Remembering Bill

History of the Nobles Outing Club

1957-1961: The Early Days by Peter Ward ’61

Peter Ward (’61), Woody Barr (’60), and Ted Blatchford (’62) climbing above Crag Camp on the north side of Mt. Adams in 1960.

I was one of Bill Biddle’s first students when he arrived at Nobles to teach fifth-class English in September, 1956. We were 13; he was 26, the second youngest on the faculty. I was immediately drawn to his energy and enthusiasm both in class and in life. When we discovered our mutual interest in nature and mountains, we began plotting trips.

In early 1957, Bill and I and one other non-Nobles person set out on snowshoes for Crag Camp, high on the north flank of Mt Adams in New Hampshire. The snow was unusually deep, the trail difficult to find, and our snowshoe bindings kept failing. Finally as darkness fell, we had to admit that we were lost and had to bivouac under a small army poncho stretched to a small tree pole between two trees. When we woke in the morning our fire pit had sunk 6 feet into the snow. When we returned in the spring, the pole between the trees was 10 feet off the ground! This was, in effect, the first trip of the Nobles Outing Club, although Bill and I did not ask the Headmaster, Eliot Putnam, about forming the club until that fall.

Climbing in the White Mountains of New Hampshire during the winter was not common in the 1950s. We never met anyone or found snowshoe or ski prints outside of Tuckerman Ravine. Perhaps the first serious pioneers were Miriam and Robert Underhill who set out to be the first to climb all 48 four thousand foot peaks of the White Mountains in the winter, which they completed in late 1960. Miriam O’Brien Underhill was a famous mountaineer and feminist born in 1898 who organized many all-women ascents especially in the Alps beginning in 1926. She was editor of Appalachia, the journal of the Appalachian Mountain Club , from 1956 to 1961.

There were other groups doing winter climbing in the 1950s, such as those associated with the MIT or Dartmouth Outing Clubs, but there were not very many. By early 1958, Bill got us both involved with a few eager winter climbers in the Appalachian Mountain Club (AMC) led informally by Bob Collin, a cancer researcher. We spent many winter weekends over the next few years climbing four thousand foot peaks throughout New Hampshire, sometimes together, sometimes apart. As an AMC hutman at Lakes of the Clouds Hut in 1961, I completed the list with about half having been climbed during the winter.

Berges binding from above.

Our difficulties with snowshoe bindings in 1957 led to experimentation and improvement. With Bill’s encouragement, I designed a more effective snowshoe binding made with a steel hinge and leftover leather from Peter Limmer & Sons boot makers. Through a notice in Appalachia, I ended up selling around 50 pairs over the next eight years.

I do not remember clearly when other Nobles students began to get involved. In the fall of 1958, after the football/soccer season, Bill led 14 of us every afternoon chopping wood, clearing brush, and building a bench near a small pond along the Nobles Bridge-Street driveway. Outing Club members in the 1958-1959 school year included Sam Perry, Tom Taylor, and Peter Ward, all Class of 1961, Ted Blatchford of the Class of 1962, and Fin Glidden of the Class of 1964. In 1959-1960, we added Paul Foss and Paul Pilcher of the Class of 1962, and Nick King and Art Watson of the Class of 1964. By 1960-1961 there were 18 members increasing to 26 in 1963-1964. This is out of a total school population of less than 200 students. Springs trips to Crag Camp and Mt. Adams became a tradition in 1959.