The Mountaineers Historic Films

Couldn't wait til lunch. Classic sub-alpinism on Index. The scenes in the undeveloped Crystal area give me a feeling of nostalgia. Amazing that we can see Fred Beckey using crampons for the first time. Thanks!

For those of you into "turns all year," you may enjoy Marion Hessey's magic ski backpack. Click here .

Imagine what it must have been like to be the Hesseys in the 1950s, with the undeveloped basins of Crystal Mountain as their backyard.

Another great film is Dwight Watson's 1939 documentary of skiing in the northern Olympic Mountains. Click here . I love the opening scene of the ski car loading the old ferry. In his interview with Harry Majors at UW, Watson talked about trips to the Olympics:

They took the Ballard-Ludlow ferry to the northern Olympics in those days. The return ferry didn't reach Ludlow until 11 p.m. so they would take their time hiking out, swim in the hot springs, then have a late dinner in Port Angeles. They'd roll out sleeping bags on davenports on the ferry. The ferry departed at 4 a.m. and arrived at Ballard at 6 a.m. Dwight recalled, "The nice thing about the boat was, it left at four. You got in at six in the morning in beautiful weather coming down the Sound. And you could shave and get cleaned up on the boat and we just dashed home, dumped our stuff and ready to go to work. So we had plenty of time that way."

Mountaineer film clips can now be viewed on your iPhone!

When I posted the film clips described in this thread, I provided versions to work on the Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Chrome browsers. I didn't provide a version for Apple's Safari due to lack of time and expertise. I've rectified this, and you can now watch these clips on your iPhone. Give 'em a look...

The Mountaineers History Committee has obtained a grant from the Brunhilde Wislicenus Fund of the Mountaineers Foundation for the preservation of these and many other films in cooperation with the University of Washington. The complete list of films can be found here:

www.alpenglow.org/mountaineers-history/cat/movies-film.html

For those of you into "turns all year," you may enjoy Marion Hessey's magic ski backpack. Click here .

Imagine what it must have been like to be the Hesseys in the 1950s, with the undeveloped basins of Crystal Mountain as their backyard.

Thanks for posting these video links Lowell.

I was in Explorer Troop 9 from Yakima and have some very fond memories of many ski tips to Gold Hill and some fantastic BC skiing.

I remember Chuck and Marion skiing into the cabin at least one time in the mid 80s (they were both pretty old by then but still going strong!) with us. We also used to stop at their cabin on the way up from Yakima and our Scout master (Craig Gilbert) picked up ski wax from them and always got a good story out of them.

I always heard about the movies they had made but never got a chance to see them so it's a real treat to finally get a chance!

Ted

A satisfying ending to this project...

[size=10pt]UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES - University of Washington

PRESS RELEASE -- For Immediate Release
April 25, 2012

[/size][size=14pt] UW Libraries, Special Collections, awarded $200,000 NEH Grant [/size][size=10pt]

The University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections, has been awarded a $200,000 Humanities Collections and Reference Resources grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Humanities Collections and Reference Resources Grants allow institutions to preserve and provide access to collections essential to scholarship, education, and public programming in the humanities. The award to the UW Libraries is for the preservation, arrangement and description, digital reformatting and selective web streaming of 448 films, created by the Mountaineers Club, that document the natural environment of the Pacific Northwest. The 2-year project was submitted by Nicolette Bromberg, Special Collections Visual Materials Curator and will continue work on the moving image collections currently supervised by Hannah Palin, Film Archives Specialist. 

The Mountaineers, an outdoor recreation, education, and conservation group based in Seattle, Washington, recently donated the films to Special Collections. The collection includes the films of Bob and Ira Spring, Dwight Watson, and Charles and Marion Hessey, as well as, a newsreel shot by Selznick Pictures cameraman Charles Perryman documenting a 1922 winter ascent of Mount Rainier. Highlights from the collection include Mountaineers' trail trips and summer outings, a tour of the Paradise Ice Caves, mountain rescue films such as Mountains Don't Care and This is Self Arrest, and performances by the Mountaineer Players at the Kitsap Forest Theater including Alice in Wonderland, Sleeping Beauty, and A Midsummer Night's Dream. Earliest films in the collection date to the 1920s and extend to the early 1970s.

The University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections is a major resource for rare and unique materials. Research strengths include the history of the Pacific Northwest, Alaska and Western Canada; architectural drawings; book arts; photography, and the University of Washington Archives.  The film collections include home movies, documentary film, news film, industrial film, educational film, and more. Examples from the moving image collection can be seen at: content.lib.washington.edu/filmarchweb/index.html

The Moving Image Collection housed in Special Collections on the University of Washington Seattle campus contains films created or collected in the Northwest covering a wide range of topics and genres.  Home movies, industrial films, documentaries and art films capture life in the Pacific Northwest and beyond from the earliest film shot in 1914 through videotape taken last year.

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) announced earlier this month that $17 million in grants were awarded for 208 humanities projects. The grants will also support fellowships for scholarly research, the development and staging of exhibitions, digital tools, and the preservation of humanities collections and reference resources. Several projects receiving grants in this funding cycle will help preserve fragile historical and cultural collections and make them more accessible to the broader public.

Institutions and independent scholars in 42 states and the District of Columbia will receive NEH support. Complete state-by-state listings of grants are available here (39-page PDF): www.neh.gov/files/press-release/march2012statebystatefinal.pdf

The National Endowment for the Humanities was created in 1965 as an independent federal agency supporting research and learning in history, literature, philosophy, and other areas of the humanities by funding selected, peer-reviewed proposals from around the nation. Additional information about the National Endowment for the Humanities and its grant programs is available at: www.neh.gov . Media Contacts: Paula Wasley at (202) 606-8424 or pwasley@neh.gov
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The NEH grant is a wonderful confirmation of the importance of these films.  It's a tribute to the people who helped care for the films over the years.  Here's an article from the Moving Image Archive News on the NEH grant:

www.movingimagearchivenews.org/money-for-mountain-films/

My thanks go especially to the Mountaineers History Committee, the Mountaineers Players, the Mountaineers Foundation (Brunhilde Wislicenus Fund), the Ira Spring and Charles Perryman families, friends of Charles and Marion Hessey, and the estate of the Dwight Watson.

Congratulations to Nicolette Bromberg and Hannah Palin of UW for their work on the NEH grant request. This is a big shot in the arm for the University's film program, and I'm proud that The Mountaineers were able to help. I look forward to seeing the UW's online finding aids take shape in the months ahead. In the meantime, you can find more information about these films on the Mountaineers History Committee website here:

alpenglow.org/mountaineers-history/cat/movies-film.html

Lowell Skoog
History Committee Chairman
The Mountaineers

A satisfying ending to this project...

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?

"The award to the UW Libraries is for the preservation, arrangement and description, digital reformatting and selective web streaming of 448 films, created by the Mountaineers Club, that document the natural environment of the Pacific Northwest."