Climber ascends Cathedral to give UHC lecture

A man who climbed the tallest mountain in North America — twice — ascended the Cathedral… A man who climbed the tallest mountain in North America — twice — ascended the Cathedral of Learning Sunday night.

He used the elevator.

John “Jed” Williamson, the president of Vermont’s Sterling College, gave a slide show presentation of his two ascents of 20,320-foot Mount McKinley in Alaska, in the most recent installment of the University Honors College’s Sunday night documentary series.

A group of about 20 Pitt students and Explorers Club of Pittsburgh members gathered on the 35th floor of the Cathedral of Learning to meet the gray-haired Williamson and listen to him recount his adventures.

Alec Stewart, dean of the Honors College, introduced Williamson as “a man from the century before us.”

Williamson began climbing as an undergraduate at the University of New Hampshire.

“School was relatively easy for me,” Williamson said, “but climbing was something I had to do right. I knew I had to get from point A to point B, and there was no other way out of it.”

After college, Williamson taught high school, but he said some administrators had problems with his teaching practices.

“I always thought there was a better way to teach English,” Williamson said in his quiet, scratchy voice.

Before reading Jack London’s “How to Build a Fire,” Williamson had his class go outside in the rain with three matches and try to start a fire with the resources they had. Williamson calls this form of teaching “experiential education.” He founded the experiential teacher education program at the University of New Hampshire, where he was a faculty member from 1973 to 1982.

“My career hasn’t been linear because I’ve been on expeditions throughout my life,” Williamson said, going on to explain that he has traveled to Mexico, Canada, Europe, the United Kingdom, Bhutan, Tibet, China and Russia.

In early April of 1963, a bush pilot flew Williamson and his four buddies from the Grand Tetons to Ruth Glacier, about 10 miles from the base of the climb up Mount McKinley.

“We were the rejects from the ’63 expedition [that went to Mount Everest],” said Williamson. “We were too young, so we did Denali.”

Williamson said that Denali, which is the former name of Mount McKinley and the one still used most frequently in Alaska, is “as much a vertical assent as Everest is.” Denali, in the native language of Athabascan, means “The High One” or “The Great One.”

The slides Williamson presented showed the brilliant white Alaskan Mountain Range piercing a cloudless, blue sky.

“It’s a regular museum,” Williamson said, joking as he looked at a slide of him and his buddies standing around in the snow. He pointed out that his team did not use Northface gear, a modern brand of climbing gear and clothing, but two-dollar cotton pants, leather boots and caribou socks, which are made from two opposing layers of caribou skin, one side with the hollow hair follicles against the foot to capture moisture, and the other side with the hair facing outward.

“Now, we didn’t have the tools you have today,” Williamson said. “The total of all our gear amounted to one ice tool today, about $300.”

The team’s plan was to climb Denali in 25 days and then do another mountain in the next 25 days, but their Denali expedition was set back two to three days here and there because they were snowed into their tents. In the end, Williamson’s group spent 45 days on Mount McKinley.

One slide showed the jagged peaks of the smaller mountains below Williamson jutting out like islands from a sea of white clouds.

At 24 years old, Williamson completed his first assent of Denali in mid-May 1963.

Williamson then presented slides from his 1985 expedition, when he was 46, which took 18 days. The slides from the second trip showed the advancement in mountaineering technology over the years since his first trip. That same year, 17 people attempted to climb Denali, whereas today, 1,200 try for the peak.

“Half the people who attempt the mountain don’t make it for some reason or another,” said Williamson.

The following year, Williamson summitted Mount Everest at 47 years old and said he was “the oldest guy in the group.”

As editor of Accidents in North American Mountaineering since 1974, Williamson warned the crowd that bad preparation, not the mountain or the weather, causes deaths and accidents.

“There’s no such thing as bad weather,” Williamson said. “It’s weather. It’s what you get.”

“The leading cause of accidents is trying to stick to a schedule and trying to please other people,” he added. “You don’t climb up something you can’t climb down.”

Glen Green, an ECP member, enjoyed the presentation.

“I found it interesting to hear what it was like to climb from the old-school perspective, from a man who is climbing to this day,” said Green.

The University Honors College hosts a presentation every Sunday night on the 35th floor of the Cathedral of Learning at 6 p.m. For more information on the documentary series, e-mail shac@pitt.edu.