“I

rode west in a hearse.”

COURTESY OF TERRY CLATTENBURG A converted hearse was one of the two vehicles for the 22 campers and two adult counselors. They stowed their gear into a trailer towed by the hearse.

That’s what a survivor of the tragedy said would be the opening sentence of his memoir.

Wilderness Travel Camp left Philadelphia for points west in late June, after meeting up in the parking lot of Chestnut Hill Academy, the elite prep school in one of Philadelphia’s wealthiest neighborhoods. The boys piled into two vehicles, a new Ford station wagon — and a hearse converted into a kind of minibus. The cars towed trailers laden with canvas tents, surplus stoves, cinched bedrolls, and the like.

It was the spring of 1955. President Dwight D. Eisenhower was campaigning to build the Interstate Highway System. Disneyland was just about to open. “Rock Around the Clock” was surging to become the first rock single to hit No. 1. Phillie Richie Ashburn was on his way to beating out Willie Mays for the National League batting crown.

Berkshire School (top); Wendy and John Field (bottom) Tony Woodfield (top) had had experience climbing in Switzerland. He and another camper, Billy Watts (bottom), were selected as the two “crew chiefs” for the trip. After the avalanche hit, Tony climbed down to save Billy. “Move your limbs,” he told him. “Hang on to life.”

The boys on the trip ranged in age from 12 to 16. Among the oldest were sophomore Tony Woodfield and junior Billy Watts Jr., enrolled in different New England boarding schools. They were both natural athletes and leaders. Tony, thin and tall, with chiseled good looks, had grown up in Switzerland and already had had a fair amount of experience with climbing in the Alps.

The blond Billy wasn’t bookish like Tony, but had plenty of common sense. And like his father and namesake, Billy had charm to burn. He’d transferred to his school in Connecticut after attending Chestnut Hill Academy.

The 16-year-olds were proud to be named the trip’s two teenage “crew chiefs.”

In all, 22 boys had signed up for the grand trip put together by Bill Kershaw, the teacher at Chestnut Hill Academy who had founded Wilderness Travel nine years before. The grandson of a venerated headmaster at Germantown Academy, Kershaw had the pedigree and contacts to attract the kind of boys whose families were in the Social Register, prep-school students bound for Harvard, Yale, or Kershaw’s alma mater, Stanford.

For $2,500 in today’s dollars and a signed release from liability, parents bought a 6½-week expedition that took their sons across the United States and into western Canada. The traveling camp would include visits to national parks in both countries, camping, canoeing, and climbing.

Kershaw, then 32, and business partner Don Dickerson, 29, planned the trip. They decided a highlight would be climbing 11,626-foot Mount Temple, a popular tourist destination that was one of the tallest peaks in gorgeous Banff National Park in Canada, west of Calgary.

Kershaw was not along for the trip itself. Instead, he took a different group of boys that June on a trip through New England. The two men hired another counselor, Bill Oeser, 28, to accompany Dickerson on the trip. They were all teachers. Dickerson, who lived in Philadelphia’s Mount Airy section, was an insurance whiz who lectured at the Wharton School. Oeser had graduated from Pennsylvania State University after growing up in Philadelphia. He taught at a Baltimore junior high.

COURTESY OF TERRY CLATTENBURG The Ford station wagon and trailer used on the trip.

As they headed west, in Minnesota, the boys jumped over the headwaters of the Mississippi. The hearse broke down in North Dakota, and the boys camped out in a town park in Minot for five days while it was repaired. On the road again, the two-car caravan headed to Glacier National Park in Montana. While the boys took in the view at Glacier — its massive glaciers shrouded in glistening white snow — porcupines chewed flat all four of the hearse’s tires. They liked the salt on them.

In a postcard to his parents, one boy wrote of Glacier’s beauty — and of their “big snowball battle” on the Fourth of July. It arrived just after his death.

Two weeks after leaving Philadelphia, Dickerson, Oeser, and their charges entered the Banff park, 4,500 feet up, a spectacular range of peaks and glaciers, of alpine plateaus and lakes, of bears and caribou. On Thursday, July 7, they pitched their tents at Two Jack Lake.

COURTESY OF TERRY CLATTENBURG A tent and equipment used by the boys, who ranged in age from 12 to 16.

Billy Watts wrote a letter to his 8-year-old sister, telling her proudly that he was a crew chief and a cook for the rest, preparing meals on an Army stove.

“The trip is wonderful. ... We are now in Banff, Canada. The scenery is beautiful, but the weather is much colder. We have seen deer and bear and I have fed a chipmunk out of my hand. Love, Billy.”

The goal was to climb Mount Temple and then head to another national park in Canada for more adventure and then return home in early August.

In the village of Banff, Dickerson headed to the park information offices and picked up mountain maps. But he couldn’t find anyone expert about Mount Temple, just “some girls” in the office who “seemed to know absolutely nothing about the mountains in the area,” he would say later. For its part, the office staff found him impatient and incurious.

The Road to Mount Temple In June 1955, 20 boys and two adults left Chestnut Hill Academy in Philadelphia for an expedition that would include trips to national parks in the United States and Canada. The group picked up two campers near Chicago and had a five-day stopover in Minot, N.D., when one of their vehicles broke down. After a stop at Glacier National Park, they headed to Mount Temple in Banff National Park. Staff Graphic

He was given a form to register his plan to climb the mountain. It asked what day his group would be climbing. He hadn’t decided yet, so he ignored it. No one officially in charge would learn of their plans.

Despite knowing little of the mountain or its conditions, Dickerson and Oeser pressed on. On Saturday, July 9, they and the boys scaled part way up 9,675-foot Mount Rundle, just outside Banff, returning to their campsite late, at almost 10 p.m. This climb went well.

COURTESY OF TERRY CLATTENBURG Lake Louise, glacier-fed lake at nearly 6,000 feet in Banff National Park in western Canada. On the climb, the boys’ counselor “wanted everybody to stop, and like the fools we were, we argued against him, and he let us go on up,” Clattenburg said.

On Sunday, they moved their camp near the foot of Mount Temple, and set up at Moraine Lake, glacier-fed and startlingly blue. The next day, they would tackle the snowcapped mountain, only 250 feet shorter than the highest peak in the park.

The popular trek up Mount Temple’s southern side is known as a “scramble.” Climbers don’t need pitons or other equipment used in technical climbing, but it’s not a route to take lightly. In places, hikers must haul themselves from rock to rock to ascend vertical bands of stone. Some climbers hire guides for the trip, and some of those guides rope up clients for tougher traverses.

There is danger from falling rock, cliffs — and avalanches.

Experienced climbers stay off the mountain in early summer, when rising temperatures melt snow, creating the conditions for avalanches. In 1955, an early spring had heated up the mountain, melting the snow, and rangers already knew it to be dangerous. If Dickerson had found park officials to ask about Mount Temple, one would later say, “we would have advised them against going anywhere near it.”

Your browser does not support the video tag. MONTANA BASSETT / Staff The boys’ route up the southern face of Mount Temple is shown in red. Green depicts the recommended route, along the ridge line. (This Google Earth photo from December 2016 shows less snow than on day of tragedy.)

Nonetheless, the group pushed off that Monday morning. Six boys stayed behind. The counselors had given the youngsters a choice: Do laundry at camp or climb the mountain. Dickerson also stayed behind. A heavy cigar smoker, he was too winded to go, especially after climbing Mount Rundle.

That left Oeser, with far less climbing experience, in charge. Neither he nor Dickerson knew that avalanches were a risk on Mount Temple. Their group, the first to tackle the mountain that year, was climbing in early summer. That was significant because park rangers usually advised scramblers to wait later in the summer when most snow had melted away.

The 16 boy climbers were not well-equipped. Many lacked hiking boots. Instead, they wore baseball shoes with cleats or even track shoes. They carried only 150 feet of manila rope, in just two lengths. Many wore only thin summer shirts. As the most skilled climber, Tony carried the group’s only ice ax.

Oeser and the boys hiked for four or five hours, working their way higher via switchbacks to the pass that connected Paradise Valley with the Valley of the Ten Peaks. This put them up on Sentinel Pass, which cuts between 10,062-foot Pinnacle Mountain and the higher Mount Temple. At the pass, the group turned east to scale the southern face of Mount Temple.

At about 8,500 feet, Oeser and his 16 boys reached a meadow. It was ablaze with wildflowers. Oeser called a halt. He had a nasty blister on his foot. Besides, Oeser would say later, “unfortunately, heights do not agree with me entirely.” He told the boys that he, too, was dropping out.

He wanted them to quit, as well. The boys wanted to keep going. After all, it was a balmy 76 degrees. The looming summit seemed so close.

Oeser sat down and pulled off his shoes. He relented and waved the boys onward.

Tony Woodfield and Billy Watts were now in charge. In short order, five more tired youngsters abandoned the climb, clambering down Mount Temple to rejoin Oeser.

That left 11 still ascending.

The youngest was 12-year-old Miles Marble. He was an only child who was a blur on the basketball court at Germantown Friends School. His favorite expression: “Oh, rot.”

There were the smart 13-year-old Balis twins: Ricky and Townsend, aka “Towny,” eighth graders at Chestnut Hill Academy. Their parents must have seen them off with some trepidation. Before the twins were born, their parents’ first child was killed at age 5 in front of his Chestnut Hill home when he rode his scooter into traffic.

There was Frederic Ballard, 13, also a “Ricky,” another Chestnut Hill Academy eighth grader. His great-grandfather founded Philadelphia’s Ballard Spahr law firm, and his grandfather and father were lawyers there. His mother was Ernesta Ballard, a civic leader and feminist years before the term had any wide popularity.

Luther “Buzzy” Seddon, 13, was a competitive speed skater from St. Louis who was named after a grandfather who had led the campaign to build the Gateway Arch there. Seddon had joined the caravan near Chicago so he could vacation with a friend from Chestnut Hill.

Another 13-year-old, Peter Smith, a Haverford School student from Paoli, was tousle-haired, outgoing, but intense.

Glasses-wearing Terry Clattenburg, 14, another student at Chestnut Hill Academy, was tall and quiet, the son of an architect. He bunked in a tent with the twins and camper David Chapin.

Chapin, 15, was a close friend of Woodfield’s at the Berkshire School, a boarding school in Massachusetts. His father was an ad executive in a new field, television. At Berkshire, the determined Chapin liked to hike nearby Mount Everett, a peak one-quarter the height of Mount Temple. A photograph from his teens shows him with a big grin, a big cowboy hat, and a backpack.

Willie Wise, the son of a Souderton obstetrician, was a coltish 15-year-old in the middle of a growth spurt. It was his second consecutive summer with Wilderness Travel. This time, he was hoping the hiking would toughen him up for football at William Penn Charter School. A junior there, he was a Lutheran acolyte who’d read just about everything by Bruce Catton on the Civil War.

At first, the boys seemed to bound upward, encouraged by the warmth. What they didn’t realize was that heat was a growing threat.

Oeser and the boys had started out that morning far too late. They had set off from Moraine Lake at about 9:30, many hours after most climbers depart to summit Mount Temple. That meant the boys would still be out there when the afternoon sun was thawing the snow, making it unstable and the climb more strenuous. Moreover, the afternoon was unseasonably hot, the climax of a run-up that had seen temperatures climb nearly 20 degrees in just five days. The heat sapped their energy, slowing them and keeping them on the mountain longer and later.

They should have been off the mountain by lunch. They weren’t.