Nominees for the GCC Board of Directors – 2014-2016 term

Chair – Pete Cody

Treasurer – Fred Polvere

Fred Polvere has been hiking since 1957 and climbing since 1972. He has climbed extensively throughout the United States, Canada and Switzerland.Active in outdoor organizations for over 40 years, Fred is a Charter Member of the GCC. He has maintained trails for the NY-NJ Trail Conference and was the supervisor of the Appalachian Trail in Harriman/Bear Mountain State Park. He was active in getting Peterskill in Minnewaska State Park opened to climbing – scouting trails and routes and taking baseline photos.

Fred started climbing with the Appalachian Mountain Club and still has Mohonk Preserve buttons numbered 72 and 73 which he inherited from his climbing mentor – Chuck Loucks. For the AMC, Fred led instructional programs teaching aid-climbing, cliff rescue techniques and leader safety. On an Adirondack trip he led up the Trap Dike and slide on Mt Colden, Fred and two other climbers hauled eight bottles of wine to the summit, while his wife, Natalie, carried cheese and crackers much to the astonishment and enjoyment of the other climbers.

When not outdoors, Fred can be found listening to classical music and opera and reading and writing about politics.

Secretary – Jannette Wing Pazer

I first learned how to climb from my college outing club at the Gunks in 1981. In 2010 I moved full time to Gardiner, so I can be even more involved in the Gunks climbing community and make good use of my life membership to the Mohonk Preserve. I have two teenage daughters who also climb.My degree is in computer science and my career was doing UNIX operating systems development and program management. I am now doing digital marketing and search engine optimization. I am the webmaster for the Gunks Climbers’ Coalition and my own website, cliffmama.com. In my past I have been secretary and newsletter editor of the Syracuse University Outing Club and for 2 caving clubs, the Northern New Jersey Grotto, and the Shawangunk-Catskill Area Grotto. Back in 2003, I created a Gunks family climbing group which now has over 70 climbing families in it.

As Secretary, my tasks include taking minutes at our meetings, archiving letters and memorabilia from our activities, and participating in GCC planning, events and decisions. While the official role as Secretary does not include the webmaster and mailing list administration roles, as the GCC “Geek”, I enjoy being able to contribute by taking on any computer-related jobs for the organization, especially with the social media marketing skills I have since learned in my digital marketing career. This includes maintaining our gunksclimbers.org website, Facebook, Google+ and Pinterest page, Twitter feed, and mailing list, sending out email news flashes and posting and participating in climbing website discussion groups on behalf of the GCC.

Director-at-Large – Jason Beaupre

Bio coming soon!

Director-at-Large – France Menk

My climbing career started before nursery school with chairs, and graduated to garage roofs and fences as I grew tall enough. After my hire as an Outward Bound instructor in expedition travel at the Minnesota Voyager school, I changed to rock as a climbing medium. I was the first woman to complete a mountain search & rescue course with Norwich University in Vermont. Outside of New Paltz, New England, Minnesota and Western Ontario, I have climbed in Switzerland, the UK, Australia and Spain. For hobnobbing ;-), I’ve climbed with our own Dick Williams, Tony Sartin, Peter Darmi and Julie Seyfert in the Gunks; with Dougal Haston in Switzerland; and scrambled on the bottom slopes of Everest and Annapurna. I engage in buildering from time to time (that’s not a typo). I moved to New Paltz in 1994 to be nearer the Gunks and still be able to travel easily to New York City, which, as a photographer. is my primary market.Relevant career history background for PR outreach for the GCC:

TV commercial storyboard design; editorial & corporate identity design; fashion, editorial and political illustration; political cartooning; photojournalism, photo editing for the web as well as print and fine art photography and multimedia design. I maintain a website: france-menk.com and a blog: sbasa.net (linked from my website).

My contribution to the GCC started at its inception as a contributing member of the team writing its mission statement. I designed our logo and its applications. I am a liaison contact with other climbing organizations, and contribute to our press release content as well as person to person communication.

Embedded in my personal passion for our sport, is my belief in proactive educational outreach by every climber. By engaging in dialogue with climbers and non-climbers alike, we will promote understanding of how our particular activity, with its requirement for open, untrammelled space, protects the ecosystem for all. My door is always open.

Director at Large – Tim Keenan

Living in the area since 2005, Tim Keenan got his start as a climber nearly a decade ago in West Virginia. While attending school there, he was a founding member of the Coopers Rock Regional Climbers Coalition which helped to solidify the stance of the climbing community there as a resource for education and conservation. Since moving to New York, Tim has found his place at the Gunks, helping to develop many new bouldering areas, while ticking off classics both on boulders and on a rope. He has become involved with the GCC in a meaningful way and is excited about what the future brings for the organization.

Director-at-Large – David Wilkes

David is an avid rock and ice climber, along with a number of other high-adrenaline pursuits that include flying an airplane, motorcycle racing and mountaineering. He is a Contributing Editor for the American Alpine Journal and has completed the AMGA single pitch rock instructor course and assessment.By day he runs a successful boutique international law practice based in New York that focuses on complex land rights and valuation disputes around the world, and has served as Senior Legal Advisor on projects in the Middle East and Eastern Europe. He is the Editor in Chief of the New York State Bar Association’s nationally acclaimed monthly magazine, and prior to that ran an academic quarterly for New York University. He has served as Chairman of many professional organizations and not-for-profit boards, including a national professional standards-setting agency sanctioned by Congress and based in Washington, DC. He is currently at work on three long-term book projects and enjoys painting and photographing cityscapes.