Honorary Member Profile :: Kelsey Loughlin

Adventuresome…appreciative...creative…generous…sincere….dedicated…and oh-so-capable…. All apply to Kelsey Loughlin, current (and l991-92) Spokane Mountaineer president, and the new addition to the honorary member plaque.

Here are snapshots from her l8 years with the club:

First Mountaineer woman to climb in the Himalayas (22,495' Ama Dablam)….
Leader of two-woman team to summit 22,835' Aconcagua in the Andes, the Western Hemisphere's highest
Five-time mountain school co-director and co-author of the instructor manual, the first formally-compiled content/curriculum record
Four years as secretary (1989-91 and 2003-05)
Chuckle-inspiring cartoon artwork for "Guide to the Spokane Mountaineers," the Kinnikinnick, notices, agendas, etc….
Designs for SAR (Search and Rescue) logo and mountain school shirts
Slideshows for five general membership meetings, plus new member social, "Meet the Mountaineers," annual banquet and mountain school kick-off
Leader of club climbs (Sahale, Black Peak, Glacier Peak, Silver Star, Mt. Daniel, Colchuck and Dragontail); five crevasse rescue and three winter camping seminars, Tuesday night bike rides, Centennial Trail roller blading and social events
Spoofs for the Annual Banquet

It's not only what Kelsey tackles, but how she does it that brings accolades. "Anytime she decides to become involved, she gives it her all," says Steve Reynolds, who has co-directed and co-led with Kelsey many times. "If she's decided to participate as a leader, I know it's going to be successful. It doesn't matter if it's a years-long or minimal commitment," Steve points out. "And she's incredibly thoughtful and sensitive!" Eric Christianson, another mountain school co-director, emphasizes her mentoring abilities: "She had a huge impact on a lot of new climbing students!"

"I like to inspire people," Kelsey admits. Once, she shared her passion for photography with a young climber who is now a successful professional. And a continuing thread through Kelsey's account of her adventures is the huge credit and appreciation she accords her many Mountaineer friendships. "I had awesome partners!"

After saying "no" to the nominating committee last summer, Kelsey mulled the opportunity. So her offer to fill the presidential void after no candidates surfaced for the October election was a surprise. "The more I thought about the responsibility, the more my interest and passion grew," Kelsey reveals. "By the time I stepped forward at the November board meeting, I was very eager. Being president again was a way to not only develop new friendships with the amazing team of leaders and fellow officers, but also a way to help in meeting our collective goals to better serve the membership."

Though Kelsey's climbing career began with the 1988 mountain school, her desire stems from a close, and continuing, Seattle childhood relationship with her father, Bruce Loughlin, a Boeing design engineer who pioneered several Mt. Rainier route variations. "I can't imagine how often I rummaged through those boxes of climbing equipment in the basement, starting when I was four to six years old," Kelsey reveals. Her dad frequently took her backpacking and, when she was 11, on a six-day Bowron Lakes, B.C., canoe circuit. She still has the canoe, plus his canvas backpacks, wooden skis and ice axes. "I cherish them," she says. (Her three older sisters are athletic too with a history of marathon running, road biking, competitive ice skating and taekwondo "black belt.")

She couldn't wait to get home to tell her dad of her second Rainier climb, a three-day assault via steep Liberty Ridge with two other Mountaineers in l989. " I called him from the Medical Lake exit. He couldn't believe we had done it," Kelsey remembers. The first day involved 16 straight hours of climbing and the second 12-hour day concluded with a windy, cold night on the summit. "The fact that it took so many hours to climb the mountain is nothing to brag about! We may not have been fast, but we had courage and endurance!"

Six years later she led a strong, promising 17-year-old up Rainier's Wilson Glacier Headwall "because it was my dad's route."

A 1985 BS degree in Manufacturing Engineering from Ellensburg's Central Washington University, coupled with recruitment by American Sign and Indicator, brought her to Spokane and to the Mountaineers. Kelsey sat at a desk next to graphic artist Terry Janeck, "who showed me the Kinnikinnick and eventually talked me into joining," Kelsey says, recalling that her introduction was a potluck at a member's house on Grand Boulevard. "Mountain school was just great! I'd found something I was good at, and felt accepted, " Kelsey says. "I'd discovered a path that brought elation, and the friendships that come along with that."
(It wasn't Kelsey's first job. At 21, she interrupted her junior year at CWU to become Yard Supervisor over 20 men at a Seattle cement plant. "I was an experiment on the plant's part," she explains. "The guys tested me, and I didn't have a very thick skin." After a year, she used her severance pay to re-enroll fulltime at Ellensburg.)

A friendship with Bill Erler born in mountain school brought Kelsey to her current job as Principal Mechanical Engineer/Design Manager for Itronix, designing rugged notebook computers. Five years ago, Engineering Manager Erler hired her.

Kelsey relishes her "quite cool" current project: a flashy silver and bright yellow "Hummer" notebook computer that requires frequent travel to Taiwan for collaborative design and manufacturing.

Work -- which also included a mechanical engineer slot at Telect -- has been notable and intriguing. She worked on the design and manufacture of new blood analyzers for both Instrumentation Laboratories and Spectrum Systems, and co-authored three patents for robotic subsystems used in the analyzer. Casinos still use a high-speed card shuffler she helped design with a 4-man development team during a two-year consulting stint.)

The 50-foot DOT signs on I-90 east and west-bound from Liberty Lake and Coeur d'Alene warning of hazardous road conditions were designed by Kelsey while working for American Electronic Sign. She still doesn't know if the Lake Ponchartrain causeway signs that she designed to withstand a category 5 hurricane actually survived the recent storm.

As a sideline, she illustrated a book written by psychologist and Mountaineer, Larry Weathers.

Topping Kelsey's "memorable climbs" list are Ama Dablam (SW ridge) and Aconcagua (Polish Glacier Traverse). A bonus was a chance meeting with Mt. Everest first-timer Sir Edmund Hillary at the Namche Bazaar visitor center while trekking to Ama Dablam base camp with fellow Mountaineer Shannon Barnes. "I took his picture and had him sign a rupee note to the Spokane Mountaineers," Kelsey says. "It's still hanging at the Chalet." Kelsey told Hillary she was from Spokane, Washington, and was astonished when he said he knew Bill Fix!

After topping Kala Patar 18,400', with its great view of "mystical" Everest, on the three-week trek to the 15,000' Ama Dablam base camp, Kelsey took turns with her 11 fellow climbers, including expedition leader Scott Fischer (who died in the multiple tragedy near Everest's summit in 1996), ferrying loads and replenishing fixed ropes to progressively higher camps on the mountain.

"Then I was climbing technical rock up to 5.8 with mittens, crampons for the ice-filled chimneys, a 45-lb. pack and a Jumar clipped intermittently to a frayed old rope." Fear was a companion. "I fell off the route and swung like a pendulum on the fixed rope just below 20,000', climbing back up the featureless face using my one Jumar."

At 20,000' Camp II, the Camp III team radioed that they had run out of rope for fixing the route. They were headed down to Base Camp to send a runner out to the village of Namche for more rope. Everyone descended, so disheartened and exhausted that only three -- Kelsey and the two lead climbers -- wanted to go back up. Back down at base camp, the lead climbers decided to climb "Alpine style" without the use of fixed rope, and to "blast" the 7,500' vertical gain from Base to summit and back in two days. "I knew I had done well technically, and was tough and experienced," Kelsey remembers, but she questioned her capability under the demanding new plan.

"It didn't sound like teamwork," Kelsey recalls, so she declined a summit bid. Two days later she packed up and hiked 25 miles to the Lulka airstrip on her own. A short, violent bout of nausea overnight (food poisoning from a yak meat dinner) in Namche added to her disheartenment.

Nine months later she was planning her own trip to Aconcagua. "I took care of my own destiny by leading," she points out. After a 37-mile trek to base camp, Kelsey and Shannon Barnes ferried loads between three high camps. "We almost didn't make the summit after hanging out through storms at 19,000'." After packing up their gear to descend under threatening skies, a chance conversation with an Aconcagua veteran who said "not to worry" led to a windy, cold, but "perfect" summit two days later. "It was compensation for Ama Dablam!" Kelsey exults.

As you may have guessed, Kelsey "really likes marathon outings" and the bonding on two-person trips with her "awesome" partners. Her eyes light up as she cites a few more:

A one-day round trip ascent of Rainier. "We drove over to Paradise Friday afternoon after work and started climbing at dark, stopping briefly at Muir and napping for 20 minutes atop the Cleaver at sunrise," Kelsey relates. The two headed on to the 14,410' summit and made it back to the car 16 hours after leaving the Paradise parking lot, ready for a good nap.
Leading the N Ridge on Stuart and being trapped by a lightning storm on the 9415' summit. "It was my second-scariest experience."
Thirty-four miles of the Wonderland Trail around Rainier, from Mowich Lake to Longmire, with 9,400' elevation gain, in one day. "It was just as cool as any alpine ascent in its own right."
A week in Wyoming's Wind Rivers on the hardest, extremely remote map-and-compass routes, including a miles-and-miles long, prehistoric boulder field at 9,000' with nary a spot of greenery in sight.
A 50-mile loop in the Glacier Peak area with her standard poodle, "Filson," who totes his own pack, squall jacket and sleeping bag.

Now, the challenge and intensity of her drive to climb has somewhat faded and her interest has shifted to backpacking trips. Kelsey has long realized her heart lies in the Cascades. "I'm beginning to recognize drainages and peaks, to develop mental images of where I am in terms of the overall landscape of the range," she says, explaining a growing desire to further explore the Cascades "to link together all the topographic feature pieces in the puzzle."

So what's ahead for the Mountaineers? Kelsey firmly believes that "Alpinism is the heart of the club," and that her push for more Kinnikinnick-listed activity opportunities for the membership will see a real boost in the number and variety of mountaineering trips.

More fun is another priority. "Just like at my work, I believe that if people are having fun, they can and will be productive in meeting objectives."

If President Kelsey has her way, 2006 will be a year of fun, achievement and abundant outdoor adventures for all Spokane Mountaineers.

--Lorna Ream