1963 Honorary Member Profile : Frank Hefferlin

He was always walking....He was the one who had the campfire going....He always knew exactly where we were.... Every week he wrote his legislators....He gave me appreciation for the beauty of the outdoors....

These are the memories of Frank M. Hefferlin's daughter, son, and mountaineering colleagues.

"Throughout his life, he sought to be, as he put it 'The Best Man West of the Mississippi,'" wrote his son, JB (Lon) Hefferlin of Sacramento, upon his father's death in Seattle in July 1974. "You took responsibility for yourself, for others, and for the institutions in which you believed." (See the Autumn 1974 Kinnikinnick, pp. 14-16.)

The Mountaineers bestowal of honorary status in 1963 recognized Frank as one of the club's best. Kinnikinnicks, news clippings, and his own detailed scrapbooks tell the story.

Idaho's Stevens Peak was Frank's first club summit in June 1940, shortly after the Northern Pacific Railway moved him from Missoula to Spokane, where he eventually became chief draftsman. That same month he topped his first major peak-Mt. Adams. Mt. Rainier via the Emmons Glacier followed in July. A Mt. Stuart attempt failed, but he was on the first recorded ascent of the Cabinet's Rock Peak in September.

Although he began his long career as a club trip leader on a Marshall-to-Spokane hike that first November, Rock Peak in May 1941 was Frank's first climbing lead. That season, after successes on Mt. St. Helens and Mt. Hood's Sunshine route, and another failure on Stuart because of avalanches, he topped Idaho's Chimney Rock. The four-man club party found just nine earlier signatures in summit cairns. Later, he led Chimney. He made Stuart's summit in 1942.

Typifying Frank's versatility, a September 1940 news photo shows him in a club male chorus line garbed in "smart pink dresses" dancing the "Boots Ballet." (Eight men trained for 2 months for the club's public carnival at the Women's Club.) There are other photos: Frank astride his two-wheeler, climbing rope slung over shoulder, leading a 1944 bike hike; in goofy costume at club parties; packing in on Mt. Stuart with headband supporting a huge sleeping bag....

As his climbing and hiking continued apace-the Cabinets, Bitterroots, Cascades, Selkirks, Tetons, Canadian Rockies-Frank hunkered down to club responsibilities. He served two terms as president, in 1949 and 1950. Other offices and chairmanships included vice-president, treasurer, secretary (2 years), trustee (4), Kinnikinnick editor, historian, librarian, membership (3), outings (2), climbing, hiking, commissary, publicity (2), promotion. He served often on these and other committees (e.g., contact, winter sports/lodge, nominating). Frank wrote the club's Spokesman Review column for 2 years, was club representative to the Spokane County Search and Rescue Association, delegate to the Federation of Western Outdoor Clubs, and chairman of a club-sponsored Boy Scout troop. Summer outings were a special love; Frank attended at least 12, beginning at Mt. Rainier in 1940 and ending in the Tetons in 1960, 2 years after Northern Pacific transferred him to Seattle. He was chairman five times and edited the outing record, the Rockslide Journal.

Wife Myrna was a worker, too, serving on the education, social, contact, and courtesy committees. Many club events took place in their home.

Born in Livingston, Montana, in 1899, Frank was no stranger to the outdoors when he made his first climb in 1917, 8,500-foot Mt. Baldy. He recovered from polio to help his father, of the Hefferlin Mercantile Company, take tourists into Yellowstone. Frank went ahead, driving the supply wagon, setting up camp, and catching trout for dinner. He canoed Yankee Jim Canyon on the Yellowstone River.

His lifelong career with the Northern Pacific Railway began behind a lawnmower at the Livingston depot. After his father died in 1917, Frank helped support his mother, two sisters, and two younger brothers as a section gang timekeeper and survey crew member. Marriage came in 1928, and daughter Majorie was born in 1930, before he was transferred to Glendive, where son JB arrived. After 2 years as a construction inspector in Missoula, Frank's calculus and trigonometry correspondence courses led to a Spokane drafting job in 1939. It was wartime, so he pitched in part time at the Trentwood aluminum rolling mill and in Civil Defense. He designed Northern Pacific line changes and other improvements throughout the Northwest. Even after retirement in 1965, he was called back to help design the new Pasco switching yard.

The railroad influence was evident. "Don't Miss the Train" headed one of Frank's trip write-ups that involved taking the train to Marshall and walking 8 miles back to Spokane. One Kinnikinnick noted that regarding a walk along the Northern Pacific tracks from downtown to Yardley, "Leader Frank Hefferlin...will see that hikers do not make any disparaging remarks about his railroad." There were walks along the tracks to Parkwater; a "railway educational outing" that toured the main office, yards, and roundhouse; a winter hike across the Great Northern trestle, etc. The Northern Pacific depot was a club trip meeting and parking location for many years.

"He gave me a love of the outdoors," says daughter Margie White, who remembers long train rides, walks, and family outings. "We saw all the parks in the West," she recalls, and points out that her father never owned a car. Margie's annual hikes to and from the bottom of the Grand Canyon are a carryover, as are brother JB's annual Yosemite outings.

Political activism is another legacy. Margie recalls his weekly letters to legislators and Congressmen as she describes her own sign and banner-making and crusading for farm workers' rights. Her brother volunteers helping AID's patients.

Frank's meticulous scheduling on trips and record keeping were famous. He kept climbers' record cards up-to-date, too. At his death, his familiar To Do list on the closet door had only five items not checked off.

Typical of his humor was this quip at a farewell party in 1958, when the club gave Frank and Myrna an electric frying pan: "I'll carry it to the summit and plug it into the current bushes."

JB's obituary tells how his father cherished the camaraderie of his mountaineering friends. "Friends who rescued him twice from climbing accidents-a near-drowning in Canada's Valley of the Ten Peaks and a broken ankle from a falling rock in Montana's Mission Range."

Frank asked that his ashes be scattered on a mountain. The ice axe Frank took to so many summits and along so many trails endures. It's part of the honorary member plaque at the Chalet on Mt. Spokane that Frank helped build while president. His homemade pack survives in the club archives.

Lorna Ream

NOTE: Frank's scrapbooks for 1951- 1959 are missing from the Mountaineer archives. If anyone knows their whereabouts, please contact club historian Lorna Ream.