MISSOURI MOUNTAIN 7/31/87

MISSOURI MOUNTAIN 14,067'


Mountain........Missouri Mountain
Elevation.........14,067
Rank...............36th
Range..............Sawatch
Trail length......4.5 miles
Elevation gain..4,400'
Difficulty..........**
Comments........Richard's last

TRIP REPORT

7/31/87

Richard had been feeling somewhat sick ever since La Plata 5 days earlier (mostly nausea). But he was determined to climb anyway, so we got up early, drove to the Vicksburg trailhead and started climbing around 6:15 a.m. We climbed quickly up into Missouri Gulch. From there, we decided to skip the roundabout route that goes over a pass and then climbs the peak from the back side. Instead, we attacked the ridge on the west (right) in two different spots (Richard decided to go further up the valley before turning uphill).

My route, on scree, turned out to be a little easier - I could hear Rich mumbling nasties as he ascended steep slabs with loose rock over to my left.

I heard a thunk as a rock bounced and then whizzed past my ear - looking up, I saw a bighorn sheep doing a traverse above me. I was impressed with his footwork but a little upset that he had failed to yell "Rock!".

I reached the ridge top and wandered over to a point above Richard where I waited a few minutes until he joined me. Then we headed on to the summit on a pretty easy trail with one or two little scrambles. On top, Richard was not feeling well at all, and said "33 is enough - I don't need to do any more". (see picture above for his non-verbal expression of that sentiment)

We took the backside route off the mountain - Richard descended directly off the summit to the south while I took the southwest ridge down partway, then traversed over to where he was. He continued dropping straight down and I continued to traverse - we both wound up at the saddle between Missouri and Belford at the same time. We decided the best route down would have been to take the ridge as I did, then descend to the basin floor as he did, then pick up the trail over the pass and back to Vicksburg.

Richard was getting sicker as we descended (contrary to our normal experience), so we hurried as fast as we could to get down. It rained on us for the last mile but that was okay - we were done for this trip anyway. The next day we drove to the airport. Richard flew to Seattle to meet his wife for an extension of his vacation; I flew back home to Maryland.

Later that fall when the topic of the next year's climbing expedition came up, Richard said "no, not interested". By October, it was just "no" to backpacking, but he would consider trying to climb Sneffels and Wetterhorn again. I began to plan a two-week trip - one week of climbing with Richard, then a week of backpacking into the Needles Mountains with some friends from work.

In January, Richard was diagnosed with melanoma and an inoperable tumor in his lungs. The operation on his shoulder mole three years before had failed to remove all of the disease and it had spread throughout his body. Over the next six months we took a few short local hikes as his condition deteriorated. He was hospitalized in late spring, and on July 6 he died.

He was cremated and the bulk of his ashes were scattered on property he owned at Old Rag Mountain in Virginia; the rest went into my pack for distribution on the remaining Fourteeners.