William Earl "Smoke" Blanchard (March 3, 1915 - June 23, 1989) is an American mountaineer, climber, trekking leader, guide, world traveler, writer, Buddha and truck driver. She was born in Montana and moved to Portland, Oregon during her childhood and found love for the mountains in the shadow of Mount Hood. He spent years climbing his mountain at Mount Hood during the mid to late 1930s. He was present during the "Golden Age" of climbing on Mount Hood, and under the guidance of Gary Leech became a solo hiker and built a new route on the mountain.
Video Smoke Blanchard
Personal life
Smoke made its first journey to the Yosemite Valley in 1937 and later that summer stumbled to the Eastern Archbishop's town. He moved there from Portland before 1942 and in 1943 had "discovered" the Buttermilks: the rocky areas that became his playground, and the training ground for young climbers like Doug Robinson, Galen Rowell, and Don Jenson.
In 1967, he married Su Ahlstrom after proposing to him on top of Mount Hood. She has two children from her previous marriage, Glen and Lorelle, and Smoke has one son, Robert, from a previous marriage. Su died in 1976.
Maps Smoke Blanchard
Trekking in the Himalayas and Japan
He is widely known in the Himalayas by porters, cooks, Sirdars explorers, and fellow guides. He was so accepted into this small fraternity that he became acquainted with Edmund Hillary (who reviewed Smoke's 1984 book) and Tenzing Norgay. Her relationship with Tenzing is personal and professional, with two major trips in Bhutan together and sharing food and time at Tenzing's house in Darjeeling.
Smoke's first association with a nationally and internationally renowned climber had started years earlier while still climbing the slopes of Mount Hood and proceeding after moving to Bishop. His friendship with uber-climber and legend of California mountain climb Norman Clyde is well documented. Smoke was one of Clyde's last good friends in life and saw the man's need during the illness and the decline that caused his death. In 1972, Smoke led a group that included his sons Robert and Jules Eichorn to the top of Clyde Peak to spread Clyde's ash from the summit.
Death
In 1989, Smoke was dividing the time between a house in Japan and a small apartment above a house still owned in Bishop. He's in a relationship with a young Japanese woman named Keiko Ishikawa. Early that summer, they traveled from Japan to Italy to take a stroll in the Dolomites. He and Keiko then fly back to the US to spend time in Bishop. During the return journey from Los Angeles International Airport, Smoke hands over the wheels to Keiko and crawls behind his small truck to sleep under the camping skin. Somewhere near the town of Mojave, Keiko loses control of the vehicle; it slips off the road and rolls over. He was relatively unharmed but Smoke suffered a major head trauma and after spending more than a week in intensive care, he died of his wounds on June 23, 1989.
Source of the article : Wikipedia
0 Comments