Tag Archives: mountain climbing

Thinking of Pop on His Birthday

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Pop was born on June 21, 1918, and lived 101 years after that. He died the day before the first case of the pandemic was reported in this country. He had impeccable timing.

Pop was a well-known mountaineer. You can find him here in wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dee_Molenaar

But more important to me, personally, than his mountaineering achievements, was who he was as my dad. In the last years of his life, he lived near me, and we were able to spend a lot of time together – going on drives, and exploring the highways and byways of this part of the state.

I wrote a couple books about our adventures together in his later years. Here’s an excerpt from the first one, *Are You Taking Me Home Now?: Adventures with Dad*:

“I Don’t Want to Run Errands”

May 29, 2017

Dad: Let’s head out into the open countryside, head towards the coast.
Karen: Let’s do it!
Dad: I don’t want to go into the city. I don’t want to run errands with you.
(I nod my head in understanding.)
Dad: (His voice cracking.) I love you.
Karen: I love you, too.
Dad: It’s nice that we have each other to love.
Karen: Yes, it is!
Dad: Thank you for including me when you take these drives.
(I smile – I take these drives FOR Dad.)

I turn onto Samish Island Road, thinking maybe I’ll go to Bayview State Park.
Dad: Have you ever been to that little island that’s connected to the land?
Karen: Samish Island? Do you want to go there?
(Dad nods his head, and I head out to do the loop around Samish Island.)
Dad: Is Mom alive?
(I shake my head no.)
Dad: I had a dream that she’d died. (He starts tearing up.) I think I’ve already mourned her.
(Dad’s quiet for a bit. We’ve almost finished the Samish Island loop now.)
Dad: Can we see Mount Rainier from here?
Karen: I think it’s hidden behind those hills.
Dad: Let’s go someplace where we can walk on a beach.
(I head for Bayview State Park.)

After parking, Dad and I make our way to a bench near the beach. When I’m getting Dad’s walker out of the back of the car, I see the cans of root beer I put in there months ago – I’d bought them for Dad, and had forgotten about them. Now I grab one, join Dad on the bench, and hand the root beer to him. His face lights up and he smiles and takes it from me.
Dad: Do you ever dream about Mom?
Karen: Yes. I had a dream that she was sitting on the top bed of a bunk bed, dangling her feet over the edge. She had a happy, mischievous smile on her face. There was an open casket on the bed behind her. She said, “I’m done with this!” and hopped down. I felt like she was done with the whole dead-thing, and was happy. Have you had a dream about Mom?
Dad: Yes. I dreamed she died.
Karen: She loved you, and loves you very much.
Dad: She was such a wonderful person.
Karen: Yes, she is!
(Dad and I are quiet for a while, just enjoying the sunshine.)
Dad: This is nice here. I’m glad we made this stop. That’s a nice, gentle breeze. It smells like saltwater. (He belches and laughs at his own belch.)

When we get back in the car, Dad says he had a dream where he had to fart once, but there was no place to fart. He starts laughing – cracking himself up. I’m laughing, too. Then Dad asks, “Do you and Mom have a lot of nice conversations?” And I tell him that we do.

As we’re heading back to Dad’s home, he turns his head and points, “That would make a happy picture! That house all covered in flowers! But I don’t have my camera with me…” I turn the car around and head back to the flower-bedecked house, and get out my camera for Dad to snap a photo.

We get back to his home, and Dad doesn’t recognize it at first – he has moved three times in the last year, and it’s all a little confusing. I explain that their last home couldn’t take Mom and him back when Mom got sick. And then when Mom passed, we had to find another home for Dad. I tell Dad that I felt that Mom had directed us to this place – a place with hummingbird feeders and cats and dogs. Dad asks, “So Mom knows these people then?” And I think about this, and then nod my head yes. (I believe Mom does know these people, even if they never actually met in the person.)

Dad gets back in the house and doesn’t recognize anything. I ask him if he wants to go to his room – and he asks, “I have a room here?” I point the way, and once he enters he says, “Oh! I remember this place now!” He sees his paintings on the walls, and pictures of his friends and family. He realizes he’s home. He starts grinning at himself and says, “I’ve been thanking these people for allowing me to stay here.”

Dad points to a book by Leif Whittaker about Leif’s father, Jim. “I think I got that book for Christmas.” I tell him that I think Jim Whittaker gave him that book when he came to visit him here. “Jim visited me here?!” Yes, I tell him, also his friends Rick and Cindy, and Tom Hornbein, and Mary from the Mountaineers. Dad is shaking his head in amazement now. He says, “The things I’ve forgotten would fill a book!”

Karen: Are you going to take a nap now?
Dad: Yes, I want to make that transition into the dream.
Karen: What dream is that?
Dad: (Tearing up.) The dream about the real world. (And I know he’s thinking about the world where Mom is still with him.)
Karen: I love you, Dad.
Dad: I love you, Karen.

Children of the Belay

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(Originally published in Newsweek on November 2, 2006.)

In 1953, my father, Dee Molenaar, went on an expedition created in hopes of making the first successful ascent of the world’s second highest mountain, K-2. The leaders of the expedition, Charles Houston and Robert Bates, chose their teammates not only for their climbing skills, but their ability to get along with others. When the team was finally assembled it consisted of Bates, an English instructor at the University of Pennsylvania and Phillips Exeter Academy; Houston, a medical doctor and graduate of Harvard and Columbia University; Art Gilkey, a doctoral geology student from Columbia University; George Bell, a 6’5″ physicist from Cornell; Bob Craig, a ski instructor from Aspen; Tony Streather, a British officer; Pete Schoening, a chemist from Seattle; and my dad, a Seattle geologist and artist. Most of the men on the expedition were strangers to each other when they met for the first time, but it didn’t take long for them to become friends. They all shared a love of the mountains and the desire to do whatever they could to help the team reach the summit.

But a series of catastrophes kept the team from reaching that goal. During a storm, Art became ill with blood clots in his lungs and as the others tried to maneuver him down a treacherously steep and icy slope to a lower camp, one of the climbers slipped, three ropes tangled, and five men – my dad amongst them – found themselves hurtling down the mountain with no way to stop themselves. Fortunately Pete, the youngest and strongest man on the team, was anchored above them and performed a rope belay – a technique climbers use to stop another climber from falling by winding the rope around a secure object, in this case, an ice axe. The daring maneuver has come to be known as “The Belay” in mountaineering lore, stopping the five falling men from plummeting to their deaths.

As I was born more than three years after “The Belay” I’ve always been personally grateful to Pete for his remarkable feat. And through the years I’ve sometimes thought about the other descendants of the K2 expedition – all of them impacted as I had been by that moment when our fathers had been pulled back from the brink of death. I wondered if the other climbers’ kids felt the same gratitude to Pete that I did. Would we feel the same instant bonds of friendship that our fathers had felt if we ever met?

In 2004 Pete died at 77 after a brave battle with cancer, leaving behind five remaining survivors of the expedition – Bob and Charles, both in their nineties by then, Tony, Bob, and my dad. George had died several years before from complications after surgery, and Art had been swept away by an avalanche on K2 during the expedition. As the men of the 1953 K2 expedition began to pass on, the urge for me to meet their descendants grew.

In 2005, at Pete’s memorial service, I found that his children shared my desire to meet our fellow “Children of the Belay” (or “COB” as I’d dubbed the K2 climbers’ descendants). Soon e-mails were flying from one COB to the next and the idea of a COB get-together began to become a reality.

In August, 28 descendants of the expedition members – coming from Germany, New York, Colorado, New Mexico, and Washington State – along with spouses and partners, my dad, and the widows of George and Pete converged on the small town of Leavenworth, Washington.

As my family pulled into Leavenworth, we saw the husband of Kim Schoening, Pete’s daughter, standing on the sidewalk outside the Forest Service Station and he waved us into the parking lot. The lot was bursting with lively, laughing COB. There was George’s daughter, Carolyn, and his son, George, Jr. And there were Pete’s children: Kim, Kristiann, Mark, Lisa, and Eric. I’d never met the Bell offspring until now, but without hesitation I found myself getting out of the car and introducing myself to them, shaking Carolyn’s hand and giving George a hug. It was like we were old friends meeting again after a long separation.

On a hike through the woods to Icicle Creek, we chatted and learned the basics about one another: Jobs, hometowns, educations. Afterwards we ate lunch and then splashed and swam around in the Wenatchee River. There was a young lad there with a wakeboard and we took turns trying to stay upright on the thing. Later we celebrated one of the grand-COB’s birthdays, singing happy birthday to her in honor of her nineteenth year.

But for me the standout experience came that night as we watched videos on the K2 Expedition that had been shown on the BBC. When Pete’s face appeared on the screen a little voice excitedly piped up, “There’s Grandpa!” And it hit me that for the first time in my life I was in a roomful of people who could relate to the story of the expedition in the same way that I relate to it. Here were other spawn of those adventurers, as familiar with the personalities and events of the expedition as I was. As we watched the videos, we all laughed in the same places, and shared the same respect for the courage and camaraderie shown by the climbers. Even the littlest children listened quietly.

The next day, as we prepared to leave Leavenworth, the adieus were bittersweet – although we’d only been together for two days it felt as if I was saying good-bye to family. The members of our fathers’ expedition had gone into the mountains as strangers and had come out as friends. Maybe it’s not surprising that the same was true for their children.

– Karen Molenaar Terrell

A Letter to Dad, Dee Molenaar, on His 107th Birthday

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My dad’s birthday is today. He would have been 107. I’ve put other stuff on my wall about Pop – recycled stories and videos (and have I mentioned Dad is in Wikipedia?) 😃 But I thought I’d gift him with something new for his birthday. He’s not really gone, you see. I still feel his presence here with me – not as a ghost or anything – but I feel his smile with me, his humor and his love.

Daddy, I miss our drives together. I miss the conversations we managed to have, even though we were both hard-of-hearing. I remember you sitting in the passenger seat, your head going back and forth as you took in the landscape, telling me about the geologic history of whatever area we were traveling through, and often saying, “I made a field trip out here for the USGS,” or “I hiked that trail,” or “I climbed that,” or “This would make a good painting.”

One of the greatest gifts you passed on to me was a love for the outdoors, and an appreciation of the natural beauty around us. I followed you up to the summits of Hood and Rainier, Baker and Adams – and when I look at those peaks now I’m sort of in awe that I climbed them – who was I to think I could do that?!

I was Dee Molenaar’s daughter, that’s who.

You instilled a confidence in myself that’s gotten me through some really challenging years. Thank you for that gift, too.

Through your travels and connections you met some amazing, fearless people. Your community of fellow adventurers was filled with brave, heroic visionaries. You introduced me to people of all races and all major religions, and exampled for me what it means to love the world’s people without bigotry or discrimination. As a youngster, I hiked with Tenzing Norgay! As a twelve-year-old, I ran a mile down our country road with Doris Brown!! Governor Evans came to our house to borrow climbing equipment one time. And it wasn’t out-of-the-ordinary for me to pick up the phone and find myself talking to Edmund HIllary. You were comfortable moving among both the famous and the not, and always enjoyed meeting new “mountain people.”

You could be stubborn. You could be critical. You could be bossy. But I always knew you loved me. I always felt your support. You let me know you were proud of me. I’m glad I had you for my Pop.

Happy birthday, Daddy!

(Photos: My feet next to Dad’s – I think this was on our climb of Mount Hood when I was 15; a screenshot of what came up when I googled “Dee Molenaar”; Dad, my brother, Pete, and I on Mount Rainier.)

MountRainierMountAdamsMountBakerMountHood

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I’ve said their names so many times together that they’ve morphed into one word: MountRainierMountAdamsMountBakerMountHood.

The first major volcano I climbed was 11,249′ Mount Hood. I was 15. I didn’t really understand the BIGNESS of what I was doing at 15. I just followed my dad, Dee Molenaar, up to the top of Hood, and followed him back down again. I remember feeling like I was on a whole different planet, though. I remember the smell of sulphur from the crater, and I remember it made me a little nervous. I remember the top layer of skin on my face burning a crispy red. And I remember being back in high school on Monday morning.

The summer before I turned 21 I asked Dad to guide me, and some of my friends who worked with me at Paradise, up to the summit of 14,411′ Rainier. I better understood the bigness of what we were doing by this time – this was my second summer working on Mount Rainier and I’d been around enough climbers up there to know that some people prepared their whole lives for this climb. But I don’t think I yet appreciated how blessed I was to be able to call Dad to be my guide and then two weeks later to find myself climbing in his foosteps up to the summit of Washington’s highest volcano. Climbing mountains is just what the people I’d grown up with had always done and it seemed natural that I should climb mountains, too. Our climb of Rainier that weekend was awesome – like on Hood, I felt like I was in a whole different world, but this time I wasn’t nervous about it. I remember the suncups that looked like little ice castles. I remember the deep blue crevasses. I remember climbing under the stars, in the quiet and stillness of pre-dawn, and then watching the sun rise over little Tahoma down below. It was magic!

A few years later, as a promise I’d made to one of my bridesmaids, I, once again, asked Dad to lead me and my friends on a climb of Rainier. But this time felt different for me, and for Dad, too. He was 66, had already climbed Rainier 50 times by then, and I knew his heart wasn’t in this one. He was a little grumbly. So this time, as we left Camp Sherman, I told Dad I wasn’t feeling well (this wasn’t really true) and I could hear the lift in his voice as he happily unroped from the rest of the team and announced that he and I would be heading back to camp because I wasn’t feeling good. We had a wonderful time that day just hanging out at Camp Sherman together, preparing to be a support for the other climbers when they made it back down. Dad’s friend, Pete Schoening – who’d saved my dad’s life and the lives of four other climbers with his famous belay on K2 in 1953 – was with the team, and we knew our friends were in good hands.

A year after we got married, my husband, Scott, and I moved to the northern part of Washington State, near the Canadian border. Rainier was no longer a quick drive away. Now our closest volcano was Mount Baker – Rainier’s 10,786′ sibling. Baker is humbler than her big sister and less famous, but I began to think of her as “my” mountain – and her summit was calling to me. The summer before I turned 31 I called Dad and asked him if he could guide Scott and me and some of my teaching friends from Sedro-Woolley to the top of Mount Baker. And bless him, he agreed. Dad must have been about 69 then – at the time I didn’t think much of that, but now, from the perspective of someone who’s almost 66, I am in absolute awe of who Dad was at 69. He safely led the team to the top of Mount Baker – and (just as importantly) safely led us back down again, over and around crevasses that were widening as the afternoon grew warmer. It was another wonderful day with Pop in the mountains – and Mount Baker was the first summit my husband, Scott, and I stood on together.

The summer before I turned 41 I got it into my noggin that I wanted to climb Mount Adams, Washington’s second highest mountain at 12,280′. I picked up the phone and called my faithful guide, Dad. Dad agreed to guide Scott and me and Scott’s friend, John, up Adams – and when I think about that now I am astounded! Dad was 79. In retrospect, I can see that, even if I was oblivious to Dad’s age, he wasn’t. He invited another man with a lot of mountaineering experience to join us on the climb, and that proved to be a really good call on Dad’s part.

A couple of significant things happened on our climb of Mount Adams: first, I had an epiphany that changed the way I viewed mountain climbing – it struck me, as I looked down the steep, icy slope I was traversing, that I was a mom now – I had a a three-year-old and a five-year-old waiting for me back home – and it occured to me that I could no longer be so cavalier about my own life – I had little people I loved who needed me to stay alive for them; and second, at about 10,000′ Dad let us know that he was done – that he felt he was holding us back (he wasn’t) and he would stay down below at base camp while the rest of us went on up to the summit. It felt really weird to be climbing without Dad. It was like there was this empty place at the top where he should have been standing. When our troop made it back to base camp, Dad hurried out to greet us – his arms opened wide to hug me. He said, “This is the first time I’ve had to wait at base camp for you and I didn’t like the worry of it!”

Mount Adams was the first big volcano I summited without Dad, and it is the last big volcano I ever climbed.

I look at these mountains now – MountRainierMountAdamsMountBakerMountHood – and I think to myself: “What in the heck were you thinking?! Whatever made you think you could climb those mountains?!” But then I remind myself that I did, indeed, climb those mountains and I’m sort of blown away by that. And I realize that if I hadn’t been born with the Dad I was born with I probably WOULDN’T have climbed MountRainierMountAdamsMountBakerMountHood. How blessed I am to have a father who gave me the mountains! How blessed I am to have a bank of memories over-flowing with the mountain adventures I had with Pop! I’m not climbing big volcanoes anymore, but I still get into the mountains for some good hikes. And every hike I take, I bring Dad with me.
-Karen Molenaar Terrell

Photos: My boots next to Dad’s boots on Hood (upper left); teacher Jim Johnson, Dad, me, and Scott on Mount Baker (middle left); Scott and me on Mount Adams (bottom left); Dad, me, and my brother, Pete, on Rainier.

“The Children of the Belay” Podcast

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In 1953 Pete Schoening saved my dad’s life, and the lives of four other men, with his belay (known as “The Belay” in mountaineering circles) on the slopes of K2, the world’s second highest mountain. If not for Pete’s belay, a lot of us would never have been born. Pete’s grandson, Brian Schoening, recently invited me to chat with him about “The Children of the Belay” on his podcast. To listen to the podcast, click here.

Here’s a photo of The Children of the Belay taken when the descendents of the 1953 K2 climbers were able to get together in Leavenworth, Washington, in 2006.

The Children of the Belay

Worthy of Being a Prize

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Something happened that really touched me today. It was Scott’s last day of the quarter at WWU and, unbeknownst to me, he brought in one of my books – Are You Taking Me Home Now?: Adventures with Dad – as a prize for whichever student was the first to find out who’d painted the highest painting in the world. “Dee Molenaar?” one of his students asked, after a quick search. And she got my book! Scott explained to the class that Dee Molenaar was his father-in-law and that his wife had written the book. It just really warmed my heart that Scotty thought my book was worthy of being a prize.

Epic Afternoon

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Epic afternoon. Dad (Dee Molenaar, aged 99 and 10/12) was visited by three of his old mountaineering buddies – Tom Hornbein, Jim Wickwire, and Bill Sumner – extraordinary climbers all. Dad arm-wrestled Tom (Tom and Willi Unsoeld were the first men to ascend Everest from the West ridge), looked at a K2 book with Jim (Jim and Louis Reichardt were the first Americans to ascend K2), and had a good laugh with Bill (who was a member of the expedition that included the first one-legged person to reach the top of Denali). They talked about old friends, old climbs, and the Mountaineers Lifetime Achievement Award Tom is going to receive tonight. (Tom picked up the award for Dad last spring when Dad was in the hospital, and says that helped him prepare for accepting his own award tonight.)

Watching these old pals reunite – men who have shared adventures together that most people probably can’t even imagine – men who are living pieces of history – brought tears to my eyes. What a privilege to be there with them…

 

 

 

Wikipedia Dad

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The other day I had to take care of some business on behalf of my dad. At one point I needed to know his birthday – I can never seem to remember when Dad’s birthday is – it’s either this day in June or the next day in June – and I was ready to give him a call to find out, when I realized all I needed to do was go to Wikipedia.

Whoaaaah…. right?

Dad’s Backpack

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Tomorrow will not only be Father’s Day, it will be my dad’s 97th birthday. My dad, Dee Molenaar, has lived a most amazing 97 years. He was born at the end of World War I, was alive when women got the right to vote, lived through the Great Depression, fought in World War II, saw men walk on the moon, and teared-up with pride for his country the night the first African-American was elected President. He has traveled on six of the seven continents (the only continent he somehow missed was Africa),  climbed on the highest mountains in the world (and, with his climbing team, almost made the first summit of the second tallest one), painted paintings, written books, created maps, had his photos published in National Geographic, and hobnobbed with presidential candidates.

He and Mom are currently in the process of moving out of their home of 48 years. This has involved some down-sizing. Last weekend when I was at their place to help them pack up, Dad gave me the little backpack he’d bought in 1973 for his journey to Europe to climb in the Alps. I cannot tell you how much it meant to me to be able to bring that familiar little pack home with me. I always knew I was safe when I was climbing with the man who wore this pack. This is the pack Dad wore to the summit of Rainier when we’d climbed it together in 1977, and the same pack I’d followed up to the top of Mount Baker ten years later. This is the pack Dad wore when he’d taken hikes with my young sons and myself. There are a lot of fond memories attached to that pack.

For now, it is hanging from a hook in our family room. I know it doesn’t have any special magical powers or anything, but somehow just looking at it makes me feel safe.

Dee Molenaar's pack

Dad’s pack

Preface to Memoirs of a Dinosaur Mountaineer

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Preface to Dee Molenaar’s book, Memoirs of a Dinosaur Mountaineer

A light breeze came up the canyon and through the pine boughs overhead, and soon isolated white specks began descending. The snowflakes increased and soon we were encompassed in a flurry that blotted out the semi-arid valley far below, and the trail penetrating the pines below the granite walls high above. In our present light apparel and on a short, leg-stretching hike after motoring from Death Valley 80 miles in the east, our “Old Cronies Expedition” took another prolonged look around, and turned back to the trailhead at Whitney Portal.

It was then that my brother K and I and our friends, George Senner and Bob Johnson, found we were not alone among these rugged mountains.

Coming down through the mists was a lone hiker.

The heavily-bearded, long-haired chap was traveling beneath a bulky backpack that suggested he’d been out for some time. However, the big coil of fiberglass rope tucked beneath a hatchet, a large cast-iron skillet, and soft-toed boots indicated this was no modern-day mountaineer with a fetish for the latest in lightweight travel.

He stopped briefly and we questioned him about his travels. He was originally from Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, and more recently from the Stockton area across the mountains. Tiring of the Bay Area drug scene, he was aiming for a change of pace and was now returning from a trip into the mountains. He talked confidently of his climbing experiences and we enjoyed his free-spirited philosophy before we parted. At a distance through the mist we followed his burdened figure down the trail.

Meeting this hairy 40-ish fellow on the Mount Whitney trail rekindled my thoughts of a half-century earlier – in 1937, a late-summer trip into the Sierras Nevada with my brother K, similarly clad in jeans and carrying unwieldy loads. In that day we also had the trail and the mountain pretty much to ourselves. But in today’s world, had we passed here a couple months later, during the summer’s climbing season, we would have been part of the mountain’s allowable 75 hikers registered daily for the 20-mile roundtrip to the top of Mount Whitney.

How times have changed since those youthful days of the 1930s, during the Great Depression and prior to World War II.

Yet my life since has been a succession of fortuitous circumstances – in many cases being in the right place at the right time and meeting the right person. And though the breaks never made me rich, they provided a bounty of fond memories of fascinating places and events, people and good friends.

– Dee Molenaar