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 Milton
Smith, shown here with his wife, Frances, conquered the Matterhorn (at rear)
when he was 64. |
At the age of 95, G. Milton Smith '24 is still climbing mountains, jogging a mile or more every day, and singing in three community choral groups. (Each hobby benefits the others, he notes, by strengthening the lungs.)
Smith traces his love of choral singing and classical music back to his years in the Harvard Glee Club under "Doc" Davison, but his love for the challenge and beauty of mountains is even older. It began at age 13, when he first saw a picture of the Matterhorn over his uncle's piano and vowed someday to get up that beautiful and terrible peak. He hiked around New York State with the local Appalachian Mountain Club for more than 30 years, and in and around Randolph, New Hampshire, where he and his sons built a cabin in view of Mounts Madison and Adams in the Presidential Range. Then, at the age of 60, he learned that the average slope of the topmost ravine on Adams was the same as the cone of the Matterhorn. After spending weeks working on that ravine, he felt ready to make his first serious attempt on the Swiss mountain.
That summer he traveled to Zermatt, at the base of the Matterhorn, but no guides were available. In bitter frustration, he returned to Randolph and climbed Mount Washington twice in the same day, a total of 8,000 feet. Two years later, after rigorous conditioning in the Presidentials and the Tetons, he engaged a guide in advance and returned to Zermatt. This time the weather turned sour. Back in Randolph, with the same frustration, he once again climbed Mount Washington twice in the one day. In 1966, on his third Matterhorn attempt, four years after his first, both weather and guides cooperated; his 50-year dream was realized at age 64.
With the same persistence and stamina, Smith has trekked four times to the base of Mount Everest. Prior to a rugged trek in Nepal in 1978, friends said he was off his rocker to go: he was 19 years over the recommended age limit of 55, 16 years older than the next oldest member of the group, and twice the group's average age. He went. Eight years later, at 84, he was using crampons and ropes to climb the final 1,200 feet of the Breithorn, near Zermatt.
Many people slow down when they reach the "sedentary sixties," but Smith has climbed more than half a million vertical feet since then. Even now he prefers to jog rather than walk. Though his climbing is limited to the lower trails of Mounts Madison and Adams, the former psychology professor still assures friends, "I'd rather be off my rocker than settled down in one on the porch."
~ Eunice H. Trowbridge