You can read the full tribute to Climbers We Lost in 2024 here.

Ted Wilson, 84, April 11

Climbing pioneer, wilderness advocate, and three-term Salt Lake City mayor Ted Lewis Wilson died on April 11, due to a combination of congestive heart failure and Parkinson’s disease. Wilson, who was born and raised in Salt Lake City, spent much of his life in politics, first as Salt Lake City’s mayor from 1976 to 1985 and later running for governor of Utah and the U.S. Senate. He also served as the director of the University of Utah’s Hinckley Institute of Politics for nearly two decades. Aged 36 when first elected, Wilson was among the youngest mayors in the United States.

Ted Wilson was also a pivotal early member of the Wasatch climbing scene and a cornerstone of the ​​local Alpenbock Climbing Club. He was among the first to establish climbs in Utah’s Little Cottonwood Canyon. These included the first documented climb in the canyon, in 1961: Chickenhead Holiday (5.6), and Robbins’ Route and Robbins Crack (5.10), both climbed with Royal Robbins, and ice routes like the ultraclassic Great White Icicle (WI3), which Wilson climbed with Rick Reese in 1962.

As a climbing ranger in Grand Teton National Park in the late 1960s, Wilson took part in the infamous 1967 “Grand Rescue.” He worked with a team of six other rescuers over three days to save two climbers stranded high on the Grand Teton’s rugged North Face. The rescue, which inspired an eponymous documentary film released in 2013, was at the time considered the most ambitious, dangerous alpine rescue ever conducted in the Tetons. Wilson received the Valor Award from the U.S. Department of the Interior for his efforts.

In addition to climbing in the United States, he also climbed abroad, notably in the Andes and the European Alps. (Wilson taught high school economics in the U.S. and also taught at the Leysin American School in Switzerland for a year. He invited American alpinist John Harlin to the school, where Harlin worked before his death on the North Face of the Eiger in 1966.)

Wilson also led several university trips to India, during which he met with the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, the Dalai Lama, and piloted efforts to build housing for Tibetan refugees, a community hall in Leh, Ladakh, and a school in Kotwara. Wilson was interviewed for two segments of the climbing history podcast Ascent Archive (Part I, Part II).

Among other mayoral projects, Wilson led the first redesign of the Salt Lake City Airport, a rework of the city’s wastewater treatment plant, and was instrumental in designating the Mount Olympus and Lone Peak wilderness areas. He was named a fellow of Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy Institute of Politics in 1991.

He remained a tireless advocate for wilderness, and particularly climbing areas, throughout his life. Most recently, he was active in the fight against the Utah Department of Transportation’s planned construction of a gondola in Little Cottonwood Canyon. (The Salt Lake Climbers Alliance is hoping to raise awareness of the threat to climbing in LCC via a film about Wilson and the Alpenbock Club.) Wilson was also credited with preserving climbing access in a large part of the Gate Buttress area, negotiating an agreement with the LDS Church which owned the land. Former Black Diamond CEO Peter Metcalfe, another close friend, credited him with the decision to relocate Black Diamond to Utah in 1991.

“Ted wasn’t foolish or impulsive. He calculated his risks, always running a mental cost/benefit analysis of where they might take him,” his wife, Holly Mullen, wrote for The Salt Lake Tribune. “He possessed a rare instinct for recognizing opportunities for himself and others.”

As an elected official, she said her late husband was someone who “took the kind of risks that in today’s bloody political arena seem quaint. He treated his political opponents with respect. He pitched himself and his skills to the electorate, rather than gut-punching his adversaries with insults and personal attacks. His accommodation of far-ranging views was a trademark.” Other climbers shared their memories of Wilson on a memorial page hosted by the Salt Lake Climbers Alliance and on Mountain Project.

Longtime friend Brian Smoot called Wilson a “very talented climber” but also emphasized that Wilson’s life was dedicated, first and foremost, to serving his community, not personal pursuits in the mountains. “He wanted his life to be about service, about helping people, protecting the environment,” Smoot said. “Later in life, he told me that climbing was a very self-serving activity, and that there were far more important things to focus on.”

Smoot said Wilson was magnetic, not in the glossy or smarmy sense one might associate with a politician, but in a deep, authentic way. “He was kind to everyone,” he said. “When you were talking to Ted, it was like you were the only person in the room.”

In a tremendously entertaining oral history Wilson gave in 2011, he shared the story of the first climb he ever did:

I’d just barely graduated high school, took a job as a busboy in the Mammoth cafeteria in Yellowstone National Park. And we shared a dorm with some kind of old coots … old alcoholics I think. They sorta worked their way around wherever they wanted to go by working in kitchens and stuff … But they were good guys. We sat out on the porch one day and they pointed to this awful peak across the Gardner River, called Mount Evert … They said, “No man could climb that face over there.” And I said, “Wanna bet?” 

I’d never climbed. He said, “I got twenty dollars [that says] no man can climb that face over there.” Well, my buddy Glen and I said, “We can climb that face.” So the next day, we drove down to the Gardner River. We waded the river, which was horrendous. But we got across. We had old combat boots on that we’d gotten because we were involved in the National Guard in the early age, to stay out of the draft. And we climbed that face … It was as hard as a rock. It was very, very dangerous. If we’d fallen off anywhere up there, it would’ve at least just taken all the skin off our body. We didn’t know that. And we finally got to the top of the dirt, which was about two-thousand vertical feet, there was a limestone [cliff band] at the top of the cliff face, and we didn’t know how to get up that, but we somehow found a chimney and worked our way and got to the top of it. 

We went over to where we could see back down to Mammoth, and we could actually see the dorm. And we had stolen a sheet out of the hampers that they used over in the hotel. We hung that sheet over the top because we knew with a pair of binoculars you could probably see it. And then we backtracked. And, you know, how we ever got down there without just killin’ ourselves was amazing. And we came back, crossed the river, went back, went to the dorm, and we couldn’t wait to get these old guys out. And we got ’em out there, we rustled up some binoculars, and we said, “Take a look. Look up there. You can see our sheet.” I could see it, and Glen could see it, and this old codger went, “I don’t see no sheet up there. Do you Bill?” 

We never got our twenty bucks. I’ve always laughed about that, because those two old coots turned me on to climbing … For me that was worth more than twenty bucks. A lot more. 

Ted Wilson is survived by his wife and five children, including a daughter, Jenny Wilson, who is currently the mayor of Salt Lake County.

You can read the full tribute to Climbers We Lost in 2024 here.