Fred Beckey
Mountaineer and author who conquered numerous summits and chose to live like a vagabond
FRED BECKEY, the mountaineer and author, who has died aged 94, conquered the summits of countless peaks in North America, Alaska and the Canadian Rockies. Although he wrote more than a dozen mountaineering books and guides – including, most recently, Fred Beckey’s 100 Favourite North American Climbs (2011) – Beckey avoided publicity and was virtually unknown beyond the mountaineering scene.
But few other climbers could claim to have done as many first ascents as Beckey, and numerous mountain guidebooks contain a “Beckey route”. There is even a Mount Beckey, a previously unnamed, 8,500-foot peak in Alaska that Beckey and two fellow climbers were the first to climb in 1996.
Grizzled and leathery skinned, Beckey, whose climbing career lasted seven decades, lived like a vagabond, disappearing for months at a time. Even in his eighties he preferred to rent an occasional room in a friend’s house rather than have a home of his own.
He had climbed in the Himalayas and the Swiss Alps, but his chief interest was not in conquering the highest peaks but in mastering the most difficult climbs, and his relentless energy, even in the last decade of his life, meant that most of his climbing partners were in their twenties or thirties. For Beckey, however, climbing never lost its allure. “You’re putting yourself on the line,” he explained in 2008. “Man used to put himself on the line all the time. Nowadays we’re protected by the police, fire, everything. There’s not much adventure left. Unless you look for it.”
Wolfgang Gottfried Beckey was born in Düsseldorf, Germany, but his father, a surgeon, and mother, an opera singer, moved to Seattle when Wolfgang was three. He changed his name to Fred after being teased in the playground.
He made his first climbing trip in 1936, aged 13, and by the time he was 16 he had climbed his first unclimbed peak, Mount Despair, in the North Cascades, Washington State. Throughout his university years – he studied Business at the University of Washington – he climbed continuously.
In 1955 made an unsuccessful attempt to conquer Lhotse in the Himalayas, which was the then highest unclimbed summit in the world. Although he had to turn back because of a storm, he still managed to set a world altitude skiing record.
The expedition to Lhotse, however, probably cost Beckey a place in the American team attempting to conquer Everest in 1963 after it was revealed that he had abandoned a sick fellow climber in the storm (who was eventually rescued by others) and descended alone.
Beckey was not offered a place to join the Everest trip – a fact which infuriated him – and he subsequently focused his energies mostly on American and Canadian peaks, although he also led expeditions in China.
His other publications included Mount Mckinley: Icy Crown of North America (1993) and the three-volume, Cascade Alpine Guide (1973-2008) which described almost every possible route on the Cascades as well as detailed geological and historical notes.
A documentary film, Dirtbag: The Legend of Fred Beckey, was released at the beginning of this year.
He never married, preferring a gipsy life in the mountains to a full time companion, although he enjoyed the company of women. A t-shirt worn by fellow climbers bore the slogan: “Beware of Beckey: He will steal your woman, steal your route.”
Fred Beckey, born January 14 1923, died October 30 2017