Leslie A. Viereck (1930-2008)

Les Viereck was born on 20 February 1930 in South Dartmouth, Massachusetts.Undergraduate urges for adventure led Les and two friends from Dartmouth to drive a Model A Ford to Alaska in 1948.By happenstance, after the briefest of interviews with the legendary Cap Lathrop, a colorful and enormously successful Alaskan pioneer and entrepreneur, Les was employed that summer at Lathrop's Suntrana coal mine.However, he spent his days off at Denali National Park, and when he returned the following year, the colorful Grant Pearson, then park superintendent, hired him as ranger for Wonder Lake.After graduation from Dartmouth in 1951, Les returned to Alaska and was promptly drafted into the Army.For part of his tour (1952 -54) he served as post game warden at Fort Richardson, Anchorage, distinguishing himself by arresting one of his senior officers for a game violation.This clear sense of right and wrong presaged a serious test of character a bit more than a decade later.While still in the Army, Les and three other climbers pioneered the South Buttress route on Denali.In an approach typical of the time but unheard of now, they began the climb at the railroad, not by flying to the Kahiltna Glacier.This climb has been chronicled elsewhere, and details can be found at http://uaf-db.uaf.edu/jukebox/denali/html/levi.htm.Although injured in a fall that led to the death of one of their party and severe injury to another, Les and Morton (Woody) Wood walked out for help, a demonstration of Les's physical toughness.Les then considered graduate studies at the University of Alaska and McGill University before settling at the University of Colorado.There he earned his Master of Science degree with Bill Weber by working up plant collections he had made at the Knob Lake subarctic field station of McGill University, Schefferville, Quebec, followed by a doctorate with John Marr on primary succession on the Muldrow Glacier foreland, Denali National Park.Les met Eleanor (Teri) Norton in Alaska and they married in 1955.They spent the summers of 1955 -59 in Alaska, and during one of these worked with W.O. Field to investigate botanical dating of recent glacial activity in Prince William Sound.In 1959, Les and Teri, shortly before the birth of son Rodney, traveled from Boulder north to Fairbanks for Les to take up a position at the University of Alaska, where he worked with Project Chariot to conduct what was probably the first environmental impact statement of consequence.Although it sounds reckless today, it was seriously considered then to excavate a harbor on Alaska's northwest Arctic coast by using a nuclear device.However, as data from multidisciplinary studies accumulated, it became increasingly clear to Les, Don Foote, and W.O. (Bill) Pruitt, Jr. that the "controlled" nuclear explosion could not be justified in the face of the likely radioactive aftermath on people using the region for home and hunting.Formal

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