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The American Alpine Club : New York Section | ||
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This portion of the website is dedicated to New York Section members who have lost their lives. M.Girard (Gerry) Bloch Phil Erard "I hear you know a lot about the climbing around here. Ever try my route on Wallface?" I'd never seen the guy before. I was at a dinner of the New York Section of the American Alpine Club. The inquisitor was a thin old man, bald, glasses, sort of stooped at the shoulders. It was 1992. After twenty-five or so ascents and two guidebooks, I figured I knew Wallface better than anyone, and here was this frail-looking gentleman laying out what sounded like a challenge. "What do you mean, your route?" Well, I was in for a story, one that I didn't really believe until I got up there myself. Yet my skepticism didn't stem from a lack of information. Gerry Bloch went on to tell me all about his first attempt in 1943, about the blanket he had folded and pinned together as a pack, the orange he split with his partner, the cost of the two tea bags they brought (it was wartime). He told me about the rain and the night spent on a bushy ledge. And he told me about the many other times he would return to the route, pushing it higher each time. Way up, he said, was a huge corner formed by a detached pinnacle. "If I could've just stepped across onto the slab, I think I would have made it. Want to try?" A bit about Wallface. At just under 800', it's one of the East's largest cliffs. It's big and blocky and dangerous. In fact, three of the region's four climbing fatalities at the time had occurred up there. It's not sculpted and angular, like the classic granite cliffs. The middle is a vast white shield, capped by overhanging corners. Trees and blocky ledges nudge in from either end. And it's a long way from the road. Fritz Wiessner was one of the first explorers, reporting in the early 1930s that the cliff was "steeper than it looks and the rock is not built for climbing. The upper part is overhanging. The cliff is probably unclimbable except at the ends." Predictably, some good hard routes would later go up the sheer and overhanging central section, but the earliest forays by Wiessner and others targeted a tree-cluttered bowl to the right. From what I could gather, Gerry's route was somewhere in this neighborhood. My own first impressions of Wallface had come convincingly illustrated in the bloodied arms and legs of two locals who staggered into my friend's apartment one evening during my first summer in the Adirondacks in 1977. "It's sucks, man. It absolutely,..ing, sucks!" Their arms and necks were a mysterious constellation of little red spots (I was yet to build my own intimate acquaintance with the notorious Adirondack black fly). Their legs were mapped with oozing scratches earned in the boulder-field below the wall and the bushwhack off the top. "We're never going back," they pledged. You see, this isn't a cliff where you seek pleasure. The approach is awful, the walk-off near impossible. On some climbs you aren't even sure that you have even found the route till you get a few pitches up in the scrub for your first open view. Rap anchors vary between loose blocks and dying trees. There are few enterprises more maddening than trying to sort a tangled rope with a dark swarm of black flies drilling into your ears and eyes, drowning in the sweat on the back of your neck. Which is kind of why like the place. Confession: Easterners have always felt a little insecure about our cliffs. To us, "real" climbing happened elsewhere. Our little crags were just practice areas where we'd learn the skills and fantasize about the big routes - in Boulder, and the Tetons, and (oh, my gosh) Yosemite. And so we needed cliffs like Wallface, cliffs where the attempt was likely to fail, where you might get lost or hurt, where the cumulative whole was so much more important that the sum of the individual sections. Every climber needs a place that grants him permission to begin a tale with, "No shit, there we were." And that has been the main draw of Wallface, a cliff that creates epics, authentic Adirondack epics, like this one: In 1933 three naive local teenagers with no gear or experience wandered up onto the blocky ledges that criss-cross the face and turned themselves into a rescue story that the New York Times would splash across its front page. It began with a local pilot shutting down his engine so that he could yell to the boys to stay put. Then ropes were tossed to the assembling crowd in the forest above the cliff. A light line broke when the first boy was being hoisted. The plane returned, this time with a two-hundred and fifty pound rope that was more than sufficient. The saviors were guided by gunshots and bullhorns made of rolled birch bark. Or this one: A friend of mine, with images of big-wall, Royal Robbins Yosemite dancing in his head, tried a new route on Wallface in 1975 when he was seventeen. After a fall sent him careening across the face and cracking his skull, he wobbled back into town where he switched wallets with his rope-mate so that his care could be covered by the other's health insurance. Somewhere in a basement filing cabinet in a Lake Placid hospital is a set of x-rays, wrongly labeled. Like a lot of climbers, my own first climbing adventures were vicarious, and what climbing was supposed to be was defined by the accounts of others. When we'd venture out on our own humble hills, we'd pretend to on Ben Nevis or the North Face of the Grand or the Walker Spur. We would hike Mount Washington in winter, not to be on Mountain Washington in winter, but to be, in our minds, on Everest. And we would pose mid-layback on some small local outcrop because of some photo in Basic Rockcraft or Climb! , because that was the way climbers were supposed to look. Wallface gave us homegrown importance. Its challenges were particular, its stories authentic. Over the years, I'd hear a lot of those stories drifting down from Wallface, like the mists that swirl over the cliff and roll out of Indian Pass. Often I find myself staring into the wisps from the trail's high point, watching the clouds gray over the details of the vast white slab and the steep upper corners a thousand feet above, listening to whispers past. The cliff's mystique began in 1837 when an Indian named Lewis Elija offered to guide the owners of the iron works near Lake Placid to a much richer vein of ore on the other side of Mount Marcy for a "half dollar and 'bacca." The expedition brought them right under New York 's highest cliff. David Henderson of the ironworks later wrote that "If Niagara be the prince of waterfalls," this cliff was certainly "the prince of precipices." The iron strike on the backside of the Great Range turned out to be a profitable one. Today, the giant mounds of tailings are the only signs of human intervention, barely visible from the high belay ledges. Sometimes things are just right up there on the ledges of Wallface. In late August, as the boulder-choked gorge below flickers in the light of autumn yellow and the sky is deep blue, a belayer's attention gets drawn away from the task to the views, to the deep green slopes of Mount Marshall across the way, to the stony summits of Algonquin and Iroquois peaks high and left, south to the jewel shimmer of lakes and ponds that drain into the upper Hudson. (Springtime and well into July, however, that view is usually meshed by a bug net and punctuated by a waving hand, like a futile windshield wiper.) John Case was 93 when I visited him in his vacation home in Keene Valley. I remember him sitting in a recliner. A blanket covered his legs against the summer chill. I was there to hear about what many believed to be first ascent of the big cliff. Case was the Adirondacks ' first real climber. Past president of the American Alpine Club and trained in the Alps , he was the proper gentleman, with a strict sense of fair play on the rock. He once hiked all the way back to the top of Haystack Mountain, more 3,000' of elevation, because he had left his Wall Street Journal up there, held down by a small stone. Case told me that it's all about control, and he stated unequivocally that he would have quit climbing if ever he had fallen, even on a top rope. Case was probably right when he insisted that his 1933 route wasn't the first on Wallface. "It's too obvious," he said. "Someone must have done it earlier." With his son and Olympic skier Betty Woolsey, Case had zigged and zagged on rubble-strewn ledges, past one particular exposed crux overlap, and on to the top. He told me that it was "a reasonable down climb" (not for me, I'd later decide), and that he had probably soloed it every summer for a decade. One of the zig-zags passed beneath a towering corner, formed by a detached pinnacle of rock. I wonder whether Case or Wiessner had ever stopped there and wondered. "I'm an old man," he said. "And so you'll have to carry most of the weight." If Gerry was anything, he was sly. I should have known that when, in an earlier day on the rock, he loaded his trail rope onto a prusik in front of him so that I'd have to pull both ropes when I belayed from above. In the lot, he strategically fluffed his sleeping bag into his pack to make it look huge. Everything else, he said, would have to go into mine. Two ropes. Rack. Two pairs of climbing shoes. Two helmets. Tent. Stove. Fuel. Food. Water. "Gerry, you think you can squeeze in a couple tea bags?" The only way I could get the pack off the ground was to lean it against his van, get down on all fours, strap it on, grab hold of his New Jersey plate and mantel. We staggered, side to side, off down the path, each mimicking the other. It had been forty-nine years since Gerry had first scoped out the lower pitches. But things had changed. Trees had sprouted on the lower ledges. Gerry's memory was cloudy. On the first day, he sent me up several dead ends, some fairly dangerous. The second day it rained, and Gerry still couldn't find the start of his climb. It became clear that the old man simply didn't know what he was talking about. I was soaked, tired, and very cranky when I finally told him, "We're heading over to the Wiessner Route , and we are getting the hell out of here." "Just a little longer," he pleaded. "I'm sure we're close." I shook my head no. His face twitched, the dreams of many years screaming inside of him. "I'm seventy-two. This is my last chance." The pitch of his voice rose with each word. Things were crashing all around for him. "No, it's over," I grouched. It was day two. I was shivering and wet. And I refused to get myself killed on another bad set of directions up some stack of blocks held together with tree roots. He stared long and hard at me. His eyes were clear and steely. I stared back. Then something changed. He was no longer looking at me but at something in the distance over my shoulder. "There it is, the pinnacle!" I turned. Way off to the right was a steep, leaning corner that culminated in a little spire. From where we stood, it looked 5.10, and my first thought was, "Now he's really lost it." "There it is! There it is!" Gerry Bloch became giddy and started to bounce in his shoes as I (still cranky) stacked the ropes and grudgingly headed across the blocky ledges toward "his route," where the old man's memory crystallized into sparkling detail. "Reach around right," he called up. "No, a little farther. There's a little hidden grip." Sure enough. The beta he gave me on the towering pinnacle corner was perfect. He'd even left a piton with a little brass tag with his name on it. Well, we made it. A couple of TCUs protected the step-across. At hard 5.7 it would have been one of the era's noteworthy climbs. Gerry Bloch would probably be a name you'd recognize. He was a happy man when we shook hands back at the cars and went our different directions. Christmastime, I received a holiday card printed of the summit shot I'd taken of him. We lost touch after a while. I would keep going back to find more adventures on Wallface. I didn't hear of Gerry again until many years later when Tom Brokaw reported Bloch's ten-day ascent of El Cap. He was 81. Charles Houston Clif Maloney Born in Philadelphia on October 15, 1937, Mr. Maloney graduated from Princeton University in 1960, Harvard Business School in 1965, and served in the U.S. Navy from 1960-1963. An investment banker and real estate investor, Mr. Maloney worked at several financial services companies, including The City Management Corp, Electronic Bond and Share Company, and New York Securities Co., Inc. In 1974, he became a Vice President of Goldman, Sachs & Co. In 1981, he founded his own company, C.H.W. Maloney & Co., Incorporated, to acquire established businesses for long term investment. Mr. Maloney served as a director of several companies, including The Wall Street Fund, Inc. and Interpool Limited. Mr. Maloney was a dedicated marathon runner who had finished the New York Marathon 20 times and in 2008 finished as the fastest American in his age group. He enjoyed sailing and was a member of the New York Yacht Club. Deeply committed to the quality of life in his local community, Mr. Maloney was on the Board of Civitas and the New York Foundation for Senior Citizens and was active in Carnegie Hill Neighbors. He was the Annual Giving Class Agent for the Princeton Class of 1960 and was proud to report more than 70% class participation. He was an avid mountain climber having climbed five of the Seven Summits (including Mount Elbrus, Aconcagua, Mount Vinson, Denali, and Mount Kilimanjaro). In addition, he climbed Orizaba, Mexico's highest volcano. He was a member of the Explorer's Club and the American Alpine Club. His passion for mountain climbing and an equally great passion for boats of all sorts stemmed from his experiences as a lifelong summer resident of Blue Mt. Lake in the Adirondacks. Mr. Maloney is survived by his wife, Congresswoman Carolyn Jane Bosher Maloney to whom he was married in 1976, his daughters, Christina Paul Maloney and Virginia Marshall Maloney, his mother, Virginia Wells Maloney, his sister, Virginia Maloney Lawrence, and eight nieces and nephews.
Dave was an active member of the New York Section and frequently attended Section events in the City as well as its outings. Most recently he participted in our winter outing in the Adirondacks, as well as our Fall outing at the Ausable Club. Dave was born in Vermont and was a graduate of Mt. Hermon School, Middlebury College and Columbia Business School. He was a software entrepreneur and a pioneer in the computer animation industry. He founded and was CEO of Blue Sky Studios in White Plains which won an Oscar in 1998 for its animated short "Bunny". Blue Sky was also responsible for "Ice Age", another animated film that has enjoyed great box office success. He sold Blue Sky to 20 th Century Fox a few years ago. Dave was involved in a number of other outdoor and environmental organizations including the Vermont Land Trust, the Wilderness Society and the Audubon Society. He was also a trustee of the Union Church of Pocantico Hills, located, ironically enough, only a few miles from the scene of the fatal accident. He is survived by his wife Andrea Bailey, two brothers, including AAC member Fred Brown, and several nephews and nieces. At his Memorial Service David was remembered as a visionary businessman, a great lover of the outdoors and as a person who was unfailingly kind and helpful to others. He will be greatly missed. Phil Erard Addendum by John Tiernan This is one of the few recent photos we have of our friend and recently departed member of the NY Section, Dave Brown. Shown here at the October 2002 Fall Outing to Keene Valley, the group had just completed a long day hike over Bear Den, Dial, and Nippletop in dramatic post-storm weather. From L to R, Julie Chateauvert, Mark Fedow, trip leader John Tiernan, Betsy Royal, and Dave. George Van Brunt Cochran George Cochran applied his orthopedist's knowledge of stresses and strains in bone to those in Arctic ice, designing equipment to measure the movement of glaciers and the progress of climate change. In 1967 he organized and led the Cape Dyer Arctic-Alpine Expedition to Baffin Island, which began with a long voyage with Inuits in native whaleboats and resulted in several first ascents. From 1967 to 1990 Dr. Cochran led six expeditions to Ellesmere Island. On his 1978 trip the party used sledges and skis to travel more than a hundred miles in rough weather. Cochran studied at Dartmouth College, and at Columbia University's medical school. In 1958-9 he was a captain and flight surgeon in the United States Air Force. In 1980 he founded and was director of the Orthopedic Engineering and Research Center at Helen Hayes Hospital in West Haverstraw, NY. In 1981 he was appointed professor of clinical orthopedic surgery at Columbia. He was president of the Explorers Club from 1981 to 1985. Webmaster, with help from the New York Times Earlyn Dean An AAC member since 1971, Earlyn will be best remembered as an indefatigable volunteer for the Club and the New York Section. Among the projects she organized and undertook was the cumulative index of the American Alpine Journal from 1929-1976, an immense and time-consuming undertaking. Each year without fail, we in the New York Section could always rely on her willingness to get up early on Sunday morning and make pancakes for a bunch of hungry climbers at our Annual Section Outing at the Ausable Club in Keene Valley. Earlyn's climbing extended back into the 1960's: hence she knew and climbed with many of the legendary figures of Eastern climbing during those colorful decades. It was therefore appropriate that she wrote the AAJ obituaries for such Eastern luminaries as Ed Nester and Chuck Loucks, both of whom died in climbing accidents. She was part of the support team when Ted Church, her former husband and business partner, did the first ascent of the East Ridge of Mount Sir Sandford in the Selkirks in 1968. Philip Erard Arthur King Peters A 1940 graduate of Cornell, Arthur served during World War II as an officer in Army counter-intelligence. He later received a Ph.D in French literature from Columbia University. During the 1970's, while running his own importing business, he taught French at Hunter College during his lunch hour. He was also active as a translator, critic and author and published five books, including "Jean Cocteau And His World" and " Seven Trails West", the story of the Lewis and Clark expeditions. Arthur had a long friendship with the late, great French climber, Gaston Rebuffat , and translated a number of his works into English. He introduced Gaston at a memorable New York Section Annual Dinner in 1982. Arthur climbed extensively in the French Alps, the Shawangunks and the Tetons where he had a home for many years. He served as the President of the French American Foundation from 1977-83 and received the Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur from the French Government in 1984. He leaves a wife, Sarah, three children, six grandchildren and a great many friends here in the New York Section. Philip Erard He wrote two important books on mountains: "Around the Roof of the World," which explores the diversity of Central Asian ranges and cultures, with first-hand accounts of challenging Russian peaks, and "The Alps: Europe's Mountain Heart" (forthcoming in 1999 from University of Michigan Press.) Shoumatoff was a former director of special projects for ITT Rayonier, Inc., a vice president with Parsons and Whittemore, and Manager of Manufacturing Services at West Virginia Pulp and Paper. He was among the first American businessmen to create contracts with Iron Curtain countries during the Cold War. He held two U.S. papermaking patents. Shoumatoff's passion for lepidoptery led to the discovery of a new subspecies of the Lycaenidae family, a small iridescent blue butterly with a distinctive "hair" at the bottom of the wing, now called the "Shoumatoff Hairstreak." He gave up his butterfly net in his forties to indulge his love of the mountains, and took thousands of photographs of alpine flora and fauna while climbing in the Alps, Rockies, Caucasus, and Pamirs. Nicholas Shoumatoff was a Fellow of the Explorers' Club, the Bedford Audubon Club, and the American Alpine Club. (Summarized from an obituary in THE PATENT TRADER, Friday, September 17, 1999.) Thom Scheuer Limerick by Jennie Keith, recited by Thom's "daughters" Amanda Gluck, Jamie Weinstein, and Lauran Epstein at his Memorial Service, April 21, 1999. Antonio Nicoletti Charles F. Brush III Charles F. Brush, Ph.D., a 30-year member of the New York Section, passed away peacefully on June 1, 2006 at the age of 83. During his lifetime Charlie acquired distinction as an anthropologist, mountain climber, explorer and long-time board member of his family business, Brush Engineered Materials. A Yale graduate, Dr. Brush earned his doctorate at Columbia and, with his wife Ellen, made significant contributions in the field of early Mesoamerican archeology. At the age of 49, Charlie took up mountain climbing, and from 1982-1989 he led five Andean high altitude archaeological expeditions. In 1983 he set an altitude record for scuba diving in the world's highest body of water at 19,450 feet atop Lincancabur in Chile. At the time no one had any idea of the physiological effects of diving at such high altitudes. Unscathed by the experience, Charlie discovered a new species of microfauna which he contributed to Yale's laboratories. He was a competitive race walker and completed several marathons well into his 70's. Charlie was President of the Explorers Club from 1978-1983 and helped forge strong ties with the New York Section which continue to this day. During his tenure he fought successfully for the admission of women to the Explorers Club, thus bringing it into line with the AAC which admitted women from its earliest days. A gentleman of the old school, with a sparkling wit, broad intellect and a ready smile, Charlie will be greatly missed Philip Erard
Sandie Meil, my beloved wife and partner for almost 25 years, passed away suddenly in early January from complications from leukemia, a disease she had been battling for more than three years. This came as a shock to most of our friends as Sandie, not wanting sympathy or condescension because of her condition, wished to keep it secret. Naturally athletic, Sandie took up climbing late in life, because so many of our friends were climbers and she hated to be left on the sidelines. But she was determined to get into the AAC the old fashioned way, with a climbing resume that she could be proud of. So for a five-year period she climbed extensively not only here in the Northeast, but also in the Canadian and American West as well as the Alps. Among her accomplishments were the Devils Tower and the Arrete des Cosmiques in Chamonix. Basically a rock climber, Sandie drove her French guide ( and her husband) crazy by not willing to change from the rock climbing shoes she was comfortable with to mountaineering boots from the mixed sections of the climb. One of her proud moments was having her accomplishments recognized and receiving the Alpine Club pin at the 1997 New York Annual Dinner . Her Memorial Service in late January, actually a celebration of her life, was packed with friends from all walks of life. But the overwhelming support of friends from the climbing community stood out and will always be deeply appreciated. Climbers seem to understand, better than most, the importance of coming to funerals and comforting those experiencing grief and a great loss. Phil Erard
Rich Gottlieb of Rock and Snow in New Paltz said this of his friend Curt in "Gripped": "Curt Dempster was not a great climber. He wasn’t even a good climber, but he needed to climb . He couldn’t cope with his day to day without having some of the adventure, beauty and peace that he knew he would find in the mountains. He climbed in Alaska, Wyoming, California and Colorado but most often in New York because it was close to his apartment in New York and farmhouse in the Catskills… Both art and climbing have the potential to prove to the world that life has a heart and what is in that heart can be expressed. Curt’s heart beat loudly and now is silent, but his gift to the many people he touched is coursing through their veins and joining them inexorably to those for whom life is art and art is life." William Eldridge Bill was an unabashed liberal, and a card-carrying member of the ACLU. He was also an Adirondacks 46er, and a past president of the New York or "Knickerbocker" Chapter, now defunct, of the Adirondack Mountain Club. He took up cycling and rock climbing, and was getting into ice. We shall miss his energy, his good humor, and his marathon hikes. Vic Benes Theodore H. (Ted) Church Ted's Revolutionary War era home in Georgia, Vermont, was furnished with significant antiques and paintings. His love of fine objects probably exceeded his love of the mountains in his later years. Ted was a very active member of the early Appalachian Mountain Club group of Shawangunk rock climbers, having started climbing there in the late 1940Õs. Ted often teamed with Krist Raubenheimer, and they put in a number of what were then hard, new routes. Ted's climbing travels took him to the Pacific Northwest, the Dolomites, the Swiss Alps, Alaska, the Canadian Rockies and the Selkirks. I had the pleasure of climbing with Ted in the Gunks, on Monte Rosa, Cima Grande and others in Europe, on Mounts Rainier, Baker and Shuksan in the U.S., and in areas ranging from the Ramparts to the Bugaboos in Canada. Some of our less successful attempts were the Kain route on Mount Robson and the North Face of Mount Saint Elias in Alaska. Ted made a number of ascents in the Selkirks, including Mount Sir Sanford, with his late wife Earlyn. Ted could be counted on to take on hard climbing leads, but also to avoid camp chores like cooking, cleaning up and packing. Ted was a diehard Mad River Glen skier who would look down a steep track covered with water ice and exposed rocks, exclaim that the skiing was excellent and off he would go. His ski house was a gathering place that many of us cherished. He stayed active in the Alpine Club virtually until his final days, attending without fail the Annual Black Tie Dinner of the New York Section. His many friends in the climbing world will miss him. Bob Jones |
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American Alpine Club New York Section New York, NY http://www.nysalpineclub.org |
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