In Memory of James Anderson, Clare Pogerba, Mark Levitan, Ray Martin, and Jerry Kanzler - Yellow Bay State Park, MT - Citizen Memorials on Waymarking.com

This Citizen Memorial is for five young men you died while attempting to scale Mount Cleveland in 1969. It is located in Yellow Bay State Park in Montana, beside a small stone bridge over Yellow Creek and with a view over Flathead Lake. It is a short distance from Bigfork, MT - the hometown of James Anderson. The bodies of the five men were discovered in late June 1970.

Partial text from the memorial:

IN MEMORY OF
JAMES ANDERSON - CLARE POGREBA
MARK LEVITAN - RAY MARTIN - JERRY KANZLER
THESE MAN DIED WHILE SCALING
MT. CLEVELAND. GLACIER NAT'L PARK
DEC. 29. 1969

NEVER THE SPIRIT WAS BORN. THE SPIRIT SHALL CEASE TO BE NEVER.
NEVER WAS TIME WHEN IT WAS NOT. END AND BEGINNING ARE DREAMS!
BIRTHLESS ABD DEATHLESS AND CHANGELESS REMAINETH THE SPIRIT FOR EVER.
DEATH HATH NOT TOUCHED IT AT ALL, DEAD THOUGH THE HOUSE OF IT SEEMS.
FROM THE BHAGAVAD-BITA

The following news article was published on Jan 8th, 1970, about a week after the climbers went missing:

Little Hope Five Climbers Alive
January 8, 1970
Port Angeles Evening News
Port Angeles, Washington
Searchers prepared early today to return to Mount Cleveland for possibly the last time this winter with little or no hope of finding alive any of five missing mountain climbers. After five days of searching the rugged peak In a remote section of Glacier National Park, rescue workers had only a few articles carried by two of the missing men to show for their efforts. The articles, found in a snowslide, included a backpack, a parka and a camera. Mountaineering experts said Wednesday for the first time since the youths disappeared that search operations should be "considered one of recovery rather than search and rescue." Authorities said continued search efforts were dependent on the weather. A spokesman for a group of Canadian alpinists participating in the search said avalanche conditions In the area were "considerably dangerous" and said a light wind or more snow could start more slides. The temperature fell to about 10 degrees below zero Wednesday night and a Pacific weather system was forecast to bring snow to the area late today. Authorities said the climbers apparently never reached the top of the 10,448-foot peak, A search helicopter landed on the summit late Wednesday, The crew checked the registration log and found that none of the missing men had signed the log, officials said. The five hiked into the area Dec, 27 and were due out last Friday, They were Clare Pogreba and Ray Martin, both 22, of Butte; Mark Levitan, 20, of Helena; Jerry Kanzler, 18, of Bozeman and Mark Anderson, 18, of Bigfork, They were experienced climbers. A film developed from the camera found in the snowslide showed a panoramic view of Mount Cleveland. Authorities declined to say to whom the articles found in the slide belonged. Tracks traced to the slide indicated that only two of the five men may have perished there. No trace of the other three had been found, Canadian and American officials conferred Wednesday at Waterton, Alta, with parents and relatives of the missing climbers to explain the situation.

For a thorough report on the tragedy including the search and the discovery of the five bodies, visit www.outsideonline.com/1907616/and-none-came-back

An excerpt from that article:

Jerry Kanzler, Clare Pogreba, Ray Martin, Mark Levitan, and James Anderson—were only in their late teens and early twenties, but they had rambled around Glacier since they could walk. Jerry Kanzler, 18, and his older brother, Jim, had been raised climbing here with their father, Hal, an Okinawa vet with a passion for wildlife photography. Park rangers knew the Kanzlers to be among the most talented climbers in the region.

Their friends Ray Martin and Clare Pogreba had founded the climbing club at Montana Tech. They were known as Mutt and Jeff to family, friends, and professors alike: Ray, who worked summers in Alaska fighting fires, was a gangly six-foot-six with a grin as broad as his face. Clare was a stocky five-foot-two, with a sloping, Eastern European nose; his head came to just under his friend's armpit. Clare had taken to flooding sections of ramp inside the college football stadium to construct a long sheet of ice, and he'd inch his way up it using crampons and ice axes.

At 22 years old, Martin and Pogreba were the oldest, and the leaders in spirit if not necessarily in ability; even they considered Jerry Kanzler to be a superior mountaineer. Not long before the Mount Cleveland trip, the Kanzlers had gone off to Oregon and Washington to climb some of the highest mountains in the Northwest—Mount Rainier, Mount Hood, Mount St. Helens, and Mount Adams—all in a week. Jerry's grace on rock faces left his companions awestruck. Peter Lev, a skiing and climbing instructor at Montana State who would go on to become a co-owner of the world-renowned Exum Mountain Guides, considered Jerry the best mountaineer he'd taught.

James Anderson and Mark Levitan were not nearly the technical climbers their friends were, but they were nonetheless comfortable on high peaks. Levitan, 20, was the bookish son of a Tenth Mountain Division battalion surgeon who had been the division's only officer taken prisoner of war. Father and son had scaled the Grand Teton. At Montana State, Mark had also enrolled in Peter Lev's ski mountaineering class, and it was there that he befriended fellow intellectual James Anderson. By the time of the Mount Cleveland expedition, Anderson, 18, had already climbed the comparatively gentle west face twice, although during the summer. The sheer wall of the north face, especially in winter, would present challenges of a different order.

The team was missing its most accomplished climber, Jerry Kanzler's brother, Jim. Recently married and responsible for a young son, he had accepted a job as a ski patroller at Bridger Bowl. But if anyone could do the north face, this group could; together they'd pioneered routes up peaks from Bozeman to the Canadian border, including a first ascent of Glacier's Citadel Spire, with its daunting 350-foot pinnacle. Pogreba and Martin had completed a two-week course in avalanche safety in the Tetons. Before they graduated, before jobs and families and Vietnam, they wanted to scale Mount Cleveland.

What happened to these climbers left an indelible mark on an entire generation of outdoorsmen. Prepared and informed, suspended between an older corps of relatively few and highly skilled experts and today's army of backcountry skiers and climbers, they stood on the eve of a new era of American adventuring. Their story is no less relevant today than it was in 1969.