Iowa Mountaineers

Publication Year: 1980.

Iowa Mountaineers. The club membership has grown to 1200. Once again the year was an unusually active one. Many of our courses and mountain camps were again offered for credit by the University of Iowa. Under the instruction of John and Jim Ebert, seventy members completed the five concentrated one-week basic rock-climbing courses held at Devils Lake State Park, Wisconsin. One hundred members completed the three- day weekend rock-climbing classes. Three general weekend outings were held at popular Devils Lake, with an average attendance of 30 members.

In January 40 members participated in a nine-day cross-country skiing and winter survival camp held at 10,500 feet in the Collegiate Range in Colorado. A winter backpack trip to Arizona’s Grand Canyon involved two groups of 15. The professional film-lecture series had an average attendance of 450, while the annual banquet in April attracted 150 persons from nine states. John Bragg presented an outstanding program on Cerro Torre in Patagonia.

There were three groups afield during the summer. John Ebert headed a group of nine up the Alaska Highway for climbing and hiking in June and July. Two other major camps were sponsored in July and August with Jim Ebert as leader. Thirty-seven members attended a 10-day snow- and-ice course in the Purcell Range of British Columbia. Over 100 individual ascents were made by the participants. Twenty-seven climbed Commander (12 making a grand traverse), 20 the Cleaver, 14 Maye, nine the Delphine, four the Eastern Guardsman, seven Jumbo, while 19 ascended the unnamed peak at the head of the Farnham Creek valley. The climbing staff included John Filsinger, Frank Mohling, Mike Bogart, Dennis Turville, and Jim Ebert. This was followed by an 11-day, 45- member camp in the Chimney Rock area in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado. Considerable climbing and hiking was enjoyed before the weathered deteriorated.

The 1980 foreign expedition will be to the European Alps from June 28 to July 20 or 27. The in-states summer camp will be in the Sawtooth Range of Idaho from August 5-15.

Jim Ebert, Vice President