• Age: 15
• Grade: 10

Clarke had no interest in "trophy climbs" and never did ascend many of BC's highest peaks. On the other hand, he explored more virgin territory and racked up more first ascents than any other climber--perhaps more than any climber who ever lived.

Although he came to be honoured far and wide and is one of the few mountaineers to be awarded the Order of Canada, he was a modest man who pursued his passion without fanfare, frequently embarking on gruelling expeditions into unknown territory by himself. His reputation spread and grew to legendary proportions, not just owing to the prodigious scale of his achievements, but because of the way he carried them out--he travelled light and scorned technology, wearing cotton long johns and eating homemade granola.

He dedicated his life to exploring the numberless, nameless peaks of the Coast Range and worked at odd jobs just long enough to pay for the next season's climbing. He was charismatic and famously attractive to women, but none were able to compete with his first love and he didn't marry until he was almost fifty. Always a popular lecturer, in his later years he devoted his considerable energies to the cause of environmental education. After he succumbed to cancer in 2003, the BC government named Mount John Clarke in his honour--fitting recognition for the man who had himself named many BC mountains.

John Clarke: Explorer of the Coast Mountains covers this remarkable life from beginning to end, examining Clarke through his own words and pictures as well as through the words of his many friends. All agree it was an honour to have known him, and readers will find it equally inspiring to meet him through these pages.

Lisa Baile has worked as an Event Leader for the Vancouver Section of the Alpine Club of Canada and is a member of the Board of Directors for the BC Spaces for Nature. She climbed with John Clarke and co-founded the Wilderness Education Program with him.

Lisa Baile's profile page

John Clarke: Explorer of the Coast Mountains

John Clarke is one of Canada’s most prominent mountaineers. From the 1960s to the 1990s Clarke completed hundreds of first ascents of glaciated peaks in remote areas along the BC Coast Range, usually done as multi-week solo traverses. This intimate biography of Clarke provides an account of his personal life and gripping examples of survival in the mountains. Extended snowstorms, grizzly bear encounters and near-death misses are the daily fare of Clarke’s explorations. Separate fact boxes explain less known aspects of mountain geography such as sun scoops and slide alder. As the 1990s drew to a close, Clarke became alarmed by the incursion of the timber industry on the BC wilderness and transitioned from mountaineer into a prominent conservationist, in the process re-energizing the environmental movement. A mountain now bears his name.