Here’s a toast to a true explorer
Rainier, Everest, McKinley are names that have no acquaintance with the mountains to which they are associated. But 10,300-foot Mount Vaughan, the name given to Antarctica’s highest mountain by Admiral Richard Byrd, stands as a fitting monument to a true explorer.
Norman Vaughan died in Fairbanks at age 100 on Dec. 23. He had planned to return to the mountain for his birthday celebration, and the dream was not far-fetched.
No man better lived up to his own motto: Dream big and dare to fail. Whether he was mushing the 1,100-mile Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, mountain climbing or snowmobiling across Alaska, Vaughan was the ultimate outdoor senior citizen, a symbol of all that is possible for those in their 70s, 80s and beyond.
Just before Vaughan turned 89 in 1994 he journeyed to Antarctica to ascend “his” mountain. It was a preposterous task, but with the help of his fourth wife, Carolyn Muegge-Vaughan, world famous mountaineer Vernon Tejas and a team of supporters, he succeeded in touching the sky.
Vaughan said he never had taken a drink. For his 100th birthday, he wanted to obtain a French champagne sponsor to finance another climb of Mount Vaughan. Then, when he stood on the summit, Vaughan would pop the cork, sip the bubbly, and proclaim, “I waited 100 years for this.”
Vaughan had dropped out of Harvard to handle dogs and accompany Byrd to Antarctica in 1928. When the Winter Olympics in Lake Placid allowed dog mushing as a demonstration sport in 1932, Vaughan was a U.S. contestant.
While he didn’t make his third planned return to Antarctica, family and friends who visited him in the hospital on his 100th birthday the week before his death said Vaughan celebrated by taking his first swig of champagne. Just one.
Karier chairs NPCC
Tom Karier of Spokane was elected last week in Vancouver to chair the Northwest Power and Conservation Council, a four-state energy planning and fish and wildlife mitigation agency for the Columbia Basin.
The Council, among other things, administers the program to compensate for losses of fish and wildlife and their habitat caused by the building of dams on the Snake and Columbia rivers.
The Council’s eight members are split evenly with four serving on the Fish and Wildlife Committee and four serving on the Power Committee, which Karier has chaired twice.
Karier was appointed to the Council in 1998 by then-Gov.Gary Locke and now serves under Gov. Christine Gregoire. Karier was an associate dean at Eastern Washington University from 1995 until his appointment to the Council. He had been a professor of economics at the university since 1981.
Karier earned a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, with a major field in natural resource economics. He holds bachelor’s degrees in physics and economics from the University of Illinois. His research areas included public policy, taxation, labor, international trade and industrial organization.