Earle was born in Berkeley, California in 1930. They moved to Boston where his father, Fred L Whipple, was a professor of astronomy at Harvard. Earle began climbing with the Harvard Mountaineering Club in 1953 when the club went to the Adamants in the northern Selkirks. He found that climbing mountains improved his life a great deal.
During the HMC climbing camp in 1955, a highlight was backpacking Glacier Circle including Mts Wheeler and Purity. His first experience in the Coast Range was a trip to Mt Waddington in 1956. He was on the HMC expedition to The Cordillera Vilcanota in Peru in 1957 and climbed in the Bugaboos in 1958.
He initially worked in Boston as a researcher in analytical and solid-state synthetic chemistry without a degree. Here he met his wife Carmen. In 1965, they moved to Vancouver where Earle attended the University of British Columbia and obtained his first degree. During that time, he was a field assistant fro a geological study in the mountains near New Denver. They then moved back to Boston in 1968 where Earle obtained his doctorate in geology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1974. Publications included some in analytical chemistry and physics.
Kim Kratky was one of Earle’s very best friends and he misses him. He hopes to make it back to Nelson and visit his old friends there someday.
Earle now lives in Barcelona, Spain with his wife. He has been working on a 795-page manuscript on the Northern Coastal Range for nine years.
1. The Alaskan Panhandle and North British Columbia: A Climber’s Guide by Earle R. Whipple and Steven C. Gruhn. August 2020
2. The Northern Coastal Ranges of British Columbia: A Climber’s Guide by Earle R. Whipple. August 2022