Gail Oberlin Bates spent her last morning at home reading the New York Times, engaged in the world to the end—which was at the grand age of 103. Married for 53 years to the pioneering mountaineer Bob Bates, who died at age 96 in 2007, Gail was an adventurous person and avid trekker, and was the first employee ever at the American Alpine Club. She journeyed to remote base camps in a time when they were far more remote than today, and was a friend to generations of climbers.

Born in Cleveland, Gail studied Italian and art history at Vassar College, graduating in 1939, then earned a master’s degree (unusual for a woman in the 1940s) in social work from Columbia University.
 
During World War II, she served in the American Red Cross from 1943 to 1945, stationed in England. According to a tribute to her in the Congressional Record on her 100th birthday, “She would soon join the Allied armies in continental Europe, arriving in…France in July, where she hosted a party for the children of Sainte-Mere-Eglise, providing a brief respite from war for the first liberated town in France. Following Allied victories in eastern France and Belgium, Gail accompanied General George Patton and his Third Army into Germany and was one of only two women who served in the Red Cross Aero Club in Berlin.”

Upon her return to the United States, she was hired as the secretary for the American Alpine Club, the first paid employee of the club, which was then based in New York City. She met Robert “Bob” Bates at an annual AAC dinner, and they married in 1953. A revered English teacher at Phillips Exeter Academy, Bob Bates served as the first director of the Peace Corps in Nepal, starting in 1962, and the couple moved to Kathmandu. Gail was eager to go and took an active role in running the operation.

Upon returning home, Gail and Bob opened their doors and “continued to welcome countless students, climbers, Peace Corps volunteers and friends from around the world,” a Peace Corps  article about her reads, “always imbuing them with a sense of excitement about the possibilities in life and the belief that they could accomplish whatever they set out to do.”

Gail had a close view of a golden era in mountaineering. She and Bob, a survivor of the famous 1953 attempt to climb K2, in which all teammates risked their lives to try to rescue their ill teammate Art Gilkey, were lifelong friends and adventure-travel companions with Ad Carter, the legendary longtime editor of the American Alpine Journal, and Ann Carter, who contributed greatly to the AAJ. Bob and Bradford Washburn made the first ascent of Mt. Lucania in the Yukon in 1937. Bates was one of the famed “Harvard Five” early U.S. mountaineers, with Washburn, Carter, Charles Houston, and Terris Moore. In 1974, Gail and Bob traveled to Pakistan with the Carters and trekked into K2 base camp. Other mountaineering friends included Sir Edmund Hillary; Manzoor Hussein of Pakistan; Jolene and Willi Unsoeld; and Dee Molenaar, also of the 1953 K2 expedition.

The dedication to Bob Bates’s book The Love of Mountains is Best, published in 1994, reads: “To Gail Oberlin Bates, a grand partner and companion both at home and traveling in regions from Mt. Ararat to Phoksumdo Tal.”

— Alison Osius