Echoes from the Chair

By Dan Richter 4/26/95

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Yesterday I went to the Angeles Chapter Council meeting with your Council Representative Julie Rush to ask that the Council recommend to ExComm that the SPS be reimbursed for some or all of leader insurance expenses on restricted trips. Julie and I figured we’d get a pretty cold reception in light of the present financial crisis within the Club and I certainly was not looking forward to asking for help. After listening to an hour and a half of reports of declining membership and the woes of the Club my turn came to speak. I spoke about how the Club’s founder John Muir found his inspiration on the high peaks of the Sierra. I pointed out that the climbing of them this summer on the SPS schedule will require $1,150.00 in insurance costs for our leaders. I told them that we had stretched our resources last summer by paying over $1,900.00 for insurance for all leader costs and half of the participant's costs in order to get restricted trips off the ground.

The response was tremendous. Dave Bybee started by saying the SPS was "the jewel in the crown" of the Club’s mountaineering. Southern Courtney from the HPS said he not only supported the motion but he also thought that the HPS would be happy to contribute to our costs. Bob Marshall and Bonnie Sharpe felt help with this season’s cost was just a band-aid and how could we really revitalize mountaineering and what we now call restricted trips. A motion was made and passed 8 to 1 with 2 abstentions to recommend to ExComm that the SPS be reimbursed $625.00 for insurance costs.

The discussion that the motion caused was long. I was struck by how it revived and animated the council, which had been up till then wading through the depressing financial state of the Club and Chapter. There was a real recognition that what we do, mountaineering, lay at the very heart of the Sierra Club. Many of the council members wanted to know how we could bring back BMTC. There was a recognition that if the Club looses mountaineering it would be a symptom of a greater sickness, like a body without a soul.

I was telling Frank Sanborn today about how enthusiastically Julie and I were received by the Council and he said it reminded him of the reception ExComm gave to him when he pitched the idea of a new section. According to Frank, on October 24, 1955, Frank, Pat Meixner, Barbara Lilley, Bud Bingham, Miles Brubacher, John Robinson, Bob Sheller, and Leo Scotti went before ExComm, which was chaired by Bob Bear. Frank said that when he stood up to ask them to approve the SPS he was amazed by how well they were received and the Section was approved and came into being that very evening.

Frank went on to tell me that during the summer of 1954 he was sitting around a campfire with Barbara Lilley and other climbing friends after climbing Glacier Divide. As they looked at the alpen glow on Humphreys Frank had the idea to form a new section devoted to climbing in the Sierra and called The Sierra Peaks Section. As we continued to talk on the phone he reflected on what the Section has become. "The SPS is the heart and soul of the Club".

Climb on.

© Copyright 1994-2001 Dan Richter

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