Thoughts of Gordon

A dear friend, Dr. J. Gordon Edwards, is gone to the big alpine meadow in the sky at the age of 84. Last week, Montana newspapers, radio, and TV stations provided coverage about his life in the mountains as the patron saint and guru of Glacier Park mountaineers. The stories also told of his wife Alice and daughter Jane so actively sharing his love of climbing.

Everyone interviewed accented Gordon's kindness and consideration of others. I told one of the reporters who called that being around Dr. Edwards for very long made most of us realize how much personal improvement was needed to make a truly nice person.

Some of Gordon's friends, as well as daughter Jane, talked about his clash with a mother grizzly bear while hiking alone in 1974, wherein he may have talked the bear into letting him go. It is a wonderful yarn, one more panel in a colorful and very productive life's quilt. It's the sort of thing, which forms mystic around Gordon's time here on earth. He excelled at many things because he would accept nothing less, an athlete, an outdoorsman, a combat soldier, a magnificent international scientist, a teacher, and always … a friend to all he met.

The surprise word of Gordon's death on Divide Mountain July 19 was phoned to my house by Glacier Park chief ranger Steve Frye. When I heard the news, memory instantly gave me a 1960s picture of Gordon standing with my young son Shannon on the towering ridge of Mount Allen above Snow Moon and Falling Leaf Lakes. It was the first climb I ever had with Gordon, and that was the time and place I pulled out my copy of his Climber's Guide and he signed it "…among the great peaks."

In summers that followed, it was a gift to have Gordon generously guide me, my family and friends on several magnificent adventures. Shannon and Heidi went up the Iceberg Wall, Wendy was up on Mount Wilbur, and he took Over the Hillers on those unbelievable wall walks from Ptarmigan Tunnel. One was that spectacular four-mile goat ledge to Ahern Pass, and the other up cliffs, over the beautiful ridge to Red Gap Pass. How many people had the outdoor experience of their lifetime following Dr. Edwards up some enchanting mountain?

It is fitting that Gordon died where he did … among the peaks he loved.

One of my favorite memories of that man was the grizzly bear attack because it happened the week I took over ownership of the Kalispell Weekly Newspaper. There I was trying to figure out what to do. Didn't have any idea of what to put on the front page, but I knew it had to be something big, something interesting, because I was going to make that paper one everyone wanted to read. Deadline was approaching fast, and the front page I'd laid out was not going to reach out and grab anyone. Then, a call came in. A grizzly had attacked Dr. Edwards up above Lake Josephine.

I probably called Art Burch a friend who ran the boats in Glacier. Anyway, I found that Gordon had been rushed to the hospital at Cardston, Alberta. Phoned that hospital and asked how my friend Gordon Edwards was doing. The nurse said, "He's doing well. Do you want to talk to him?"

"Well, I hope to tell ya."

He told me the exciting scary story, and my first paper edition was a best seller for the Flathead Valley. My publishing career had a nifty start.

I went up to Many Glacier when Gordon got out of the hospital. Told him there was no way I could thank him enough for letting himself get chewed up by a grizzly bear so that I could have a good front-page story for my first edition.

Gordon said, "It was the least I could do for a friend, George, but I'd appreciate it if you don't buy another newspaper … for a long time."

G. George Ostrom is the news director of KOFI radio and a Hungry Horse News columnist.