John Clarke Obituary

[jordop]

From today's Globe and Mail:

 

 

B.C. climber spent a lifetime in uncharted territory

 

Known for record number of first ascents, the climber became avid conservationist

 

By DAWN HANNA

Special to The Globe and Mail

Monday, March 10, 2003 - Page R7

 

 

In an age when virtually all of the world has been marked by at least one set of human footprints, John Clarke managed to find and explore an area that had remain untouched for millennia.

 

At the time of his death on Jan. 23, from a brain tumour at age 57, the B.C. outsdoorman had recorded more than 600 first ascents in his explorations of 10,000 square kilometres of the Coast Mountain Range. (In fact, Mr. Clarke is believed to have racked up more first ascents than anyone in history.)

 

Yet the man who was legendary for those high alpine exploits became just as well known in his later years for his work in wilderness conservation and education.

 

At the age of 13, Mr. Clarke emigrated from Dublin to Vancouver with his family and immediately took to the outdoors. By age 16, he had joined the British Columbia Mountaineering Club.

 

For the next few years, Mr. Clarke climbed the more accessible mountaintops in the Fraser Valley and Howe Sound, doing day trips and overnighters.

 

"You can imagine the effect it had," Mr. Clarke recalled in 1995. "I was so motivated . . . but I didn't have any idea how. My dreams were far beyond my abilities."

 

One of his dreams was to go to the then-unnamed Manatee Range, north of Pemberton, B.C., to climb some of its then-unnamed peaks. One day, an opportunity to realize that dream arrived on his doorstep, in the form of a BCMC newsletter. The club was planning an 18-day expedition out of Manatee Creek.

 

Mr. Clarke was determined to be on that 1967 trip and somehow succeeded in convincing the trip leader. "I wound up doing okay," he once reminisced. "But I had one of those flimsy sleeping bags, you know, the kind with the guys shooting ducks on it. I was chronically cold for 2½ weeks."

 

It was the beginning of a lifetime of exploration. From then on, Mr. Clarke would devote five to six months of each year to surveying the remote reaches of the Coast Range. Occasionally, he retraced the footsteps of early eering explorers. Other times, he simply sought out unclimbed peaks.

 

He did many trips on his own, mostly because he couldn't find anyone else to undertake such large-scale explorations. Then he met mountaineer John Baldwin and a few weeks later, they set off together on a 30-day traverse of the vast Ha-iltzuk/Silverthrone Ice Fields.

 

And thus it went for years. Each winter, Mr. Clarke would study the 1:50,000 topographic maps looking for remote, often nameless, alpine areas. He would then chart a route through unclimbed peaks and untrodden glaciers, the trips often beginning in remote inlets and ending in even more remote logging camps. Because he covered such huge, inaccessible areas over weeks at a time, he would arrange air drops of food.

 

Mr. Clarke's expeditions were also unique in their simplicity. While most mountaineers don high-tech clothing and bring along racks of gear, Mr. Clarke's equipment list consisted of the basics: simple clothing, crampons, ice axe, rope and skis. His footwear was itself legendary: leather boots soaked in coat after coat of thick, resinous pine tar to make them impermeable to water.

 

Mr. Clarke's life was changed significantly in the spring of 1994 during a ski-mountaineering trip into the Kitlope Valley near Kitimat, B.C. Mr. Clarke and his friend Randy Stoltmann had climbed a 1,800-metre peak and were skiing to camp when Mr. Stoltmann veered away and disappeared from sight. Mr. Clarke carefully followed and realized his friend had skied off a 300-metre cliff, triggering a small avalanche. Rescuers later retrieved the body.

 

The incident was pivotal. Mr. Clarke was deeply affected by the loss. He had always admired Mr. Stoltmann for his dedication to wilderness conservation and, in 1995, he decided to forgo his usual five months of exploration to lead hiking and camping trips into the Upper Lillooet Valley, then under consideration for protection as parkland by the B.C. government.

 

"There was a hole that needed to be filled by somebody who had been to all these place, was familiar with them . . . and was familiar with the politics," Mr. Clarke once said. "I realized that I was the

person to do it."

 

In 1996, he co-founded the Wilderness Education Program that combined slide presentations, wilderness hikes and curriculum workshops to introduce thousands of Vancouver school kids to their first experience of B.C. wilderness.

 

The following summer, Mr. Clarke also worked with the Squamish First Nation to develop the Witness Project. In weekend camping trips, thousands of city dwellers were invited to "witness" the valleys and forests of the Stoltmann Wilderness north of Squamish. For his work, Mr. Clarke was awarded the rare honour of a traditional naming ceremony where he was given the Squamish name xwexwsélken or Mountain Goat. Last fall, he was made a member of the Order of Canada.

 

He leaves his wife Annette, his one-year-old son Nicholas, father Kevin, mother Brigid, sister Kathleen and brother Kevin.

 

 

[Off_White]

Thanks, I hadn't been aware of his conservation/education work, yet another reason to admire the man.

[glen]

a and to a good man.

I saw a film about him at a Banff show a number of years back. I hadn't been aware of his conservation and education work. The world could use a few more role models like him.