's aerial photographs of the McKinley landscape are the very first of their kind and still the finest ever made of the great natural landmark."

Bradford made the images by removing the door of a small, unpressurized plane, tethering himself to the doorway and shooting pictures as the plane flew over an area. He used a Fairchild K-6 large format aerial camera and eight-inch rolls of film. The camera weighed 50 pounds, and he would shoot until his fingers went numb.

Besides using his photographs for cartographic purposes, Bradford used them in conjunction with GPS surveying to prove Frederick Cook's alleged McKinley summit picture of 1906 was false. He proved Cook's picture was taken from the summit of a mountain barely 5,000 feet high, and more than 19 miles from McKinley's true summit.

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

"The first assignment I had I wrote an article that came out in the National Geographic on climbing Mount Crillon in Alaska back in 1934," Bradford said. "Then they asked me if there was anything really exciting to do and I ran the National Geographic's Yukon Expedition in 1935 and then I made the first photographic flights over Mount McKinley in 1936 and just bing, bing, bing, it goes from there."

In 1936, the president of the National Geographic Society, Gilbert Grosvenor Sr., again asked Bradford if there were any other projects in Alaska. Bradford, who was supporting himself as a lecturer and freelance writer, replied that for $1,000 he could provide large-format, aerial photographs of Mount McKinley, the highest mountain in North America. After three one-hour flights, and hundreds of photographs, Bradford sent a $35 refund to Grosvenor.

MUSEUM

"My major job throughout my life had nothing to do with climbing," said Bradford. "It was building and then running Boston Science Museum. Here we have over a million visitors a year. This has nothing to do with climbing, and if I were to drop dead today, I would want the first three lines of my obituary to read: "He had the idea of the Boston Museum of Science and built it. There wouldn't be any mountains in it at all."

At age 28, Brad became the first director of the New England Museum of Natural History.

At the time, the Museum attracted 44,000 visitors a year. Today, the museum is called the Boston Museum of Science and attracts 1.6 million visitors to its 400 interactive exhibits a year.

Bradford is considered the founding director.

MARRIAGE

Bradford, 91, and Barbara, 86, celebrated their 61st wedding anniversary on April 27. When the couple married in 1940, Barbara had no mountaineering aspirations.

That quickly changed.

She expected they would settle down and raise a family. Instead, several months after the marriage, they were camped on the slopes of Mount Bertha in the Fairweather Range, poised for a first ascent.

After the successful climb, Barbara wrote in her journal: "I didn't talk much about the trip to my friends. To them it would have been as if I had gone to the moon."

In 1941, Bradford and Barbara made the first ascent of Mount Hayes. In 1947, they climbed Mount McKinley. When they summited on June 6, Barbara became the first woman to set foot on the tallest mountain in North America.

Looking back now, Barbara realizes that climbing with her husband was inevitable. "I just married a man who was a mountaineer and he wanted me to share his life with him, so I just went along," she said. "It was as simple as that. He was a famous explorer who went on expeditions every summer to get movies and pictures to show the following winter because he was the director of a science museum and the salary didn't pay enough to keep him going very well.

"He went on two or three trips when we were first married and he wanted me to go with him. It sounded like a wonderful adventure, so off I went and I learned to do it on the way. My parents helped take care of the children when I went to climb Mount McKinley. They didn't think it was odd at all.

"It wasn't physically terribly difficult at all," she said. "You just had to have a mind-set that you're not going to complain and you're not going to fuss around and say you had a headache and weren't going to go that day. If you're the only woman in the group, you don't complain. You don't say anything. You just go along and do what everyone else is doing."

Her husband was enthusiastic; her parents were supportive; the movie companies loved her. She was always careful not to take risks, and to come home safely.

"I think what makes for a good marriage is when a husband and wife do things together — and I think that is why we've been married 61 years," she said.

TEACHING

In addition to mountaineering with her husband and raising three children of her own, Barbara taught remedial reading at the Shady Hill School.

"I began teaching dyslexic children when my last child went off to college," she said. "That is the thing that's brought me the most satisfaction — it's helping children learn to read." Barbara taught at the Shady Hill School for more than 20 years, well into her seventies.

AWARDS

The Washburns have received many honors and awards for their work.

In 1979, they received the Gold Medal of the Royal Geographical Society; in 1980, they received the first Alexander Graham Bell Award from the National Geographic Society. In 1988, they received the Centennial Award from the National Geographic Society.

In 1999, both Washburns were inducted into the Alaska Climbers Hall of Fame in Talkeetna. In 2000, they both received the Discovery Lifetime Award of England's Royal Geographic Society. Bradford received Switzerland's King Albert Medal; Barbara received the Gold Medal for the 100 men and women who made the cultural, mountaineering, and sporting evolution of this century from the Italian Alpine Club.

Bradford holds 11 honorary degrees; Barbara holds one.

PUBLISHING

When the Washburns retired from active mountaineering, they donated their papers and diaries to the Rasmussen Library Archives at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, but sealed them until their death. Freedman, a former sports editor at the Anchorage Daily News, called and asked to read the papers.

he Washburns assented, and soon Freedman asked them to publish parts of their diaries.

Although Bradford had published books and articles before, this was the first time Barbara had published. "I had just gotten over a long illness and was on chemo," she explained. "I had given up my teaching job because I was already 70 and I was sick and I just couldn't do it any more. I needed something to do so I began typing my diaries, which had been written in pencil. I finished the first three expeditions and thought there might be other things my children would be interested in, so I started at my birth and went up through just a few years ago. I wrote it all entirely for my children."

Barbara's book is titled, "The Accidental Adventurer: Memoirs of the First Woman to Climb Mount McKinley." Bradford's companion book is titled, "Exploring the Unknown: Historical Diaries of Bradford Washburn's Alaska/Yukon Expeditions."

The books were published by Epicenter Press and are available in most bookstores. Barbara Washburn's book retails for $16.95, while Bradford Washburn's book sells for $19.95.