Fred Beckey

Friedrich Wolfgang Beckey (14 January 1923 – 30 October 2017), known as Fred Beckey, was an American rock climber, mountaineer and book author, who in seven decades of climbing achieved hundreds of first ascents of some of the tallest peaks and most important routes throughout Alaska, the Canadian Rockies and the Pacific Northwest. Among the Fifty Classic Climbs of North America, seven were established by Beckey, often climbing with some of the best known climbers of each generation.

Beckey was born in 1923 near Düsseldorf, Germany to Klaus Beckey, a surgeon, and Marta Maria Beckey who was an opera singer. In 1925 economic hardships due to hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic forced his family to emigrate to the United States, settling in Seattle, Washington. His brother, Helmut "Helmy" Beckey, was born in Seattle in 1926 and would later become Fred's frequent climbing partner. At age twelve, Fred Beckey climbed Boulder Peak in the Cascades by himself, after wandering off on a family camping trip. Afterwards, his family signed him up with the Boy Scouts where he learned the basic concepts of climbing. Later he joined The Mountaineers. In 1939, at sixteen, Fred and two friends climbed 7,292-foot Mount Despair in the North Cascades, which was considered unclimbable at the time. In 1942, the teenage Beckey brothers snatched a second ascent of Mount Waddington, which was then considered the most difficult climb in North America. Beckey followed that with many more first ascents of summits in the Olympic and North Cascade ranges. In 1942 he joined 10th Mountain Division, based in Colorado, and served as an instructor.

After the war, Beckey studied business administration at the University of Washington, while still spending a lot of time climbing mountain ranges in the Northwest and desert rock formations in the Southwest. After graduation in 1949 he worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and became a print shop sales representative. However, he soon discovered that his work interfered with his climbing. For a time, he worked as a delivery truck driver, which left him time for climbing. As time went on, he decided that climbing was his life's focus. He never married or had children, he never pursued a professional career, he never sought money or financial security as a goal—his goal was to climb mountains.