WILLIAM EDMUNDS BRIGGS

He was born on October 18.1941 in Riverside, California, surrounded by the orange groves of his family home. His joy was the out-of-doors where he learned to climb and grew to love the mountains and the desert. He began his adventure as part of the "Riverside Bunch", who, in the 60s put up many first ascents in Joshua Tree National Monument. His skill in the mountains and his affection for his fellow travelers led him to join the Riverside Mountain Rescue Unit, and there began a 45 year commitment to search and rescue through Joshua Tree Search and Rescue, St. Johns Search and Rescue and Atalaya Search and Rescue. He climbed everywhere from Peru, Argentina, Alaska, Mexico and Europe to the Sierra Nevada in California and the 14ers in Colorado.
Later in life he became part of a band of brothers who explored the great wastelands of the Canadian arctic traveling by snow machine from Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories to Nunavut in the east through a circle route on Baffin Island. He called home to Santa Fe from the frozen north while walking on the sea ice watching Hale-Bopp amid the Aurora Borealis. So, from sleeping among the penguins on a beach in Patagonia to "walking on water" in the northernmost reaches of our planet, he lived every moment with passion from one end of this world to the other.
Music was his life-long love, especially opera. It began in his Riverside high school years where he played the trombone in many New Years Day parades in Pasadena. From the mid-70s he was an enthusiastic supporter of the Santa Fe Opera, and hosted Opera-loving friends every summer at his "Briggs Opera Camp". If there was a musical performance where he was, he was there soaking in the beauty of the moment.
There was never a time when he wasn't totally involved in living. If he wasn't climbing he was out running ultra-marathons , skiing, or riding his bike into town for a cup of Joe.
His children: Shara and Chris, his granddaughter, Holly. And he enthusiastically entered into the lives of his wife Karen's children and grandchildren: Ron and Melanie, and her sons, Diego, Eric and Gael.

Died September 3, 2009 in Santa Fe

He loved Italian music and food, and studied Italian and read classical and contemporary Italian literature in the original. He would have read these lines in Dante's own language: "In that part of the book of my memory before which there would be little to read is found a chapter heading which says, 'Here begins a new life'" - Dante Alighieri

Any donations in his name are requested to be sent to:

BMT/Myeloma Program
University of Utah
c/o Donald Dunn
30 North 1900 East, Room 4C104
Salt Lake City, UT 84132

Bill Briggs
(1941 – 2009)
By
Mike Daugherty

I met Bill Briggs in early 1966 when I joined RMRU. He was a member of a group of Riverside climbers that included Dick Webster, Woody Stark and Jim Foote, who had all just joined the team. They had gone to high School together in Riverside and been recruited into rock climbing and mountaineering by Dick Webster and his father, Harold Webster. They were active climbing in the Sierra, at Tahquitz Rock and, particularly, Joshua Tree. In fact, they put-up some of the routes at “J.T.” that are now considered to be classics, like The Dogleg, Double Cross and The Flake.
About 1967, we all started climbing together, first at Tahquitz and then in the Sierra and elsewhere. The first mountains I remember climbing with Bill were Inyo and Keynot in the Inyos on the east side of the Owens Valley in January of 1967. In the summer of 1968 we all went to South America together, where we got over 20,000’ on Chimborazo and Bill, Dick and I summited Huascaran (22,205’). We also did a number of memorable searches and rescues together. I particularly remember the rescue of John Guth and Ron White from a route called “The Error” on Tahquitz in May of 1970. We got the call in the late afternoon and, by the time we got to the base of the rock, it was dark. They were no more than 200’ above the base of the rock, so it made sense to approach them from below. However, between the base and their position was an “overhang” which, while it is only about 5.5 or 5.6 in difficulty, looks pretty formidable in the dark. Bill took the lead and climbed the overhang by headlamp, allowing us (Dick, Bill, Walt Walker and I) to rescue Ron and begin the process of evacuating John’s body. A job which we only completed as the sun was rising the next morning. It was quite a night.
Bill left RMRU when he moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1975, but he went on to become active with the Saint John’s College Rescue Team and, later, with JOSAR (Joshua Tree Search and Rescue). He also went on to climb a number of significant mountains (Denali, Aconcagua, Mt. Blanc) and to do some pretty impressive very long-distance artic exploration by snowmobile, including a trip around Baffin Island. I was not involved in those adventures, but together Bill and I did spend several weeks together in a small tent trying to wait out a storm at 15,000’ on the south side of Himalchuli in Nepal.
Bill was an extremely intelligent and cerebral person. His great love and knowledge of music, and particularly of opera, infected me and led to my abiding affection for the art form. He was also a very independent and original thinker and engineered and built his own authentic adobe home north of Santa Fe. He was famous for his ability to suffer in silence. I remember a week long trek across the Gates of the Artic National Park (much of it in the rain) in 1990 during which his back was giving him intense pain. The rest of us never heard a word about it.
Bill spent the last five and a half years of his life battling a form of blood cancer called Multiple Myeloma. No matter how bad it got, Bill never quit hiking and climbing. Last Memorial Day weekend, Bill and I and a few friends hiked from Humber Park up to Suicide Rock and then down the Deer Springs Trail to Hwy. 243. By Labor Day he was gone. The courage and determination which he displayed in his fight with cancer will stay with those who knew him well for the rest of our lives.