Cross-border mountaineering connection

Jim Wickwire: Mountaineering Icon
by Ron Dart

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Jim Wickwire was the first American to summit K2 (elevation 28,251 ft.) in September 1978. K2 is considered a much more difficult climb than Everest and Jim, much to the surprise of many, survived an overnight bivouac beneath the summit of K2 at 27,000 feet. Jim had pioneered challenging climbs on Mt. Rainier’s Willis Wall (East Rib) in the 1960s and his four attempts on Everest (1982, 1984, 1993, 2003) are legendary as are climbs in South America.

Jim had contacted Arnold Shives and I a few months ago, his interest in Jack Kerouac and Thomas Merton an ongoing one. So, we agreed to meet on Thursday, September 4 in Lynden at The Newsroom Pub and linger over lunch and talk mountaineering history (much untold and told by some in a questionable manner).  Jim has a substantive library of about 7,000 books and many of these books are about high-end mountaineering history—he generously offered Arnold and I virtually any books we might be interested in. He in the process, at 85, of downsizing his library.

When with Jim and listening in on the tales of his K2 climb, I was reminded of two Canadians, Jim Haberl and Don Culver who reached the summit of K2 in 1993, Culver dying in the descent. Jim Haberl died when skiing in the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park in 1999. Haberl Hut in the Tantalus Range (near Squamish-Whistler) honours his mountaineering life. I was fortunate in 2006 (100^th anniversary of the Alpine Club of Canada – ACC) to trek and climb in the area for a week. ACC supported the event. Jim Wickwire did mention, though, how much he appreciated the two books published by Haberl (K2: Dreams and Reality and Risking Adventure: Mountaineering Journey Around the World). I might add that Sue Oakey-Baker’s book, Finding Jim, is a must read. Sue Okey-Baker and Jim Haberl were partners and did many a mountaineering trip together before his death. Jim Wickwire did hold Jim Haberl in high regard and saw Sue’s honest and probing book a heartfelt story close to the raw bones.  

Jim Wickwire’s mountaineering journey has been aptly and honesty told in Addicted to Danger: A Memoir About Affirming Life In The Face of Death (1998). Jim, most generously, inscribed the book to me with these kindly words, “To Ron Dart, With high regard and great admiration for your many years of commitment to furthering the lasting impact of Thomas Merton for all our lives and what will follow when you’re gone—As ever, Jim Wickwire April 25 2025). Arnold Shives and I have done a trilogy of books that threaded together the significance of mountaineering and the humanities, Merton and the North Cascades and Merton, the Beats and counterculture, Arnold doing the paintings-sketches, I the tale and text. Jim had found all three books most meaningful and wanted to talk about them-he had also found a copy of Alpine Anatomy: The Mountain Art of Arnold Shives—such a feast of a book, Arnold’s many paintings brought together with superb essays about Arnold as both a significant Canadian painter but a mountain painter at the highest and most creative level, indebted to the Group of Seven but stepping beyond them.  

The primary book that recounts, in not to be forgotten detail, the summiting of K2, by Jim and others, is The Last Step: The American Ascent of K2 (1980) by Rick Ridgeway. The text, photos and drawings unfold the nature and history of the climb in dramatic and not to be forgotten depth and detail—certainly not idealizing the demands, hazards, and challenges of such a summitting. Jim had, months before, sent me a tightly-packed box of books that recounted, from different angles, various lives of climbers or other versions of his climbs, including Lou Whittaker: Memoirs of a Mountain Guide (1994), Maria Coffey’s Where the Mountain Casts Its Shadow: The Dark Side of Extreme Adventure (2003), Stephen Venables’ A Slender Thread: Escaping Disaster in the Himalaya (2000) and The Roskelley Collection: Nanda Devi, Last Days, and Stories Off the Wall (2012). Needless to say, Jim plays a significant role in all these mountaineering classics and, as mentioned above, he has more books he is keen to send our way.

It was the lingering lunch from 11:00-1:00 at the Newsroom Pub with Jim, Arnold-Sue Shives, and I that was most memorable for a multiplicity of reasons, some of which were Jim’s reflections of his layered life as a high level mountaineer and his personal life (and the challenges of integrating the two). But, for decades of his life journey, Jim has been interested in Jack Kerouac. Kerouac lived in a lookout in the North Cascades at Desolation Peak in the mid-1950s. Many are the Kerouac devotees that make pilgrimages to Kerouac’s lookout at the north end of Ross Lake (makes for a full day of more than a 4000 feet elevation gain). I have led many Kerouac keeners to the lookout from which 4 significant and not to be forgotten Kerouac mountain texts were birthed (Dharma Bums, Desolation Angels, “Lonesome Traveller” and “Desolation Blues”). Kerouac also submitted two fine poems to Merton’s short lived poetic beauty, Monk’s Pond. Jim plans on making the trip to Kerouac’s Desolation lookout mid-September 2005, his granddaughters and extended family to join him to a different type of mountain and lookout of sorts than K2, Denali, Everest and many other peaks, ridges, and trails trekked and for different reasons.

We had a lovely and meandering journey together at the pub, each of us enjoying chowder soup and discussing a wide mountain range of ideas and issues, Arnold and Sue contributing their artistic mountain lore. It was a blend of mountaineering, spirituality, and religion not to be missed or ignored. The plan is to meet again, after the longer day to Kerouac’s lookout, in the autumn, take in the pathway to the lookout trek, and continue our journey together as we talk mountaineering history, legends, literature, politics, and religion in an organic way and manner. There are no easy answers to any of such issues as there are no easy answers to mountaineering trips and tragedies (of whom Jim has lived with many in his decades long mountain life).                          

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Ron Dart has taught in the Department of Political Science, Philosophy, and Religious Studies at the University of the Fraser Valley since 1990. He was on staff with Amnesty International in the 1980s. He has published 40 books including Erasmus: Wild Bird (Create Space, 2017) and The North American High Tory Tradition (American Anglican Press, 2016). [Editor’s note: Ron Dart has recently reviewed books by Peter D. Scott, Paul Zizka, Glenn Woodsworth & David Woodsworth, Marc Bourdon, Paul Zizka, and John Baldwin for The British Columbia Review. He has also contributed five essays: Milton Acorn, Canadian mountain culture and mountaineering, From Jalna to Timber Baron: Reflections on the life of H.R. MacMillan, Roderick Haig-Brown & Al Purdy, and Save Swiss Edelweiss Village.]