He was 94. Megan Bond, a close friend who managed his affairs, told The Associated Press that Beckey died of natural causes in her Seattle home Monday. Rawboned and tenacious, Mr. Beckey made as many as a thousand ascents that no one was known to have taken before. Fred Beckey, a fabled mountaineer and author who was the first to take hundreds of routes to the summits of North America’s tallest peaks in Alaska, the Canadian Rockies and the Pacific Northwest in an audacious seven-decade climbing career, died on Monday in Seattle. He authored more than a dozen books, including the three-volume "Cascade Alpine Guide" that details hundreds of peaks in the North Cascades in Washington state.
– Legendary mountain climber Fred Beckey, who wrote dozens of books and is credited with notching more first ascents than any other American mountaineer, has died. He was 94. Megan Bond, a close friend who managed his affairs, told the AP that Beckey died of natural causes in her Seattle home Monday. She described him as a "brilliant writer" and "extraordinary mountaineer" with "a personality and humor that almost dwarfed the mountains around him." But though he "made as many as a thousand ascents that no one was known to have taken before," the German-born climber who immigrated to Seattle, Wash., as a child, avoided publicity and was "virtually unknown to the general public," reports the New York Times. Choosing mountains over people (he never married or had kids), Beckey often climbed 50 peaks in a single year. In 1942, he and his younger brother, Helmut, wowed the climbing community with an impressive second ascent of Mount Waddington in British Columbia. He went on to accomplish hundreds of first ascents on peaks throughout the Pacific Northwest, Alaska, Canada, and Wyoming. In 1954, he established new routes on three of Alaska's mountains: McKinley, Deborah, and Hunter. "Fred was a true American icon" and "inspired countless people to explore this amazing planet," says Dave O'Leske, who spent the past decade filming Beckey. Even in his 90s, Beckey was still plotting routes and climbing. Bond said they were planning a trip to the Himalayas next spring.