Fred Beckey (born Friedrich Wolfgang Beckey, 14 January 1923) is an American mountaineer and author, who has made hundreds of first ascents, more than any other North American climber.
"Beckey," as he is known to his climbing companions, was born in Düsseldorf, Germany, and his family emigrated to the United States when he was three, ending up in Seattle, Washington. He started climbing in the North Cascades as a teenager, learning the basic concepts from The Mountaineers but quickly going on to harder climbs.
He attended the University of Washington and received a degree in business administration. He worked as a delivery truck driver, which left him time for climbing.
Unlike Jim Whittaker, a fellow Seattleite and the first American to reach the top of Mount Everest in 1963, Beckey shied away from the large team efforts, preferring smaller alpine-style undertakings. Beckey seemed a likely choice as a member for the large, 1963 American Everest Expedition, but he was not chosen, even though he had been to Lhotse in 1955 with the International Himalayan Expedition.
In the late 1940s, he asked The Mountaineers of Seattle to publish his first climbing guidebook for the local peaks. They turned him down, and the American Alpine Club agreed to print a few thousand copies for a flat fee. Between climbs, he has written several books, most notably the Cascade Alpine Guide, the definitive 3-volume description of the North Cascades from the Columbia River to the Fraser River, now in its third edition, published by The Mountaineers.
In 2003, his 563-page book on the history of the region, Range of Glaciers, was published by the Oregon Historical Society Press. According to a reviewer, he did much of the research for the volume in Washington, D.C., at the Library of Congress and the National Archives, scouring files of the State Department, U.S. Geological Survey and other agencies. Beckey also perused the Canadian archives in Ottawa; Hudson's Bay Co. archives in Winnipeg; British Columbia archives in Victoria; records of the Northwest Boundary Survey at Yale University; and records of the Northern Pacific and Great Northern railroads in Minneapolis.
As of 2008, he continues to climb all over the world.
Mt. Beckey, named for Fred, is located in the Alaskan Range at North 62 degrees, 52 minutes, West 152 degrees, 15 minutes.
"Fred Beckey has achieved enduring recognition as the most imaginative, persistent, and thorough explorer and mountain investigator of the Cascade Range Wilderness. He was noted as "one of America's most colorful and eccentric mountaineers," and is unofficially recognized as the all-time world-record holder for the number of first ascents credited to one man. In addition to being the author of the Cascade Alpine Guide series, Beckey is also the author of Mountains of North America, The Range of Glaciers: Exploration and Survey of the North Cascades, and a personal narrative, Challenge of the North Cascades."--Mountaineers Books
Timothy Egan captures Fred Beckey's personality in a chapter of "The Good Rain" (1991, ISBN 0-67973-485-6). Fred named Vasiliki Ridge, by Washington Pass, after his one true love. Fred is a quintessential dirtbag climber, and there is a classic portrait of him holding a sign "Will belay for food." His reputation is well-known among many climbers, captured in a t-shirt "Beware of Beckey: He will Steal your woman, steal your route."
