Miss Dish and the Volcano

from April/May 2020 Mazama Magazine

by Ian McCluskey

Seven years after the historic eruption of Mt. St. Helens, the mountain was finally opened again to climbers.

A team from the Seattle Times went to report. On the summit of the new crater rim, they saw something they weren't expecting: a vivacious woman on skis, wearing a red chiffon dress and white pillbox hat. Accompanying the woman in the red dress were five female friends who danced a can-can.

“After climbing the rugged mountain for four and a half hours,” wrote the reporter, “no one expected a party.”

Fast forward three decades: the annual Mother’s Day Climb of Mount St. Helens has become one of the Northwest’s most beloved outdoor recreation traditions— perhaps the most colorful, irreverent, and playful day in the entire Cascade Range. Climb permits are always sold out each year, and since the tradition started an estimated 15,000-20,000 people have climbed Mt. St. Helens in flashy dresses.

Yet few have heard of the original woman in the red chiffon dress and pillbox hat.

Her name was Kathy Phibbs. And she had a mission: get more women in the mountains—and do so in a colorful, creative, and inspiring way.

With wit, charisma, and dogged determination, Kathy set a new example of mountaineering. She created opportunities for women to have fun, challenge themselves, and become mentors to each other in the mountains. As a gay woman, she also created an inclusive community in an era of widespread discrimination. She led women to the summits of some of the world’s highest peaks, in the Andes, the Himalaya, and Denali. But it was her grassroots leadership in her own backyard of the North Cascades where she made her greatest contribution.

Tragically, her story was cut short, and has gone untold too long. HER FIRST REAL MOUNTAIN

When Kathy was a high school senior, she had a chance to climb Mount St. Helens—her first real mountain.

Before the 1980 eruption, St. Helens had been one of the most beloved Cascade peaks to climb. It rose 9,677’ in a perfect symmetrical cone, so elegant that it was often compared to Mt. Fuji. Northwesterners pointed to photos of the snow-capped St. Helens reflected in the glassy water of Spirit Lake, framed by towering old-growth trees, and proudly thought it was even prettier than Fuji.

Even the earliest legend of St. Helens spoke of the mountain’s beauty. Known as Loowit, she had once been a woman so lovely that she caused two brothers to fight over her. All three were turned into mountains.

Kathy must have been both excited and anxious before her first attempt to climb a glaciated peak. But about a week before the climb, a group of students from the University of Puget Sound were caught in an avalanche while climbing St. Helens. Five were killed.

This news hit close to home. The family had moved from the East Coast for her dad, Phillip Phibbs, to take the role of

**Kathy enjoying the snow.**
Photo: Unknown.

president of the University of Puget Sound. Now he had the sad duty of addressing the student body and calling the parents. Adding to this grief: he knew exactly what it felt like to lose a child. He and his wife Gwen had lost their young son.

**Clockwise, from top: Kathy and friends on Mt. St. Helens in 1981. Deb Petersen, Kathy Phibbs (in red dress).**
Photo: Unknown.

Upset by the tragedy and concerned for his daughter’s safety, he told Kathy he didn’t want her to go up St. Helens.

When it came time for the climb, Kathy snuck out of the house and climbed St. Helens.

MAKING HER OWN PATH

In the fall of 1975, Kathy arrived as a freshman at Pomona College. There she met Ross Macfarlane, also a new student. When Kathy learned that Ross had some experience rock climbing, she asked: “Do you have a rope?” Ross nodded. “Do you have a car?” she asked. He shook his head no. Then she disappeared and returned shortly with another student in tow. “This guy has a car.”

“She had a bulldog personality,” recalls Ross. With her witty humor and sharp zingers, she won people over. “A force of nature,” was a phrase several of her friends used to describe her.

One time Ross and Kathy agreed to take a group of classmates to practice rock climbing at a local crag. Kathy, as usual, was in the lead. But somehow she lost the trail.

After bushwacking, the group was grumbling and ready to turn back.

“Wait here and I’ll go scout,” Kathy told the group, and bounded into the brush.

Then, Kathy’s voice came back, “This way! I found a cairn!”

The group shouldered their packs and hiked toward the direction of Kathy’s voice.

They soon reached a cairn, a small pile of rocks to mark a route.

Kathy had already bounced ahead. “Up here!” she shouted enthusiastically. “Another cairn!”

The group’s optimism picked up. They arrived at a second pile of rocks.

“Hey, up here!” Kathy yelled. “Another cairn! This is it, we’re almost there!”

The group’s doubts evaporated. They pressed through the brush following Kathy’s voice.

Kathy raced ahead, stopping only long enough to grab rocks and create her own cairn.

NO, WE’RE WITH EACH OTHER

On May 18, 1980, Mount St. Helens erupted. Kathy had graduated from college the day before.

She had no idea what her future would hold, but she was certain of one thing: it would involve mountains.

The next year, she made a climbing expedition to Peru and Bolivia.

**Kathy Phibbs gives a hand-up to Nancy Czech (Mt Stuart, Washington).**
Photo: Ruth Nielson.

But after three years of trying to build her alpine resume to become a professional guide, she despaired that she hadn’t become a world-famous alpinist.

To make ends meet, she used her fearlessness of heights and rope and rappelling skills to sweep chimneys and wash windows. “Success as a climber wouldn’t have been so important if my career in window washing was, well, more fulfilling,” she wrote.

She and her college pal Ross had shared many summits, but something was starting to shift for Kathy. “She did a lot of climbing in mixed groups, and she saw the need to get more women out doing it for themselves,” said Ross.

“We all had experiences of being with men who would just take charge, go on ahead or sort of try to take over for us,” said Kristen Laine, another climbing friend. “There was this assumption that we weren't strong enough, we weren't good enough, we couldn't do it as well as they could.”

When a group of guys would see Kathy and her friends in the backcountry, they’d ask: “Are you ladies alone?”

“No,” they’d reply. “We’re with each other!”

“I had started climbing with women for all the normal reasons,” Kathy wrote,

“purity of style, greater challenge, and of course, the relentless fun of it. It was a different game. We were on our own learning from each other and from what we could glean from books and overheard conversations at climber hangouts.”

In 1983, Kathy and her close friends decided to see if there were more women who wanted to climb with women. They posted flyers near the University of Washington and started word-of-mouth. To their surprise, dozens of women showed up, and packed into a small Seattle apartment.

A new grassroots group was launched: Women Climbers Northwest.

MEETING MISS DISH

“Various male companions had taught me so much in the early years of my climbing career,” Kathy wrote. “Now I yearned for a woman to continue the process.” She looked for a female mentor. Not finding one, she invented one.

With a love of history, Kathy looked to the past for inspiration. She knew about the women of the Victorian era who climbed mountains in full-length wool dresses, petticoats, lace-up patent leather boots, and wide-brimmed bonnets.

Her version was something like that. Kathy described her as “the most astonishing little old lady” dressed in a white pillbox hat with fishnet veil, a red chiffon shift and cape with gold lame’, rhinestone butterfly-wing glacier goggles, a mink stole, spotless white tennis shoes, and a combination ice ax/umbrella. A cross, perhaps, between a Victorian climber and Mary Poppins.

HER NAME WAS MISS DISH

“Miss Dish was a very proper women alpinist who was trying to teach life lessons to ‘That Kathy Girl,’ as well as all of those other young whipper snappers who needed molding to learn to take their proper place in the alpine community,” explained Ross.

Miss Dish became Kathy’s way of criticizing climbing culture. In her writing to the Women Climbers Northwest community, she used Miss Dish to proclaim: “If you don’t have time to do it right (with good manners) don’t do it.” Manners weren’t just etiquette, but rather a reverence for the mountains themselves.

Through Miss Dish, Kathy would call for a celebration of sisterhood in the mountains, and start to define a style of mountaineering in stark contrast to the “self-Importance on the part of climbers, grunting through the mountains with no thought or sight of anything other than the summit.”

She wrote: “Though it is important that we reach the top (because that’s where lunch will be), this expedition’s goals are not assault and conquest.”

Kathy organized all-women climbs in the nearby North Cascades, a cluster of sharp peaks she called her “beloveds.”

The climbs began to take on a unique style. They became celebrations, expressions of joy for being in the mountains. Good food was mandatory. And the outfits colorful. Kathy loved to pack plastic flamingos to use in summit shots.

Within the frivolity was a strong feminist message. "We wanted to say: ‘Yes, we're women and we're going to make fun of what you think we should be,’” explained Kristen, “And we're going to be strong in pearls. We're going to be strong in a dress."

MOTHERS DAY AND DIRTBAGS

When Kathy’s friends saw her on the front page of the Seattle Times on the summit of St. Helens in a red chiffon dress dress and white pillbox hat, it was hardly a surprise to them.

“That Kathy Girl,” Annette Frahm laughed. “We figured she’d do something like that.”

But the wearing of dresses on St. Helens hadn’t originally been a celebration of Mother’s Day. “It had nothing to do with moms,” Annette explained. “It was the last weekend you could climb without a permit. It just happened that was the day.”

“We were dirtbag climbers,” said Kristen. “And we didn’t want to have to pay for a permit!”

The members of Women Climbers Northwest invited their friends, and friends invited friends. They allowed boyfriends and husbands along—if they wore dresses.

“Every time we went,” said Kristen, “people were like, ‘Oh, that's great. I love seeing you all dressed up.’ We would invariably say ‘you can do it, too. Come join the party!’"

And eventually, they’d see other climbers in dresses that they didn’t know. It’d caught on.

SISTERHOOD OF SUMMITS

Despite the gaudy thrift store dresses and kitsch plastic flamingos, Kathy took her climbing seriously. She led a group of women up North America’s highest mountain, Denali. In 1989, she led an all-women expedition up the 23,000 foot Himalayan peak Pumori near Mt. Everest, known in the Sherpa language as “Mountain Daughter.”

On the centennial of the first female ascent of Mt. Rainier, Kathy organized an all-women climb. Fay Fuller, a Tacoma school teacher, had been the first in 1890. Because of the dress code of the era, she was expected to wear a dress. In homage, Kathy wore a dress. She led 33 women to the top of the Northwest’s highest mountain.

In the expansiveness of the mountains, Kathy found a freedom to be her true self. In doing so, she created a safe space for women to be themselves. “As lesbians we really valued who she was,” said her friend Rachel da Silva.

“She didn't really want to be the actual teacher as much as she wanted to support people to be the best they could. It was more like a gentle encouragement,” said her friend Annette. “Then it felt okay to be who you were because she was being who she was.”

“She got me to perform at a higher level and take more risks and to be successful where you feel like you’re capable of doing more than you’ve done in the past,” said her friend Sally Kentch. “It’s not a role model. It’s deeper. It’s more internal than that.”

DRAGONTAIL

In 1991, Kathy and a close friend went ice climbing on a peak in the Stewart Range called Dragontail.

Kathy’s friend Hope Barnes had just completed her doctorate dissertation, a perfect excuse for a celebratory trip to the mountains.

They skied into the backcountry of the Enchantments to pristine Colchuck lake and set up base camp. The day was cold and clear, good conditions for an ice climb. The route they’d picked pitched up three couloirs. An advanced climbing route, to be sure, but within their many years of experience.

Hope was a 2-time Olympic rower, and a competent and respected ice climber, mountaineer, and backcountry skier.

The two of them were cautious and conservative climbers by nature. Many times Kathy had turned back when conditions didn’t feel right. She was one of the first to use trekking poles, recalls Annette, so she could save her knees. Kathy had always told her friends she wanted to become an “old goat” of the mountains.

Their plan was to bask in the silence and isolation of the snowy backcountry. They’d added an extra day to when they told their partners to expect their return.

They were in no hurry, with no objective other than the pure joy of climbing.

Then, on the second pitch, ice, or snow, or an avalanche broke loose. It swept them off their holds, and they fell.

What happened next is a scene that is pieced together by the rescue report days later and what her friends saw when they arrived. It haunts them, still.

Hope was unconscious. Although bleeding of her own wounds, Kathy tended Hope. She arranged the climbing ropes and pulled Hope onto them to get her off the snow, and make her as comfortable as possible, as long as possible. With broken ribs and broken femur, Kathy crawled for help.

“She died trying,” said Kristen. “I know she died trying to save herself and her friend.”

She was 33.

**Kathy Phibbs in red chiffon dress poses on the summit of Mount St. Helens, 1987—when it reopened to climbers after the eruption.**
Photo: Benjamin Benschneider/Seattle Times

RETURN OF THE RED DRESS

More than 30 years since Kathy Phibbs stood on the rim of St. Helens in a red chiffon dress and pillbox hat, her friends reunite—in tutus and dresses—to honor the memory of “that Kathy Girl.”

Helping organize the group is Colleen Hinton; she never got to meet Kathy, but now carries on her role as director of Women Climbers Northwest.

Kathy’s parents, Phil and Gwen, come to support this tribute climb—and join Kathy’s old friends at the trailhead.

“It’s a very moving experience to see and recreate the kind of life Kathy led and the spirit that she had,” says Phil. Gwen stands beside him and squeezes his arm. “I think it gives a sense of closure to what happened to Kathy that’s weighed on us all these years.”

**Kathy Phibbs wore a dress to the summit of Mt. Rainier in 1990, while leading 33 women on a centennial celebration of the first female ascent by Fay Fuller, a Tacoma teacher in 1890.**
Photo: Unknown

A colorful line of climbers start at the parking lot and snake through the woods and up the snowfield, sparkling sequins.

At the top, a few dozen folks rest, snack on lunch. A couple ‘summit sodas’ are cracked and a champagne cork pops, but this ‘party’ is fairly low-key. Everyone there has had to earn their spot, step by step up the 6 miles and 5,500’ feet elevation gain. Even the 20-somethings are content to chill in the sun.

Kathy’s friends stick the pink plastic flamingos in the snow. They snack on Ginger Snaps, Kathy’s favorite. They toast. From a backpack emerges the original red dress—chiffon and gold lamé trim.

Annette offers to try it on, and poses on the crater rim, the breeze rippling the same fabric as it had on Kathy that spring day in 1987. But it isn’t the same, and everyone can feel it, but don’t want to say it out loud.

They gaze into the vast crater, silent, feeling the welling up of grief.

Ross casually points out that the elevation we are at was nothing more than a rest break on the original climb. “Over there is the Dogs Head,” he says, pointing his ski pole. I can tell that he is seeing the mountain two ways at the same time: what it is, and what it was.

“For me it’s always a bit of a ghost mountain,” Ross said. “When you get to the rim and look into that giant crater it’s beautiful but there’s also this sense of loss, of what’s missing. A double sense of loss because of this great friend who put a stamp on it.”

At the summit of St. Helens, dozens of other people celebrate. They take turns posing with a cardboard sign that reads: Happy Mother’s Day. They hand each other their phones and say, “Take one of me.” Few here, if any, know about Kathy.

But Kathy’s story, and Mount St. Helens itself, is not simply about what is no longer there, but what remains.

**Kathy was an inspiring mountaineer and found joy in the mountains.**
Photo: Ross Macfarlane

And what remains of the day is to do what ‘That Kathy Girl’ would do: tilt head to the sun, grin, feel the flutter of chiffon, and then push off on ski poles, and embrace the letting-go sensation of carving easy turns in slushy snow on a promising spring day.