Carter Adams H.

(Bearbeiten)

Biografie:
geboren in Newton/Mass. (USA)

Herausgeber des American Alpine Journals.
Ehrenmitglied des Alpine Club in London.
Erstbesteigung der Nanda Devi im Jahre 1936.
Begehung der Nordwand der Nanda Devi im Jahre 1976.
Quelle: Archiv Proksch (Österr. Alpenklub)

Adams H. Carter, Redakteur des American Alpine Journal und bekannter Bergsteiger, feierte am 6. Juni 1984 seinen 70. Geburtstag. Für den Sommer 1984 hatte er, zusammen mit Brad Washburn, eine Reise in die Cordillera Blanca und die Cordillera Huayhuash geplant. Leider verbrachte er statt dessen einige Wochen im Krankenhaus. Beim Klettern in einem Klettergarten in der Nähe seines Hauses in Milton brach ein Griff aus. Die Folge davon waren sechs gebrochene Rippen und andere Verletzungen. Adams H. Carter ist wieder wohlauf und guter Dinge. Rollende Steine setzen kein Moos an, sagt man.
Quelle: Der Bergsteiger 1984, Heft 12, Seite 103


Hubert Adams Carter 1914-1995
Hubert Adams Carter was affectionately, yet respectfully, known as 'Ad' by everyone from Nanda Devi in the Himalaya to the Andes of Peru.
He died instantly, painlessly and unexpectedly on 1st April 1995 of cardiac arrest, while he was lunching with his beloved Ann at their long-time home in Milton, Massachusetts. He had just returned from a refreshing weekend of skiing in Franconia, New Hampshire with his grandchildren - and, the week before, had given to the printer the complete and final page-proof of his 36th edition of the American Alpine Journal. If you were an editor, a downhill ski enthusiast and a happily-married mountaineer - and you had to die - this was certainly the way to go. But for Ann and all the rest of us it was a shattering moment.
Ad was born in Newton, Massachusetts, on 6 June 1914, the third of four children in the family of Edith and Hubert Carter. His father was one of the leaders in New England's paper industry. While summering in the Carter's almost-ancestral summer home in Jefferson, New Hampshire, Ad started his mountain career well above timberline by climbing 6300ft Mount Washington when he was barely five years old!
During a year at Kandersteg in the Bernese Oberland a dozen years later, he had his first lessons in mountaineering and in the German language, led by the best Alpine guides of the day and living among the local people. He graduated from Milton Academy in 1932, and went immediately to Harvard where he at once joined the then-infant Mountaineering Club. It was there that he met Bob Bates, Charlie Houston and me - and helped us to build the club's first mountain cabin halfway up Mt Washington. In 1933 and 1934 Ad was an active member of my two expeditions to attempt the first ascent of 12,700ft Mt Crillon in the Alaska Coast Range, one hundred miles west of Juneau. Together, on 19 July 1934, Ad and I made the evasive summit of Crillon together - and then, during the winter and spring of 1935, he postponed his college education for a half-year to play an important part in our National Geographic Society Yukon expedition which explored and mapped 5000 square miles of mountain wilderness in the heart of the St Elias Range on the frontier between Alaska and Canada. It was on this trip that we all learned a lot about sub-zero sub-arctic camping and survival- and Ad firmly cemented a lifelong friendship with Bob Bates and me.
It was in his senior year at Harvard that Ad became deeply involved in the British-American expedition which made the first ascent of 25,645ft Nanda Devi in the Garhwal Himalaya, which was to be for fourteen years the highest peak ever climbed anywhere! On this expedition he started a life-long friendship with Bill Tilman and Noel Odell and renewed his Alaskan partnership with Charlie Houston.
At the outbreak of the Second World War, Ad married Ann Brooks of Boston and thus began a wonderful partnership of 53 years. Throughout the war he was one of the key cold-weather and intelligence experts in the Special Forces Section of the office of the US Quartermaster General which redesigned the antiquated clothing and special equipment of the US Army right in the middle of hostilities. At the war's conclusion, Ad, still working for the US military, travelled to Germany and Japan where he carried out a thorough investigation of the new military equipment of the Axis powers. It was at this time that his fluent knowledge of foreign languages paid off in a big way.
In 1945, Ad Carter joined the faculty of Milton Academy, only a stone's throw from his house for many years. He taught German, French and Spanish there for over 30 years - the rest of his regular working career. But as one recounts what he did in teaching, climbing, and in the military, one tends to forget that Ad was an excellent skier, having captained Harvard's ski team for two years while he was in college, competed in the Federation Internationale de Ski World Championships in 1937, and captained the US ski team in the Pan American Championships in Chile in 1938.
Ad Carter loved to teach, whether it was in the mountains or in the classroom. His students clustered around him in one way or another throughout the rest of his life. He and Ann and their children constantly intermingled with this wonderful stream of youngsters (many of whom are now well over 50!) on the ski slopes, in the mountains, and at Jefferson.
But, above all else, Ad Carter was the Editor of the American Alpine Journal. Starting as Assistant Editor under the famed Francis Farquhar in 1956, Ad took on full responsibility for the AAJ in 1960. As the years went by and Ad's active climbing career ebbed gently away, he became more and more totally involved with the Journal. What it was and what it might become were his passion: what it should or should not contain, how it was illustrated, whether or not it should include advertising, how accurate every detail in it must be.
His fluency in languages, as well as his competence as an editor, made the Journal what it is today - a thoroughly world-class publication. Although his language base was English-German-French-Spanish, he could visit any country in the world for a few days and then, through correspondence and on the telephone, in no time he would emerge reading, writing and often speaking that tongue fluently! Furthermore, after his retirement, he was able to travel repeatedly to attend international meetings in Europe and Asia, and thus established a remarkable network of sources of mountain information, which flowed steadily into Milton and Jefferson to create his ever-more-distinguished publication. It was his 36th Journal that he put safely to bed the week before he died!
The American Alpine Journal of 1995 was one of Ad and Ann Carter's greatest editing accomplishments. The mountain world owes them both a unique debt of gratitude.
Bradford Washburn

Evelio Echevarria writes:
In the late fifties, already settled in the United States, I sought to establish contact with writers on the staff of mountaineering journals of the Englishspeaking world. Two people took an interest in my Andean background: D F 0 Dangar, then Assistant Editor of the Alpine Journal, and H Adams Carter, then a member of the Board of Editors of the American Alpine Journal. Correspondence with both was decisive in the development of my mountaineering interests. Both writers had a great knowledge of mountaineering history and both were interested in properly recording the development of the exploration of the great foreign ranges. H Adams Carter, then in his prime. had a particular interest in the Andes of Peru. He and I used to exchange information. maps and opinions. When he was elected Editor of the American Alpine Journal he grew to become a leader in world mountaineering. His contribution, sustained for more than thirty years, was impressive. His knowledge of six or seven different languages enabled him to make direct contact with mountaineers in distant lands, who soon became his correspondents and friends. He also defended mountaineering ethics, always demanding deference for the culture of the mountain countries being visited by foreign expeditions. On many occasions he flatly refused even to publish the inappropriate names with which mountains were at times baptised. He himself used in Peru very apt Quichua names for the peaks he ascended for the first time. For more than thirty years, Ad was the soul of the American Alpine Journal. With his passing, who will be able to fill his unique post?
Quelle: Alpine Journal Vol. 101. Nr. 291, 1996, Seite 330-331

H. Adams Carter
* 6. Juni 1914 ? (+) 1. April
Am 1. April 1995 starb im 81. Lebensjahr H. Adams Carter.
Er war so etwas wie die graue Eminenz der inter-nationalen Bergsteigergemeinschaft. In Wechsel-wirkung dazu stand sicher seine Funktion und Berufung als Editor des ?American Alpine Journal", dem wichtigsten Bergsteigerjahrbuch der Welt, das er während der letzten 35 Jahre herausgab. Ad Carter begann seine Bergsteigerkarriere mit der Besteigung des Mt. Washington, als er 5 Jahre alt war. Mit 15 reiste er zum ersten Mal in die Alpen. 1933 kannte er als 20jähriger die meisten wichtigen Anstiege in den Schweizer Alpen und sprach fließend Deutsch. Im gleichen Jahr gelang ihm, gemeinsam mit seinem Freund Brad Washburn, die erste Besteigung des Mt. Crillon in Alaska.
1934 war er eines der jüngsten und stärksten Mitglieder der National-Geographic-Yukon-Expedition, welche die erste Überquerung der St. Elias Range durchführte.
1936 organisierte er die Expedition zur Nanda Devi. Sie erreichte den 7820 Meter hohen Gipfel und hielt damit für 14 Jahre den Höhenrekord.
Die Liste herausragender alpinistischer Leistungen und hoher Ehrungen, die er erfuhr, ließe sich lange fortsetzen, würde aber nicht genügen, um das Wesen von Adams Carter zu charakterisieren.
Carter studierte und unterrichtete Sprachen (Spanisch, Deutsch, Französisch), und es war seine Fähigkeit, mit aller Welt zu kommunizieren, die ihn über das Format anderer Weltklassebergsteiger hinaushob. 1960 übernahm Carter die Verantwortung für die Herausgabe des ?American Alpine Journal". Dieses Jahrbuch entwickelte sich unter seiner Leitung zur zuverlässigsten und vollständigsten alpinen Informationsquelle, die derzeit zur Verfügung steht. Diesem wohl wichtigsten Erbe seiner Machtwelt lag eine Vernetzung an Kommunikation zugrunde, die nur durch eine glückliche Mischung von begeistertem Interesse am alpinen Weltgeschehen und minutiöser Strebsamkeit entspringen konnte. Noch kurz vor seinem Tod stellte er seine 36. Ausgabe für 1995 fertig.
Ich glaube, daß meine persönliche Bekanntschaft mit H. Adams Carter und seiner Frau Ann typisch war für seine Art, Menschen zu begegnen. Ihr ging ein mehrjähriger Briefwechsel voran, der sich auf alpine Sachinformationen beschränkte. Die Anfragen und Antworten von Carter waren in perfektem Deutsch und so persönlich abgefaßt, daß ich stets den Eindruck hatte, mit einem alten Bekannten zu verkehren.
Mein Wunsch, diesen Mann einmal persönlich kennenzulernen, ging unerwartet in Erfüllung.
Eines Morgens läutete mein Telefon, und aus dem Hörer erklärte mir Ad Carters Stimme, daß er und seine Frau Ann auf der Durchreise in Wien ein paar Stunden Aufenthalt hätten, und ob ich Lust hätte, sie zu treffen.
Wir verbrachten dann ein langes Frühstück, lang plaudernd, über die Berge, Gott und die Welt. Die Zeit verging sehr schnell, und als auch das Mittagessen verzehrt war, nahmen Ad und Ann das Angebot, sich auszuruhen, gerne an und schliefen kurz darauf fest ein. ?Es ist gut, daß es überall auf der Welt Berge gibt, so haben wir überall Freunde", hatte Ad während unseres Gesprächs erwähnt.
Ad und Ann wollten noch am gleichen Tag einen Anschlusszug erreichen; doch wie weckt man die graue Eminenz der internationalen Bergsteiger-gemeinschaft, wenn sie einfach nicht aufwachen will?
Viel zu lange zögerten Margaret und ich, die bei-den Herrschaften an ihren Reiseplan zu erinnern. Die Fahrt zum Bahnhof wurde zu einer filmreifen Hetzjagd. Im Laufschritt erreichten wir den bereits abgefertigten Zug. Ein herzlicher Händedruck. Keine Zeit für das Herzeigegruppenbild. Als der Zug verschwunden war, schaute Margaret auf die Uhr; kaum sechs Stunden hatte diese Begegnung gedauert (die Schlafenszeit mitgerechnet); aber wir gehörten bereits zur großen Familie von Ad und Ann Carter.
Im Frühjahr '95 erreichte uns ein Brief von Ann Carter, in dem sie uns mitteilte, dass Ad ein paar Tage nach einem Schiurlaub mit seinen Enkelkindern plötzlich und ohne Vorzeichen an Herzversagen gestorben war.
?For him it was the way to go...", schrieb Ann, und seine Freunde: ?Thanks for showing us how to live a full life each day".
Harry Grün
Quelle: Österr. Alpenzeitung 1996, Folge 1529, Seite 102-103

1936 1.Best.Nanda Devi,7816m, (Uttarakhand Himalaya,Indien)
1976 Beg.Nanda Devi-Nordwand,7816m, (Uttarakhand Himalaya,Indien)



Geboren am:
06.06.1914
Gestorben am:
01.04.1995