RICHARD E. MCGOWAN, 1933 - 2007
Courtesy Next Adventure
In hindsight, the biggest reward I have received from a lifetime of mountaineering, and especially expeditions, is that I have the finest friends in the world. Dick McGowan was one of them.
Over 50 years ago, the climbing world in the United States was a small village spread across the country, connected by gossip and rumor and not the Internet. If we didn’t know another climber personally, we certainly knew his reputation, what he had done, and even if he snored at night in the tent. Although I was from California, I probably met Dick at that time and I certainly knew about him.
Dick started climbing just about the same time as I did and quickly began going on major expeditions to Alaska and the Yukon, making first ascents of King Peak, Mt. Augusta, and Mt. Cook. He rapidly gained a reputation as an extremely strong mountaineer and probably the leading snow and ice climber in the country. He went to Everest in 1955 on Norman Dyhrenfurth’s international Himalayan expedition, where he was the first American to climb the Khumbu Icefall. He must have liked the experience because he did it 24 times. When he returned, he took over the Mt. Rainier guide service. Rainier is a big mountain. After I staggered up it, I asked Dick how he got all those people to the top. He laughed and said he roped them about 30 feet apart and from time to time he would say, “Let’s have a little slack on that rope.” He also had a few people carry sleeping bags to put the dropouts in while the rest went on. It worked.
He was running the guide service in 1959 when I spent the summer in Seattle. Earlier, I had returned from Hidden Peak with a lag screw that a Swiss friend showed me to illustrate the principle of the ice screw. I had a prototype made, and then Pete Schoening arranged to have a few more manufactured in Europe. With Dick’s permission, of course, Pete and I went to Rainier to use one of Dick’s climbing classes for our test. We had perfect conditions, a warm day. When we pulled directly on the ice pitons they all shot out with a big slurp. Then we put in the ice screws. We pulled. They held. We put the entire class on the rope and they still held. Dick had not seen ice screws before, and I will never forget the look on his face as he said, “This is going to revolutionize ice climbing.” Not only was he right, but later that summer he used them to make the difficult ascent of the Nisqually Icefall.
I really got to know Dick on Masherbrum, a 25,660-foot mountain in the Karakoram. It was high, hard, and dangerous. Three expeditions by strong parties had failed. George Bell and I knew that we would have to put together the strongest, most compatible party we could. We wanted the finest climbers on rock and on ice. Dick was one of them. George had been with him on Everest in 1955 and knew his capabilities. To give you some idea of Dick’s reputation, other climbers included Tom McCormack, who had been on Hidden Peak; Dick Emerson, the finest climber in the Tetons, and Willi Unsoeld and Tom Hornbein, who later made the first traverse of Everest. It was the wildest expedition I have ever done. We were lucky to get up and to have survived. It took a tremendous team effort by everyone and a lot of good fortune to do it. Although he did not reach the summit, through no fault of his own, Dick was a major factor in our success.
He also played the straight man to a bunch of clowns, although compared to Willi Unsoeld we were all straight men. Looking back, his sober assessment of what we were doing seems to have been more accurate than that of the rest of us, but it did not prevent either him or us from charging ahead. From the very beginning we used Dick’s unique talents to push forward. We found 16 Balti men willing to carry loads to camp I, about two thirds of the way up the serac glacier. Dick and others pushed a way through the icefall to set up the camp. Then came the ferrying of loads. We knew Dick had been a middle school geography teacher. So, with this and his Rainier guiding background, we figured he was the perfect man to handle the Baltis in this exercise in mass mountaineering. They were so effective that in a week almost everything had been moved to camp I and we practically abandoned base camp for the rest of the expedition.
Except when he was in charge of the mass carry, Dick was always in the vanguard, usually with Willi Unsoeld, until we reached Camp 7 at 25,000 feet on the great southeast face. High on that face was a 300-foot ice cliff running most of the way across it. The cliff threatened everything below it and meant that an unchecked fall from above would have unfortunate results. It also meant that we would have to traverse across the lower part of the face to turn the ice cliff and then traverse back above the cliff for 1,000 feet on very steep snow over ice to reach the final couloir leading to the summit ridge. Dick and Willi were the first summit team, and we got them established in Camp 6 at 24,000 feet, from where they got around the ice cliff. Later they traversed the face and made an attempt on the summit, during which they reached 25,000 and found a site for Camp 7. They had to walk on a thin layer of snow over ice with the cliff below them, and on their first trip there was no security. Meanwhile, George Bell and Tom Hornbein joined them in Camp 6 in support. Now a snowstorm moved in and they realized that they were low on fuel.
The next day they began the retreat down the face through a whiteout of blowing snow. Small avalanches had taken out some of the wands marking the route. Suddenly a surface slide engulfed them and swept them down the slope. Somehow they managed to stop before going off an ice cliff. For a moment they seemed all right, then Dick pitched head first into the snow. He had inhaled a large quantity of ice crystals, producing a wild delirium. Fortunately, he pulled himself together a little, the snow stopped, the sky cleared, and Dick managed to get to Camp 5. Then it started snowing again. His delirium continued through the day despite liquids, penicillin, and intravenous salt solutions. He recovered sufficiently during the night to make it down to Camp 3 the next day. Although Dick rapidly improved, he never got back to his old form, but his drive and strength were such that when the weather finally cleared he was in the second summit team with Tom Hornbein and Jawed Akhter.
Dick had not lost all his alertness. He, Tom, and Jawed were on the dangerous traverse above the ice cliff, which now had fixed ropes on it. Dick suddenly had an extreme coughing fit—his lungs had not fully recovered—and they had to turn back. Dick noticed that Jawed, who was in the lead, was off balance and about to fall; he warned Tom, who immediately grabbed both the fixed rope and the climbing rope and somehow stopped Jawed’s 160-foot tumble.
Despite this and other excitement, the expedition managed to climb the mountain and the last climber got off the peak on July 12, Dick’s birthday, and we had what must have been one of the more meaningful birthday celebrations of his life.
The reason I have told this long story is that it so clearly shows Dick’s qualities of strength, courage, and character that he displayed all his life and especially in coping with the various health problems that beset him in his later years. The man was strong both physically and mentally.
Dick was more than a mountain climber. He was a pioneer businessman in the outdoor industry. In the early 1950s, before Dick took over the Rainier guide service, REI, then known as the Coop, decided to expand from the room it had in a small building in downtown Seattle, presided over by Jim Whittaker. Dick became the manager of REI’s first store until he went to Everest in 1955. In 1963 he opened the Alpine Hut chain of mountaineering stores in Seattle and Portland, followed the next year by an outdoor equipment manufacturing plant making tents, backpacks, sleeping bags, and clothing. It moved to Wenatchee in 1967 and grew to over 180 employees; Dick sold it in 1974. In 1977 he became one of the owners of Mountain Travel, which pioneered the trekking industry, and later became its CEO. He retired from Mountain Travel in 1996. But he couldn’t be still. Two years later he founded Next Adventure, and now his daughter Kili is managing the company, which customizes trips to Africa and remote parts of the world.
Dick cared about people. It showed in many ways, and not just that his businesses involved helping people accomplish their dreams in climbing or in travel. He cared about his employees and considered them part of an extended family. He especially cared about his children: the three he had with the late Elizabeth Whisnant—Richard Jr., Devi, and Michaele—as well as Kili, his daughter with Louise, his wife of 35 years. He was always going to piano recitals, soccer games, and various school events. And, of course, there were numerous hikes and backpacks together. He also expressed his concern in other ways, such as serving for many years on the board of Dick Blum’s American Himalayan Foundation, which has raised millions of dollars to help provide a better life for the people who live in the Himalaya through schools, medical facilities, and other projects. Everyone who had a relationship with Dick, whether it was close or remote, is better off for having it.
There is an old Islamic saying: “How do you know he is your friend? Is he your neighbor or have you gone on a long journey with him?” I can’t say Dick and I were neighbors, but I can say I went with him on what seemed like a very long journey. He was a good man and a good friend. I was privileged to know him, and I will miss him.
Nicholas Clinch