1985 Honorary Member Profile : Marion Krauss

Long-time treasurer Marion Krauss, 76, has kept the club's machinery running almost from the day she joined in 1964. There she is in the spring '64 Kinnikinnick leading the April 19 Davis-Horseshoe Lakes hike and the May 10 "Heron Tree" hike.

Marion was elected a board trustee in 1965, secretary in 1967, trustee again in 1972. After a 6-year membership chairperson stint, Marion took over the treasurer's books in 1978. Even though she "retired" in 1990, you'll still see her at most board meetings.

"For years, I considered the Mountaineers my family," she explains. "I was out with them every weekend." She has hiked, backpacked, scrambled, climbed, bicycled, Chaleted, summer outed,...handled registration for every club school, banquet, etc., while treasurer. And, oh, yes, she was a Kinnikinnick typist for many years--still is, for that matter, but now she's learning to use a word processor instead of a typewriter.

A few glimpses of Marion over the years: painting the "new" (now vanished) Chalet outhouse, sturdily pedaling the Priest Lake-to-Spokane century rides, giggling mightily after a Canadian waiter offered her and a companion--both in just-off-the-trail attire--a free hamburger because of their "needy" appearance.

Climbing to the summit of the South Teton (12,505 feet) on the 1965 Tetons summer outing was the highlight of her club career to date. Marion celebrated her 50th birthday by topping Montana's Ojibway Peak, her first summit. Another standout memory was an early-year attempt on Mt. Brennan in Canada's Whitewater Basin when a deep snow slog in a whiteout led to the wrong summit! She also recalls an 18-20-mile day hike--her longest--on an Idaho Sawtooths summer outing when a fellow Mountaineer "fed me caramels all the way down the trail!"

Marion, a native Philadelphian and University of Pennsylvania graduate, had no outdoor experience when she came to Spokane in 1958 from Utah to work as a psychiatric nurse at Eastern State Hospital. She had received her Master's degree in nursing administration at the University of Colorado in Boulder and worked at Utah State Hospital in Provo. Feeling a need to "meet people," she went to the Chamber of Commerce to look at its listing of local groups. She passed over the Mountaineers ("I didn't want to hang from cliffs...") in favor of another outdoor club, but later found herself part of a "renegade group" that switched allegiance.

Marion's a double retiree. In 1981, she left her position as nursing supervisor for the County Health District after 16-1/2 years. But, in addition to her frequent long auto/camping trips to Canada, the East Coast, the Southwest, the Rockies, and a European jaunt (trips to Alaska and Germany are going to keep her away form the 1992 summer outing), she volunteers at the Spokane Falls Community College Library and the First Presbyterian Church. Her garden and pine forest at her Chattaroy mobile home acreage demand attention, as does Lover, the fifth of her yellow cats. She's active in the Spokane Camera Club and the mushroom club, as well as the Spokane Mountaineers.

"I just couldn't vegetate," says Marion. "I still miss going to the Post Office [to pick up Mountaineer mail] twice a week!"

Marion Krauss, 1972

Lorna Ream