(HOST) Summer conversations about hiking and camping remind commentator Willem Lange of rock climbing – which in turn reminds him of an old friend – who was also a real character.
(LANGE) The week I was born, 75 years ago, a British expedition left Darjeeling for the trek across Tibet to the Rongbuk Glacier at the foot of Mount Everest. To this day, when I shuffle down the driveway for the newspaper – especially in winter, clad in down coat, balaclava, and mittens; shod with YakTracs; and drilling the ice with my spike-tipped cane, it’s easy to imagine myself thousands of feet higher: on the snowfield below the East Face of Longs Peak, perhaps. I get the paper, and trudge back up the dangerous slope to the house, remembering Willi.
William F. Unsoeld was his real name, but in the Fifties any of us with pretensions of being mountaineers adopted the Swiss persona. We grew beards, sported Gamsbärte on our hats, and climbed with a coil of rope over our shoulders. And we actually yodeled! So William morphed into Willi somewhere along the line.
He was a climber, one of the best: aggressive, optimistic, charismatic, companionable. He’d graduated from climbs in the Cascades and the East to the Tetons and eventually the Himalayas. In 1960 he was in the team that made the first ascent of Masherbrum in the Karakoram.
Somehow, in the middle of all that activity, he managed to get a Bachelor’s degree in physics, a Masters in philosophy, and a Doctorate in Theology. You can see where he was headed. He also married, and he and his wife, Jolene, had four children.
I first heard his name in May 1963. He and his climbing partner had pioneered the West Ridge of Mount Everest and completed the first traverse of the summit – amazing at the time. In the process, Willi lost nine of his toes to frostbite.
Six years later he blew into our lives. I was directing an Outward Bound program at Dartmouth. He came to Hanover to inspect our program venues. After a night’s camping in Maine plagued by no-see-ums, Willi declared the woods unfit for pedagogical purposes. We gave him some bug dope and netting, and managed to calm him down. He led us up the Chimney on Mount Katahdin. When he came to a large chockstone I’d always found pretty interesting, he looked at it and said, "Hmm." I’ll never know if that was a genuine expression of concern, but its effect on me was profound: I could climb with this guy!
Which, of course, is what Outward Bound was all about: perceiving your abilities as far more expansive than you’d thought.
As our rock climbing instructor, he managed to coax Mother to back over a cliff on a rappel. Later, he coached me through a rough patch in my life. He died in an avalanche on Mount Rainier in 1979. But we still think of him often: his brilliance, energy, and eccentricities – his exhortations never to give up – as each winter day I trudge, like an old man, up the perilous, snowy south ridge of my driveway.
This is Willem Lange up in East Montpelier, and I gotta get back to work.
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