Pikes Peak Region Trail Finder

(Photo courtesy of Susan Paul)

By R. SCOTT RAPPOLD

THE GAZETTE

For Spencer Swanger, the mountains could be “lonely, frightening places sometimes” – but he went anyway, to the loneliest, most frightening places in Colorado, in pursuit of adventure.

He was the first person to scale the state’s 100 highest peaks, completing that task in the late 1970s, and he spent the ensuing decades as a humble legend in mountaineering circles, leading generation after generation to some of the highest spots in Colorado and around the world.

Swanger, a retired postal carrier from Colorado Springs, died Tuesday  in a fall in the Dolomites, a rugged mountain chain in Italy, where he and his wife were celebrating her retirement. He was 70.

The loss of this elder statesman of the high country, who boasted there was never an injury on a trip he led, caused shock and sadness throughout the mountaineering community.

“He just felt at home in the mountains,” said his daughter, Christina Frazer. “So whether he was climbing or backpacking or technical rock climbing or just hiking, that’s where he wanted to be all the time. That was his spiritual place.”

A Pennsylvania native, he came to Colorado Springs in 1965 after leaving the Army. He had fallen in love with the mountains on a road trip, and the mystique called to him immediately.

He climbed all of Colorado’s fourteeners – peaks above 14,000 feet – by 1970, and when he read an article by an engineer who had identified the 100 highest mountains in the state, he set out to climb them all, too.

Even then, wildness and solitude were getting hard to come by in Colorado, which is why he sought out the far corners.

“Most of the Colorado wilderness is pretty well dissected by roads,” he told The Gazette after completing the 100 peaks. “It’s hard to think of someplace where you’ll get on top and don’t see a road or town.”

He climbed many of the peaks alone, or with a handful of others willing to brave the uncharted heights. Afterwards, he sounded tired of climbing, and talked to The Gazette of other pursuits, of spending more time with his wife and two daughters.

“My life is more in balance. Twenty-five peaks a year for ten years obviously leaves a lot undone,” he said.

Frazer laughed.

“I almost think he got more intense about his climbing. I’m not sure he ever had his life in balance,” she said.

He climbed all the fourteeners at least six times, often as a leader on trips for the Colorado Mountain Club six to eight times a year.

“He never talked about any of his accomplishments. You had to probe him for any information about it,” said climber Susan Paul, of Colorado Springs, who climbed her first fourteener with Swanger in 2005.

While he seemed like a loner, he loved being around people and helping people experience places for the first time, she said. And when things got hairy, he never panicked, and after a dozen trips, she never once saw him pull out a map, compass or GPS. At camp, he always had funny stories to share.

“He had been doing this for so many years he knew those mountains like the back of his hand,” Paul said.

“I think he took people with him to the summit,” said Debbie Welle-Powell, of Denver, who accompanied him on a trip to Bolivia in 2006. “He was a person that took people with him to the summit of his life. There were many summits in his life and the summit of one became the base camp for the next one.”

Thursday, details were still emerging about the accident, but Frazer said it appears the climbing group was on a ledge, which had a cable running along it for climbers to clip in. A mound of snow forced them to unclip, and Swanger, after making sure everyone made it around the snow, lost his footing on wet rock and fell about 325 feet.

The other climbers, including his wife Karen Morris, were air-lifted off the mountain. Frazer said Swanger’s wife plans to spread some of his ashes in Italy, and to have a memorial service in Colorado Springs in late August.

Swanger also leaves behind his first wife, Susan Frazee, a daughter, Heidi Woods and a stepson, David Morris, as well as two grandchildren and two step-grandchildren.

His friends and family take some small solace in the fact he died doing what he loved.

“He knew the dangers but it was what he loved to do,” Frazer said. “My dad never wanted to get old and infirm and have health issues. He got to go out in the prime of his life.”