Mountain Mentors

Delores LaChapelle (d. January 22 2007)    

Edward LaChapelle (d. February 1 2007)                   

I was young in those days, 
keen to learn mountain lore, to take to glaciers and snow packed slopes,
could ski better than walk, left school before finishing, against my elders’ advice, to live the mountain life, to be far from the madding crowd, early 1970s with mountain sami in northern Norway,

Arnae Naess a north star, Swiss guides my guides.

There were, of course, dangers on peaks, places to be alert and alive to when off piste, when in deep powder.

It was Edward who pioneered avalanche safety in those unsure, untried years, research from Alta Utah our north star, The ABCs of Avalanche Safety (1961) our primer and sacred text on the subject.

Alpine touring in those years was still in its infancy, and it was Edward again that did much of the early work on transceivers when most of us used antiquated means to find a buried friend.

It was in the late 1960s, I was one winter never a day not on skis, traveling the slopes like a mountain gypsy, high ridges and peaks my meccas and New Jerusalem. Was there more to mountain life than skill finesse and the rush of a challenging and steep descent between rocks on all sides? 

Dolores, you walked me yet deeper and further, taught me much of the real reasons for mountain life and soul sanity.

Your many books were tender, probing, informed, D. H. Lawrence and Martin Heidegger, deep ecology and mountain soul knit affectionately with soft powder Tai Chi spirituality, the new society and a deeper way of being ever before you.

It was all about future primitive, wisdom of the earth and a return to the mountains.

You parted paths for reasons oft-stated, a sadness I felt, but understood the reasons for—mentors are rare in our time, mountain mentors that remain together rarer still.

You took different trails, took to different peaks, far, far from one another—Edward to a one-room log cabin in Alaska, Dolores in Silverton,

You left us Delores in January 2007. It was kind of you Edward to make the long journey south to attend the funeral to bid adieu to Delores.

Did you realize how the trip would end?

The funeral over and done, you decided, at 80, to do a final deep powder descent. Why? What were you feeling at the time? You died on the mountain Dolores called home.

The thick ropes of mountain memories are not easily shredded or ripped apart.

montani semper liberi

Ron Dart