Arnold Wexler died in his sleep Sunday evening, Nov. 16, 1997, of brain cancer. He was 79.

Arnold lived in a rarefied atmosphere — as a research engineer at the National Institute of Standards and Technology and as a mountain climber. He was largely responsible for the Mountaineering Section [of the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club] as we know it. He also co-invented the idea of dynamic belaying. He made nearly 50 first ascents of Canadian mountains, which required horrendous bushwhacking.

Arnold was born Jan. 3, 1918, in Manhattan. He spent his early childhood in the Catskills, after which his family returned to New York City. He received a bachelors degree in chemical engineering from the City College of New York in 1940. In 1941 he joined what was then the National Bureau of Standards to work in structural materials research and testing, eventually focusing on instrumentation and standards for measurement, primarily for determining the moisture content of gases. During World War II he tested climbing ropes and equipment for the military's mountain operations. As an aside, his work on oxygen regulators for military pilots helped some climbing friends (inspired by Jacques Costeau) to make their own underwater breathing apparatus to explore submerged passages in WV caves.

Arnold was one of a group of rock climbers that pioneered climbing in the Washington, DC, area in the 1940s. When this group became the Mountaineering Section of the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club, Arnold served as its Chairman for five or six years, quietly leading the Section through its formative stage.

Through his testing of ropes and climbing equipment at the National Bureau of Standards, Arnold met a West Coast climber, (then Major) Richard Leonard. Together they made the first mathematical analysis of the forces on a falling climber, his or her anchors, the rope and the belayer. They created the idea of dynamic belaying — a progressive snubbing of the rope around the belayer's body to mitigate the shock on the system. At Carderock, a local climbing area, Arnold encouraged practicing dynamic belaying using Oscar, a 150-pound dummy, who could be dropped to simulate a falling climber. The ability to do a dynamic belay undermined the prevailing ethic that the leader should never fall because of the usual fatal consequences. Now the system need not fail. This was the first step toward today's new climbing ethic.

Even with dynamic belaying, Arnold was a cautious as well as a competent climber. He believed in being able to climb down from a crux. Nevertheless, Arnold pioneered routes at Seneca Rocks in WV such as Simple J Malarkey (5.7) and Ye Gods and Little Fishes (5.8) — difficult routes for 1953-'54 hikers wearing sneakers and driving pitons on sight. My most vivid memories of Arnold are when we shared a little house at Seneca Rocks (now used by a guide service). It was furnished with local yard-sale furniture and a new wood stove. It was then that Arnold and I put up Prune (5.7). At a taxing moment on the first pitch, I clipped in to a very old Army ring piton. As Arnold followed, he lifted it out with one finger. Half of it had rusted away.

Arnold climbed almost every summer, either in the Canadian Rockies, the Interior Ranges or the Northwest Territories (at the Cirque of the Unclimbables, which his party named). He also took trips to the American Rockies, the Alps in France and Italy and the Peruvian Andes. Altogether Arnold made well over 100 ascents of which nearly 50 were first ascents. His most notable climb was in 1946 to the Selkirks with Sterling Hendricks, who had been exploring the Canadian mountains. The Hendricks party made its way through one of the most inaccessible regions of British Columbia to make the second ascent of Mount Sir Sanford, a major peak that had first been climbed 32 years previously. Many of his subsequent trips involved challenging bushwhacking, ferrying loads on pre-Kelty packboards or in shapeless Army rucksacks, without the benefit of air-dropped loads — all to scale those peaks that no one had climbed before. It is hard today to duplicate the kind of excitement generated by Arnold's trailblazing climbs up virgin slopes.

Arnold had an ever-present curiosity about different ways of life and different cultures. Therefore, it wasn't surprising that he took up folk dancing. He, along with many other climbers in the'50s, would go each week to Dave Rosenberg's folk dances and afterward repair to Arnold's back-alley artist's studio for beer. Arnold's curiosity about other cultures led him to trek several times in Nepal, to Kashmir and Ladakh at the western end of the Himalayas, and to take less rugged trips to other remote corners of the world.

Arnold will not be forgotten. He was a gentle person, a patient teacher and a trusted climbing partner.

-John Christian

From the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club web site.