2000 Honorary Member Profile : Don Hutchings

A passion for climbing and sharing his skill with others characterized Don Hutchings' 11 years with the Spokane Mountaineers before Kashmiri rebels marched him away from his wife Jane Schelly nearly 6 years ago to a still-unconfirmed fate. Finally acknowledging that Don was gone, members elected him the clubs' 31st honorary member at the fall 2000 annual meeting.

Don chaired or cochaired the Climbing Committee for 6 yes between 1985 and 1991, serving two terms on the Board. Kinnikinnicks document Don's leadership in a myriad of Mountain School activities. He led or assisted in leading crevasse rescue practices, ice climbing seminars, instructors workshops, winter camping seminars, telemark ski clinics, and many climbs, especially on Rainier. "Mt. Rainier had a special meaning for him," says wife and past Mountaineer president Jane Schelly.

"The first thing he did [when he returned to Spokane after a holding a position in Pennsylvania] was spend a week getting his head together hiking and camping at Rainier," Jane reveals. "He felt like he was coming home." Soon, Don took Rainier Mountaineering, Inc.'s, course, and in 1984, joined the Spokane Mountaineers.

The next year Don was standing atop 20,320-foot Mt. McKinley, one of a team of five put together by George Neal celebrating the club's 70th anniversary. (Lynn Erickson, Chad Ray, and Tom Kimbrell were teammates.) George was sitting at a table in the Park Inn after a club general meeting when he heard that "there's a guy down there who wants to go to McKinley." It was the first hint of many mountain adventures and responsibilities George and Don would share.

"Don was a real force to help cement the McKinley team together," George says, pointing to Don's calmness and mediating role "when people got testy." Climbing chairman George recruited Don to assist with the 1986 Mountain School. "I saw him as a talented and stable force," George recalls. The next year, George, then president, "let go and let Don run it."

Don met Jane in October 1984 on his first club: to Jerry Johnson Hot Springs near Montana's Lolo Pass. "Don and I sat in the hot pool and chit-chatted," Jane remembers. "He didn't tell me for many years that he thought, 'That's the woman I'm going to marry.'" Don signed up for a cross country ski class Jane was teaching at Spokane Falls Community College. They dated "a bit" and went on club trips. "A year later when we took the same hot springs trip, we clicked and have been together ever since." They married in 1991.

The two were a versatile leadership team: canoe trips, ski trips, bike rides. Slide shows of their far-flung travels to Switzerland, Nepal, India, Czechoslovakia, Bolivia, Turkey were popular at General Membership meetings. And there were meetings and potlucks at their Northwood home. When Jane was president from 1987-1989, Don considered himself "first husband," Jane remembers. "What we did was with the Spokane Mountaineers and through the Spokane Mountaineers."

"He was a brain," a Shadle High School classmate told Jane, and took advanced placement classes. At a shade under 5'8", Don thought he was too small for basketball and football, but played some baseball. His Bachelor of Science degree from Washington State University reads summa cum laude.

Medicine had been a long-held interest. His mother, Donna Hutchings, was a nurse. Psychology became Don's career choice after he flew through the windshield in a car accident when a high school senior. "He said he looked like Frankenstein," Jane says, "with cuts from ear to ear, tongue damage, and teeth knocked out." He hid the scars with his beard.

The University of Kansas in Lawrence awarded Don a Masters in 1978 and a doctorate in psychology in 1981. He interned in medical psychology at the University of Oregon Health Sciences Center in Portland. A brief stint in general practice in Kentucky was followed by a position as a hospital psychologist in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The out-of-doors and domesticity were a part of those years. He hiked along while his roommate, an entomology student, collected bugs. Don and two Pennsylvania colleagues did a winter ascent of Mt. Washington. And he renovated an old house on a 30-acre farm with his first wife, a West Virginian and fellow psychologist when they were both pursuing their doctorates. She didn't share his desire to head West again.

When Don returned to Spokane, he joined the Sacred Heart hospital staff, where he organized and opened a head injury unit. Finding the hospital unable to give him four consecutive weeks off to pursue foreign travel, Don moved to Deaconess in the early 1990's and then to his goal of independent practice with his office in Neurology Associates of Spokane facility.

Professional memberships included the National Academy of Neuropsychologistand the American Psychological Association. He was very involved in Washington State Head Injury Foundation support, education, and research activities. Before the Kashmir trip, Don was looking at putting together a local comprehensive head injury treatment/therapy program.

A former patient who suffered a severe head injury and paralysis in a car accident still phones Jane for news. Scott Earl Bently offers quite a testimonial. "Don was the catalyst that moved my life away from institutionalized health care to a life of happiness and freedom by integrating my life into society and by remaining my friend, talking with me about hiking, camping, climbing, and other things we were both interested in. I'll never forget him for that, and he'll remain my friend for my entire life."

Don was a lifelong student and always made "To Do" lists of his goals. Jane still finds them (for example, one major ski trip a year, semi-retired by 50, board certification, time with environmental issues, cooking skills, exercise area, develop friendships, expeditions-Tibet, Peru). "He was always lying on the floor reading," Jane points out, noting his interest in philosophy and comparative religions, as well as mountaineering, history, and a mask collection. "When we started to travel, he took photography classes." She'd find him in his home office practicing knots. She reveals that tying the double fisherman's knot during their wedding ceremony "symbolized the dependence of each of us upon the other."

Don liked animals. One of Don's dogs, a golden retriever named Sirius Canus Major, took many top ribbons in American Kennel Club obedience trials in Pennsylvania. As a child, decked out in a child's cowboy hat and tiny boots, Don sat astride his own palomino and accompanied his dad on many week-long "Gentlemen on Horseback" rides throughout the Northwest. His divorced father, Claude "Red" Hutchings, a Coeur d'Alene resident who had ranched in southern Idaho, had driven 32-horse combines, and his horn and rawhide work had appeared in national Western art publications.

Cooking was a hobby. Class-learned skills and a penchant for Thai and Indian food were shared with an informal group of 10 to 12 club members at monthly, themed "cooking parties." Don also loved to flip pancakes on Methow Valley ski outings and Chalet overnights. At home, Jane would assemble the stirfry ingredients; Don would season and cook them.

Don's aficionado's approach to beer spawned annual beer-tasting parties at the Chalet. Don carefully poured out "tiny sips" of carefully selected varieties, Jane emphasizes, while telling some of his famous but perhaps not politically correct jokes. Sponsors of the beer-tasting parties required overnight stays at the Chalet for participants. "When his name was listed as leader," Jane points out, "he didn't want people driving down the mountain when they'd had a beer."

When president Bob Loomis initiated an exchange with Czechoslovakian climbers in 1991, Don and Jane not only enthusiastically helped to host them during their visit in Spokane, but the next year went rock climbing with the five Bratislava Mountaineering Club members in Europe's Tatra mountains.

Climbing pals furnish more insight when Don wasn't bearing club trip responsibilities. "Don was strong and impatient," George Neal recalls, "and always telling these jokes. But he always tried to do more than his share." George recalls a "fun endurance stunt" on Mt. Rainier where he, Don, and Bob Loomis left Spokane at 5:00 p.m., hit the trail at 11:00 p.m., climbed to Point Success through Fuhrer's Finger, descended the Kautz route with a rappel through the ice pinnacles, and were back at Paradise at 5:00 p.m. On a 1993 sightseeing adventure in Bolivia, George, Don, and Jane flew to La Paz, acclimatized for a few days in the Andes, and did a 3-day climb of 19,992-foot Huayna Potisi. Then, while Jane and George explored the jungle, Don joined two Connecticut climbers to top 21,201-foot Illimani.

"But my fondest recollection of Don is when I was having a lot of questions about staying in my marriage," George reveals. While they were cleaning up after a Mountain School class, Don sat down with George and helped him use "the Don Hutchings yellow legal pad method of decision-making" (that is, writing positive things on one side, negative things on the other, and a line down the middle). "The decision was obvious," George said. "I still use that method."

Bill Erler, who climbed a lot with Don and Joe Ohl, remembers "crazy weekends" like the East Ridge of Wyoming's 13,766 Grand Teton. "We bivouacked on the summit. We saw the Northern Lights!" Bill recalls one iced-up lead. "Don said, 'Oh, great!' and really blasted off!" On Mt. Temple in the Canadian Rockies, they left early Saturday, bivouacked halfway up the east ridge, summited, and drove home. "Don got me fired up about ice climbing," Bill says, remembering many frozen Canadian waterfalls. "We'd just motor up stuff." One time, on a "cruelly cold" day on Montana's Rainbow Falls, Don took a little tumble and sprained his ankle. "We lowered him down. By the time we got down, Don had crawled and dragged half a quarter of a mile across a rockslide to the car."

What Don enjoyed most about climbing, Bill believes, was the process. "He liked going up, being with friends, having dinner together afterwards." Their two families were close. "Don felt like a surrogate dad" to Bill and Cindy's son Luke, Bill said. The last climb Don completed before Kashmir was one they'd been weathered off of many times-the north face of Athabasca. "I thought it was neat complete circle for him in his climbing career," Bill says.

Kashmir in 1995 was Don and Jane's second trip to India. In 1990, they trekked for 24 days in Nepal in the remote Ladakh Zanskar area, piquing Don's fascination with Indian culture. Three years earlier in Nepal, where Don became intrigued with Buddhism, they hiked the Annapurna circuit and Sanctuary.

If heavy snows had not made their intended exit route from the Kashmir Himalayas impassable, Don, Jane, their native guide, and the pony handler would never been in the campsite from which Don was taken on July 4, 1995. The dozen gunmen from the Muslim separatist group al-Faran moved Jane and other tourists to another campsite. When Jane returned in 2 hours, Don, another American, and two British trekkers were gone. Guides were told the men had been taken to the guerillas' commander in a nearby village and would be returned if their passports checked out. Don didn't return. Instead came a letter "for the American woman" demanding India's release of 21 prisoners in exchange for the four men. But the Indian government does not trade prisoners for captives. The group of captives became five after the other American escaped and a German and a Norwegian were kidnaped also. The Norwegian was later decapitated.

Jane spent a frantic and futile 5 months in India before returning to her Arlington Elementary physical education teaching job. She returned to India and Pakistan seven more times and made eight trips to Washington, D.C., meeting with officials from President Clinton down. There were confirmed sightings and several published photos, but no word after a reported Indian Army attack on al-Faran in the mountains on December 4, 1995.

Hopes remained high in Spokane, since there was no confirmation of death. Reports of sightings-later proved false-continued. Club members wrote letters, gathered to just "be there" for Jane, arranged a County-designated "Don Hutchings week" on the second anniversary of his abduction, draped Riverfront Park's clock tower with yellow ribbons, placed a medallion along the Centennial trail. Church bells were rung; a candlelight vigil was held.

Giving up hope was hard. Don's Mountaineer friends couldn't bear to remove his name from the Climbing Committee's roster in the Kinnikinnick until this year. Now, a glance at "Don Hutchings" engraved on the Mountaineers' handsome honorary member plaque will bring Don alive again in the memories of all.

Lorna Ream