The Mountaineers Historic Films

Hopefully this is just the beginning!   Will the $200000 grant finally result in the films being viewable online as the quote below seems to indicate?

Well, the project is ending for me... I've been working on it for over 11 years.

I don't know how much of the films the UW will put on line. When the Mountaineers donated the collection last autumn, we included money from a Mountaineers Foundation grant, but not enough to do everything you'd like to do. So we left it up to the UW to decide how best to support the collection with those limited funds. The UW has no budget for film preservation. All their film work is funded by grants. They applied for the NEH grant, and happily they got it.

The collection now belongs to UW Libraries, though the Mountaineers retain the right to use the films. I'm happy to let them manage it. You can see clips from many of the films on the Mountaineers website (linked above). I don't know anything more, at this point.

I did some poking around in the UW's moving image collection:

content.lib.washington.edu/filmarchweb/index.html

The Ruth and Louis Kirk collection can be found here:

content.lib.washington.edu/filmarchweb/kirks.html

If you click "Browse Collection" (upper right corner of page) you get to a page that includes this film:

"Archaeological Dig at Fort Nisqually"

This page contains textual information and a five-minute video clip. The clip is just a portion of the complete film. I presume that this is how the Mountaineers film collection will be handled as well.

I find that I'm able to view the film clip on a PC using Firefox, but I can't see it on an iPhone or iPad using Safari. This is the same problem I had when I first posted clips on the Mountaineers website. It's completely solvable (the films need to be formatted differently for Safari) but it takes more time and effort.

Lowell, thanks very much for going to the trouble. And it's reassuring to know that they were skiing the same crud with lots floppier gear...

Over in the "Snowmobiles at Artist Point" thread, I posted an old photo by Bob and Ira Spring of skiers touring at Artist Point in the late 1950s:



I noticed today that UW Special Collections has now digitized and posted the movie that goes along with this photo. See the following clips:

Skiing at Artist Point, 1958, Part 1
Skiing at Artist Point, 1958, Part 2
Skiing at Artist Point, 1958, Part 3

These clips are part of the Mountaineers Film Collection, which I helped donate to the University of Washington a few years ago. The entry page for the collection is here:

content.lib.washington.edu/filmarchweb/mountaineers.html

The Artist Point film includes a few good shots of the old Austin Pass rope tow at Mt Baker. It also shows how pristine Artist Point was on a powder day in 1958. But to ski up there you had to use narrow skis, leather boots, and primitive climbers.

In the film, the crew-cut guy wearing a red jacket (the tour leader) is John Meulemans. Meulefire Peak in the North Cascades is partially named for him. I believe the girl in the red jacket and white hat is Peggy Stark. I think the young man with knicker socks, plaid shirt and a thick wool hat is Willy Stark.

Fun stuff.

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Here are links to a few of my favorite clips:

1928: Like Washington crossing the Delaware, Edmond Meany crosses the Skagit, click here .
1930: Called forth by Ned's bugle, The Mountaineers encircle Rainier, click here .
1930: On Whitehorse Mtn, how not to glissade with an alpenstock, click here .
1932: At the basecamp below Mt Hood, McKee is deloused, click here .
1938: Dwight Watson and Sigurd Hall ski Mt St Helens, Glacier Peak, and Eldorado Peak, click here .
1939: Otto Trott, Andy Hennig, Sigurd Hall, and the Beckey brothers climb Mt Shuksan, click here .
1940: Jim Crooks and Fred Beckey scale The Tooth, click here .
1949: Fred Beckey and Pete Schoening demonstrate tricks of the crag rats, click here .
1955: Bob and Ira Spring go Skiing Above the Clouds, click here .
1956: Chuck and Marion Hessey ski Cascade Wilderness, click here .
1957: Climbing the Daiber way with Ome and Matie, click here .
1959: Chuck Hessey shares skiing at Crystal Mtn, before chairlifts, click here .

Some of the links appear to be broken. "This page does not exist."

Some of the links appear to be broken.  "This page does not exist."

Yeah, all the links to the mountaineers.org site are currently broken.

The Mountaineers rolled out a new website three weeks ago. They've promised that I'll be able to upload the old Mountaineer Archives pages again, but they haven't given me the go-ahead yet. Sorry about that. (That's also why the Northwest Mountaineering Journal is currently off-line.)

You can probably find the films I listed as favorites on the new UW site, but it would take some hunting. The Artist Point film (in three parts) that I linked in yesterday's post is easy to find. Just click the links I provided.