Bernard Rosecrans Hubbard was a esuit priest, explorer, photographer, and lecturer.
Background
Hubbard was born in San Francisco, California, on November 24, 1888, the son of George M. Hubbard and Catherine Wilder Hubbard. Although very small at birth and susceptible to childhood ailments, Hubbard was an active youngster with a keen interest in the outdoors. The family moved to Santa Cruz, Calif. , when he was six, and four years later to the Big Basin Redwood area, fifty miles south of San Francisco. There he devoted his spare time to roaming with gun, camera, and dog.
Education
After attending secondary school at St. Ignatius College in San Francisco (1898 - 1906), Hubbard completed two years at Santa Clara College.
Career
He spent his vacations in scenic regions, including Yosemite Valley and the Grand Canyon. His interest was turning toward viewing spectacular geological landscapes.
Hubbard received his Jesuit training at Los Gatos, Calif. (A. B. , 1913), Los Angeles College (1913 - 1918), and Gonzaga University in Spokane, Wash. (M. A. , 1921). He then attended Ignatius College at Innsbruck, Austria, from 1921 to 1925. "As a youngster, " he wrote later, "I was always in great difficulty because I was always arguing with my teachers. .. . I decided the only way for me to succeed was to go somewhere where I didn't know the language well enough to argue. " In Austria he "devoted more than his spare time to probing and photographing the alpine peaks and glaciers of the Austrian Tyrol. " The local people dubbed him gletscher Pfarrer ("Glacier Priest"), and this became his lifelong sobriquet. In 1925 Hubbard studied at St. Andrew-on-Hudson, N. Y.
The summer of 1926 Hubbard transferred to the University of Santa Clara, where he taught geology, Greek, and German. Apparently drawn by the spectacular scenery of Alaska, then largely unexplored, Hubbard set out in the summer of 1927 to see Mendenhall and Taku glaciers, accompanied by athletic college students. In succeeding summers he explored the previously unknown interior mountains of Kodiak Island, and visited the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes near Mt. Katmai and Aniakchak peak in the Aleutians, before and during its dramatic eruption of 1931. He served as guide in the Taku River area in 1929 for a United States Coast and Geodetic Survey triangulation team.
Alone in 1931 Hubbard traveled by dogsled 1, 600 miles from the interior of Alaska to the Bering Sea. In 1932 he and others made the first winter ascent of Mt. Katmai. In 1934, for the National Geographic Society, he mapped Alaskan areas altered by recent eruptions. Hubbard spent the winter months of 1937-1938 isolated with 200 Eskimos on King Island off Seward Peninsula. He studied their language and customs, and during the following spring and summer he traveled by boat to Eskimo settlements along Alaska's northern coast to determine whether these widely separated people spoke the same basic language. He concluded that they did.
Viewing the spectacular was Hubbard's preference, and he documented his Alaskan expeditions well. He accumulated, by his own estimate, "over one million feet of standard sized film and over one hundred thousand still pictures of the terrain. " He presented these photographs in lectures, in educational films and travel shorts, and in magazine articles. He also wrote two books on his Alaskan adventures: Mush, You Malemutes! (1932) and Cradle of the Storms (1935). Hubbard was a colorful lecturer who, in his prime, delivered 275 lectures in eight months. The public responded to the drama of his flying close over an erupting volcano, scaling mountains, and devoutly performing daily mass in the wilderness. Proceeds from his lectures supported his continuing trips to Alaska and contributed to the scattered Jesuit missions there. Alaskans appreciated his role as their volunteer ambassador. Because of the public's enthusiasm, the University of Santa Clara released Hubbard from teaching in 1930, so that he could devote full time to lecturing, writing, and further trips to Alaska.
For his intimate knowledge of traveling the terrain of Alaska, Hubbard was called upon by American military forces during World War II. He summarized for them his fourteen expeditions, provided his vast film footage and photographs, turned in reports on Bering Sea weather, and advised on arctic clothing and survival techniques. He offered to the army his own specially bred Arctic dogs, and he served as an auxiliary chaplain to the military forces in the Aleutians. Hubbard's trips to Alaska after World War II were less strenuous, but he continued to lead students to scenic points in summers until the mid-1950's, when his traveling was interrupted by a series of strokes. He died at Santa Clara.
Religion
In 1908 he became a member of the Jesuit order.