Doug Walker scaled some of the world’s tallest peaks, scurrying up them with endless energy and unbridled enthusiasm. And while he lived much of his life at high elevations, perhaps what was most impressive about the Seattle mountain climber, software pioneer and philanthropist was his ability to stoop down to help others.
Walker, who died at the age of 64 in an avalanche on New Year’s Eve on Granite Mountain, was remembered Friday night in an uplifting celebration of a brilliant mathematician, entrepreneur and father who energetically and optimistically embraced life.
Attorneys, computer scientists, mountain rescue workers, venture capitalists, civic leaders, academics, CEOs and non-profit directors packed Benaroya Hall in downtown Seattle for the ceremony, hearing stories of how an outgoing South Carolina-born wilderness and book nut became one of Seattle’s most important entrepreneurs and philanthropists.
The co-founder of WRQ and former REI chairman was so many things to so many people — a great business leader, a devoted family man, an adventurer with a heart, a trailblazing philanthropist — that is almost impossible to encapsulate him in one simple sentence.
“Like a great red wine, Doug’s life had become rich and complex in flavor,” said his wife Maggie Walker. “He was interested in an eclectic array of subjects and pursuits and he tackled them all with characteristic enormous enthusiasm and energy. He was always curious, and always looking for the next challenge, the next problem to solve.”
A humble and unassuming leader, Walker was actively engaged with The Seattle Parks Foundation, The Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, MOHAI, Social Venture Partners, The Wilderness Society and The Sierra Club.
Curiosity and an outsized intellect got Walker into trouble early in his life, where one of his teachers suggested psychological examination and another said he was not “college material.” Turned out, Walker — who voraciously consumed encyclopedias like a sponge as a kid — was just bored with school because it was not challenging enough.
He was most comfortable at the family’s wilderness retreat in River Falls at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains, where his love of climbing was born.
Walker eventually did break into college, attending Vanderbilt University where he flexed his intellectual muscles through studies in mathematics.
“He was so driven that he would often enroll in two courses that met at the same time, and he aced both,” said his niece Meredith Walker Gower. He also came to the conclusion that a 24-hour day was “completely inefficient,” so he implemented a 36-hour daily schedule for himself.
“This worked just fine for Doug. He could sleep through class and still achieve top marks,” said Walker Gower. He kept his climbing skills fresh as well, earning the nickname Deputy Doug when he repelled from a friend’s 12-story dormitory on campus.
On the trails with him later in life, Walker Gower recalled that you’d have to “dig deep to match his stamina,” but he always kept others moving along with him even as he pressed his fellow hikers with Shakespeare trivia questions or brain teasers.
“He just had a subtle way of challenging you to strive further and harder,” she said. “It is hard to talk about Doug in the past tense because he was so present in this life, and so very alive.”
That joie de vivre is something that Todd Bibler — one of Walker’s early climbing buddies — frequently encountered. Before Bibler even met Walker, he heard a story about how Walker took a group of Vietnamese math students from the University of Washington on an ascent of Chair Peak, hiking out in the dark.
“I remember wondering: What kind of guy would do such a thing,” recalled Bibler. “After we met, he told me the students, being from Saigon, had never seen mountains before and he thought they should.”
As the Vietnamese students reached the summit of the mountain, many started to yell “too much fun, too much fun.”
And Bibler said that later became a rallying cry for them as they completed expeditions together.
“Doug tried to find a way to get the most out of every climbing trip,” Bibler recalled, noting how Walker gained so much pleasure in exposing others to the wilderness.
“He took his sense of joy out on every trip, even if he had been there hundreds of times. Doug believed it was important to witness the beauty of the mountain wilderness first-hand to get into the thick of it, to experience the vastness, to be humbled by the surroundings, to feel the magic of finding oneself in a position out of the ordinary of modern life, and to experience some of the physical struggle that city life eliminates.”
“Doug overflowed with inexhaustible energy,” he added.
That energy also applied to WRQ, the software company he co-founded in 1981 and grew into one of the biggest in the U.S.
Don Immerwahr, an early employee at WRQ, recalled a story about how Walker became so excited at an office party that he scaled the “previously unclimbed” 60-foot north wall of the atrium in the company’s headquarters. One year, Walker decided that WRQ’s software needed its own programming language, so in the course of 10 days on a family vacation he created one. Sometimes, Walker would just pop into Immerwahr’s office and ask him things like: “Hey, do you remember Gauss’s Law for Magnetism?”
“It is so much fun to talk about Doug,” said Immerwahr. “He was a true polymath, with a major in math. And without a mean bone in his body.”
Employees joked that Walker would talk incessantly about climbing in the office, and while on the trail he’d only talk about work. In fact, Walker joked that he preferred to work at home because he talked so much that no one could get any work done.
Initially, the WRQ employees could outpace Walker on their many team-building climbing and hiking expeditions, in part because of a smoking habit.
But things changed abruptly when Walker quit.
“It was such a sad day for us when he decided to stop smoking,” said Immerwahr to laughs from the crowd. “He became this aerobic animal, and we were never able to keep up with him after that.”
Walker created a family-oriented culture at WRQ by which all other companies will be judged, said Immerwahr. That struck him early in his interviews at WRQ when Walker’s then 2-year-old daughter, Kina, appeared in the office and Walker completed the job interview with Kina on his lap.
“Our team approach was cultivated by the partners, especially Doug,” recalled Immerwahr. “It seemed to me that how we worked together and how we treated each other was just as important to Doug as what we worked on.”
That deep connection to people was also something that Jamie Williams, president of the Wilderness Society, encountered after Walker took on leadership positions at the non-profit.
“In my greatest moments, but more importantly in my weakest and most challenging moments, he was always there with the right words of support. He didn’t sweat the details, or the small stuff. He was a big picture guy…. Doug gave of himself to so many people and so many organizations, and what was remarkable about that was how he could connect people together around big ideas.”
