Washington locals advance climbers to the peak of success

Two Spokane Mountaineers have lofty senior status for their role in taking a couple of upstart climbers under their wings 50 years ago and launching them toward the top of the world.

Bill Fix, 88, and Joe Collins, 89, were among the club members who pioneered climbs throughout the region anywhere within striking distance. They would take epic three-day trips with barely enough time to return home Monday in time for work.

In 1965, a teenage graduate of the venerable Spokane Mountaineers Mountain School was assigned during the Mountaineers Summer Outing to rope up with Fix for the rock-climbing portion of their ascent of Mount Moran in Grand Teton National Park.

Fix filed the trip report in the club’s journal: “A special commendation is due to John Roskelley for his help in route finding and leading to the summit. … At 16, he has to be dubbed ‘most promising new climber.’”

Roskelley later rose to the top of the world’s best mountaineers — a career honored this spring in Italy — as he became the first American and sixth recipient of the Golden Ice Axe award (Les Piolets D’or).

Although Fix had an eye for Roskelley’s climbing prowess, perhaps nobody could have foreseen that he would one day be on the same mountaineering lifetime achievement list as Walter Bonatti, Reinhold Messner, Doug Scott, Robert Paragot and Kurt Diemberger.

Also in 1965, Collins chauffeured Roskelley and another 16-year-old Mountain School graduate, Chris Kopczynski, for a club climb of 9,131-foot Mount Shuksan in the North Cascades.

“Chris ate all three days’ worth of food the first day,” Collins recalled Sunday. “He came to me and said, ‘Joe! Joe! My food’s all gone!’ as I had all of my food neatly organized in front of me.”

Kopczynski reportedly said, “What should I do, Joe?” as he looked longingly at Collins’s food, each meal for each day wrapped and labeled.

“I put each package in my stuff sack, pulled the drawstring tight, put it in my pack and said, ‘Next time you will remember. Let’s go climbing.’”

Kopczynski learned his lessons well. His long list of climbing accomplishments include joining Roskelley in 1974 to become the first American team to climb the North Face of the Eiger; becoming the ninth American to climb Mount Everest and completing the Seven Summits, the highest peak on each continent, by 1994.