High Life (cont'd)

AMC Outdoors, July/August 2007

Phase Two – Diamond Ring
A dazzling burst of light that happens a few seconds before and after totality during a solar eclipse. The effect is caused by the last bit of sunlight shining through valleys on the edge of the moon.

1957-1988
One Halloween, Bill was carving pumpkins with his eldest daughter Holley, and his twins Matt and Meg. Holley remembers watching him climb an unused telephone pole in their backyard in the pitch dark with the huge pumpkin in one hand and one of his Coleman kerosene lanterns in the other. “When he got to the top,” she says, “he put the pumpkin on the disk on the top of the pole, lit the lantern, and voila—the coolest aerial jack-o-lantern in town.”

From 1965 to 1980 Bill’s drive to climb accelerated. He completed various ascents in Joshua Tree, the Adirondacks, Red Rocks, the Grand Tetons, and the White Mountains. He scaled Mount Vowell in British Columbia and returned to the Tetons to climb Mounts Moran and Owen. Bill challenged himself but never pushed too far beyond his abilities. His ideal climb was “a 5.8 at the Gunks on the edge of what I could lead, with about two to three pitches on a good day, with a partner who was fun. What could be better than that?”

Ian fondly remembers Bill’s enthusiasm and creativity on the rocks. “Bill loved the physicality of climbing and the intellectual [aspect] of safe climbing,” he says. He also remembers Bill’s humor—purposely draping a rope through a horrible bush on a climb, cracking jokes, and the joy with which he chucked off his clothes to go skinny-dipping at the Gunks. “Bill was the bedrock of my climbing,” he says, “a great mate with whom any climb was an adventure, and for whom no climb was not worth doing, within reason.”

Bill’s son Matt remembers going with him to the Gunks. “I did a lot of cool stuff with my dad that most kids never got to do: climbing, whitewater canoeing, hiking.” As Bill challenged himself on the rocks, he also challenged himself on the water, partnering with AMC boaters such as T. Walley Williams and Dick Tucker and becoming an accomplished Class III/IV C-1 whitewater paddler. In 1970 AMC climbing friends took him winter camping in Tuckerman Ravine, with his twins’ sleeping bags zipped together and hot Jell-O for drinks. At 20 below, it was a rough introduction, but it “was also just another thing to know how to do.” Bill went on to hone his climbing skills in the numerous gullies in the Whites over the next few years.

AMC became his social outlet, his extended family. And he spent many hours volunteering his time as a climbing instructor. He encouraged young climbers to follow the sport for passion, not career. “Climbing should just be an avocation,” he says. “As soon as you make a living at it, you compromise the sport.” In 1968 he taught a now-famous Henry Barber to climb, and still jokingly refers to it as his “most notable failure.” His work at AMC gave others direction, but more importantly, it provided his own life with more meaning and fulfillment. From 1973 to ’76 he chaired the Boston Chapter’s mountaineering club. In 1978 he became a member of the American Alpine Club with letters of recommendation from Guy Waterman and John Standard. He joined the Harvard Mountaineering Club though he had never attended their school. Embedding himself fully in the climbing life, Bill was driving fast toward that spot of brilliant light.