William John "Billy" Beckwith, 1975-2013: In Memoriam

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• published: 08 Feb 2014
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This memorial service for Billy was held in China Camp State Park, San Rafael, California, on December 7, 2013. -------- William John "Billy" Beckwith died in San Francisco, California, on December 2 in a motorcycle accident. He was 38. Billy grew up on a 52-acre fruit-and-vegetable farm on the coast of Maine, the youngest of four children. By the time he was 6, he'd begun working 40-hour weeks in the fields beside his father, picking berries, hoeing peas and learning to drive the tractor as his siblings had before him. Billy began climbing at the age 15 on the side of the family's 150-year-old barn. He and his brother, Christian, culled rocks from the fields, drilled holes in them using their father's press drill, bolted them to the barn walls and traversed above the mud on their homemade climbing gym. A course in Outward Bound introduced Billy to winter camping when he was 17. The same year, his mother sent him to Gould Academy, where he completed his high school education, graduating in 1992. After high school, Billy joined Christian in Jackson Hole. Remembers his brother, "What followed was twenty years of adventure together that would have appalled our mother, had she been privy to the details." From his start in the Tetons, Billy matured into a natural adventurer, with numerous North American summits and El Cap routes to his credit. In his early twenties, he and a friend, Jason Lakey, bicycled from Texas to Guatemala, summitting Pico de Orizaba en route. The pair managed the ascent without acclimatization, Gore-Tex, mountain boots, or orthodoxy, shocking the expensively-clad aspirants they passed en route to the summit. Having survived the climb, the pair continued along the two-month itinerary they had penciled out on the two-dollar map they'd purchased in a Brownsville, Texas, gas station before crossing the border. Billy's formal education followed a similarly scenic route. A start at the University of Montana evolved into a semester on a bus with the Audubon Expedition Institute, crisscrossing the American southwest. This was followed by a year at Prescott College, and a concluding chapter back in Missoula. His colorful perspective may have originated in part from the number of angles of observation he enjoyed during his college years. While attending school in Prescott, Billy began to dance. As the skills he picked up on the farm flowered into a profession as a craftsman of extraordinary grace, his artistic inclinations led him to acting, and his beauty allowed him to supplement his income as a builder with jobs as a model. Eventually, the acting track led him to co-host HGTV's Curb Appeal. This "day job" got him in front of millions on TV, but his heart remained in the mountains and on the walls, particularly of Yosemite. In late September, 2012, Billy departed San Francisco on his BMW, headed for the bottom of South America with three friends. Determined to reach Ushuaia, he left his partners in Chile and soloed the remainder of the route at high speed. When he hit Argentina, the roads turned to dirt. Billy lost control of his bike; though he slowed its trajectory, he still went down in what he would later call the hardest crash of his life. When the dust settled, the bike still ran. In pain, he navigated the 200 remaining miles in time for a New Year's Eve celebration at the tip of the continent. Ten days later he had managed to navigate all the way back to Argentina to rejoin his mates. On a rafting trip, one of them fell overboard. When Billy reached out to pull him back into the boat, he was engulfed by blinding pain. His spleen, ruptured in his bike crash, now burst. Hours of emergent decision-making landed him in the Mendoza hospital, where the spleen was removed. He went on to a full recovery, and his family is grateful to have had him for an additional six months.