Tap Tapley and Ken Clanton, leaders of the 1971 NOLS Denali Expedition. (Provided photo — Jack Drury)

I’ve written in the past about three people who I’ve been fortunate enough to have as mentors. A fourth, Tap Tapley, doesn’t qualify, only because I didn’t spend enough time with him. But he does qualify as being a role model second to none.

I was with Tap only three times. In 1971, I spent over 40 days under his leadership on the first NOLS Denali Expedition. In 1975, on my NOLS Instructors’ Course, I spent a day with him learning the diamond hitch and how to pack a horse. The last time I saw him was in the fall of 1989 when I got to present him the first Paul Petzoldt Award for his contributions to the field of Outdoor Leadership and his influence within the profession. It was only appropriate he was the first recipient: He played major roles in establishing the first American Outward School and the National Outdoor Leadership School, the preeminent field-based wilderness schools in the country … and probably the world.

Tap met Paul Petzoldt when he was serving in the Army’s 10th Mountain Division and Paul was helping train them. He later recruited Paul to instruct for Colorado Outward Bound, and in turn, joined Paul at NOLS as one of the first instructors.

I heard him tell one of my favorite stories about Tap in 1989 at the Paul Smith’s College Forestry Club Cabin. It was how Outward Bound developed their Solo. The solo experience can range from a few hours to up to three days and has been an integral part of the Outward Bound experience for decades. The idea of the Solo is to foster self-awareness, self-confidence, maturity, stronger personal values and compassion towards others. In England, Outward Bound founder Kurt Hahn believed regular intervals of solitary silence were key to learning. But Colorado Outward Bound took it to another level by creating a 3-day solo experience.

But how did it come about?

As I heard it from Tap, “In the early days of Colorado Outward Bound, the courses had a basecamp at Marble Mountain. One day, the cook came running up to me shouting, ‘There’s been a mudslide up past Redstone and food deliveries can’t be made.’ There were four days left on the course, and tomorrow we’d be out of food. I thought for a moment and figured we could have the students spend three days reflecting on their experience and their lives.”

Thus the 3-day Solo became an integral part of the Outward Bound experience, not because of some higher calling, but because they ran out of food.

Another story I heard was that while in the Army, Tap and another soldier spent a month isolated on an island in the Aleutians. The Army arranged an airdrop of food, but they screwed up and dropped only a 3-foot square case of butter. That was it: 9-cubic feet of butter. I had this vision of him eating nothing but butter for a month. Many years later I learned he was more resourceful than that. They survived on ptarmigan, a member of the grouse family that are relatively easy to hunt. Although not the tastiest birds, they have saved many stranded Alaskans … including Tap and his companion.

They had ptarmigan, cooked in butter for breakfast, lunch and dinner — except for the day their pet malamute brought a fox back to camp. Then they had fox tenderloin that night … cooked in butter.

The first time I met Tap was the day we met to prepare for climbing Denali. (Although it was called Mount McKinley at the time, I always preferred the native name and continue to use it, despite the President’s wishes.) He had brown hair with a slightly receding hairline, brown eyes, high cheekbones and a ruddy dark complexion. It didn’t surprise me when I learned many years later that he was part Passamaquoddy Indian. As our team got to know one another and started packing food and equipment for over 40 days in the field, he stood out.

It became obvious he was comfortable in the woods, on rock, on snow, on the ocean or horseback, hunting with a bow and arrows made by himself, throwing a knife, hatchet or axe. He was the most complete outdoorsman I ever met. He exuded an aura. You could tell he was the real deal. While I have a loud voice and use it to command attention, he did just the opposite. He commanded attention with a soft voice. He was a humble man of few words that made you feel totally confident in his abilities. He didn’t talk about leadership, he modeled it.

Tap set the tone of the expedition with four clear objectives: We wanted a safe expedition; we wanted to like folks at the end of the trip as well as we did at the beginning; we wanted to test our new synthetic-filled sleeping bags and cold weather clothing; and we wanted to summit — in that order.

Unfortunately, we had a tragic accident, so we didn’t meet the first objective, but that’s a story for another time. We did have great group dynamics, worked well as a team, and developed life-long friendships. Due to unforeseen circumstances, my sleeping bag got soaked during our ascent. But I slept warm in below-freezing temperatures in a wet sleeping bag, and by morning the sleeping bag was completely dry. I was sold on synthetic-filled insulation.

When the accident, storms, airdrop problems and other issues kept us from summiting, we were obviously disappointed. We had been on the mountain for nearly 40 days and had been rebuffed on two summit attempts. We were discouraged and ready to head home.

Tap provided perspective in his low key way: “We were successful in some of our objectives but not in others. Keep in mind, you don’t conquer a mountain you have to learn to coexist with it. And we coexisted with the mountain. We climbed the mountain, but we didn’t summit. But don’t let anyone tell you otherwise we climbed the mountain.”

This 22-year-old came away a little older … and a lot wiser.