Allison Belcher— A Remarkable Mazama by Rick Craycraft
As a child in Massachusetts, Allison Logan loved to climb trees. Later, following her father’s time in the military around the country, she climbed trees wherever they were, finally landing in Corvallis. In 1948, Allison went to college at Oregon State and discovered rock climbing. She and her fellow students in the school mountaineering club (one of whom ,Willi Unsoeld, became a famous mountaineer) would go to the Coburg Caves to rock climb. After college, Allison moved to England to attend the London School of Economics, and joined its climbing club. They climbed in England’s Lake District, and in Wales. Allison routinely bicycled from London to these destinations. When she returned to the States to attend the University of Chicago, Allison started a climbing club there. Being poor college students in the mid-1950s, the club members there too would bicycle together to the Wisconsin Dells area of southern Wisconsin. After all this moving around, Allison set up residence in Portland and was able to go on an Acquaintance Climb with the Mazamas in 1953, led by Jack Grauer. She joined our organization in 1954. Allison followed the classic Mazama path through Basic and Intermediate climbing schools and in 1957 was made a full climb leader. She taught independent rock climbing classes for all comers at Rocky Butte for several years and climbed the prominent points of the Gorge – Rooster Rock, Beacon Rock, Crown Point and Pillars of Hercules. She bicycled to many of these climbs as well. Also in 1957, she participated in the first all-in-one-day ascent of St. Peter’s Dome with Tom Gibbons and Dave Nelson—all in one day for Allison because she was Allison Logan Belcher rappelling off the Needle, to be the Maid of near Rooster Rock in the Columbia River Gorge. Fill from I-84 covers most of the Needle today, but the Honor at a wedding in Eugene the next top is still visible on the south side of the freeway. day. Dave Nelson watches from the top, circa 1957. In the late 1950s Allison got wind of the climbing possibilities in Horsethief Butte, which had been discovered by Jack Grauer. Over the course of a few years Allison pioneered many of the routes at Horsethief and became a pied piper of sorts for scores of young people who followed her lead to explore rock climbing. These efforts of hers have led to a decades-long relationship between the Mazamas and Horsethief and influenced hundreds of students in the Mazama schools.
26 —Mazama Bulletin
An accident on Mount Hood in 1962 led Allison’s life in an unexpected direction. She was hiking up from Cloud Cap on a September day when alarmed climbers appeared and asked her to come help with a rescue. A group of Reed College students had gotten in way over their Allison and Bob Belcher. heads. Primarily novices, they had successfully ascended the Sunshine Route and questionably decided to descend via Cooper Spur. One student lost control while glissading and slid 1,000 feet and into a crevasse. Allison ventured onto the Eliot Glaicer by herself to aid the fallen climber and helped get the other students to safety. Word got back to the college and Reed decided for safety’s sake it should establish a program of formal mountaineering instruction. On the basis of her performance in the rescue and her reputation, Allison was chosen to head the program. She designed and implemented a curriculum and the program was up and running a mere six weeks after the accident. Allison ran the program for two years, then handed it off to George Cummings, long-time Mazama and current climb leader. Allison continued to move up through the ranks of the Mazamas and landed a spot on the Climbing Committee in the early 1960s. In 1963 she was nominated to be the first woman head of the committee. There was fierce opposition within the committee. One of her champions was Erwin Reiger, and with his support Allison made Mazama history. In his chronicle of the first 75 years of the Mazamas, We Climb High, John D. Scott characterized her performance as follows: “To the great astonishment of many members who could not imagine a woman holding such a position, she turned out to be one of the best”. By then Allison had met and married Bob Belcher, one of her Mazama Basic School students, and they decided to take a trip around the world before starting a family. On her brief but illustrious climbing career Allison participated in first ascents of routes on Mt. Washington in Oregon and a route in the Tetons on a Mazama outing. She and Bob had their first child in 1966. Although Allison continued to climb thereafter, she had very strong feelings about doing something as inherently dangerous as climbing when she had a family. A dicey situation on the Sunshine route of Mount Hood in 1973 with Charlie Jensen, she says, sent the clear message that her climbing days should be over. Her last Mazama climb was that of Plummer Peak in 1993, led by Vera Dafoe. What happened outside her climbing experiences subsequently dwarfed Allison’s accomplishments as a climber. She went on to raise four children and had three successful careers – social worker, teacher and, after family life, nurse. During the tumultuous political time of the late 1960s Allison was, she reports, unwilling to be “just a housewife” and rallied around many local causes. The achievement of which she is most proud, she says, is that of starting, with her husband Bob and their friend Jim Howell, an organization called Riverfront for People, which helped keep the I-5 freeway off the west bank of the Willamette and ultimately led to the establishment of Tom McCall Waterfront Park. Allison went on to become the chair of the Multnomah County Democratic Party and a State Delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 1976 (and on the Rules Committee there). Throughout the years, Allison has worked as an advocate for foster children, Oregonians with disabilties, seniors, hurricane victims and others. Such were the magnitude of Allison’s postclimbing achievements that she was awarded a plaque in Portland State University’s Walk of Heroines. Allison Logan Belcher, a truly remarkable Mazama.