LOCALadk Magazine

12 Fall 2014 LOCALadk Adirondack 76'er By Bethany Garretson Ron Hesseltine is an inspiration to anyone facing adversity. Tall and lean with a crop of white hair and strong hazel eyes framed with glasses, he's a familiar face in Saranac Lake. In 1974 Ron and his wife Carol purchased Upstate Auto, the Chrysler Plymouth dealership in Tupper Lake and relocated to Lake Cobly Drive in 1980. In his home, photos of seven children, 19 grandchildren, and four great grandchildren line the shelves and refrigerator space. A set of weights is stacked neatly to the side, next to a turntable with a selection of albums by country artists such as Buck Owens and Dolly Parton. Ron wakes up at 6:30 in the morning, stretches and exercises for 45 minutes, then eats a bowl of oat bran cereal. He considers life to be a beautiful challenge—something to embrace and improve upon with age. This philosophy may explain why Ron is the only "Adirondack 76er," a term he coined for those who start and complete a round of the 46 High Peaks after their 76th birthday. "I never had a bad climb in my whole life, I've loved every one of them," Ron exclaims. His face lights up when he talks about mountains. Before him are piles of maps and leather bound journals, his cursive on their pages, recording the round trip time of every hike, weather forecast, and trail conditions. His favorite High Peak is Haystack, partly because his granddaughter Hallie Dell Bitner joined him. He can live without Couchsachraga. He celebrated his 77th birthday on Panther, 78th on Basin and Saddleback, and 79th on Cascade with his grandson Skylar Dell (who surprised him with a cake). He laughs about a memorable winter hike on Lower Wolf Jaw that included an ornery gate keeper and a tumble down a steep bank. After an hour of conversation, it's clear what's important to Ron Hesseltine: family, mountains, and overcoming adversity. It started with a sharp pain in the palm of his left hand. It was a beautiful day in July, twelve years ago and sun filtered in through the hardwood leaves as he ran along the D&H railroad bed that stretches from Saranac Lake to Bloomingdale. It was a trail he was familiar with, having grown up a few miles away in Lake Colby. Ron knew where the railroad bed banked and where the balsam smelt the strongest. His shoes slapped against the sandy gravel and the pain spread from his palm, up his arm, across his chest and down his right arm. Ron walked back to his truck and drove himself to the hospital. He described the pain and within minutes was lying on a hospital bed as doctors worked to dissolve the blood clot. Ron was having a heart attack. And in the midst of the tubes, wires, and monitors, he was wondering what good thing God had waiting for him. Because in the past, with each unexpected hardship, he received more blessings than he could have imagined. "You're lucky to be alive," the doctor told Ron after they put a stent in his heart. The blood clot was in the main artery of the heart. "If anything is going to give you a fatal heart attack, that's the one that will do it," the doctor further explained. After a few trips to Fletcher Allen Hospital in Vermont for tests, Ron was told his heart wasn't functioning properly and he'd need surgery. It would be six weeks until there was an opening. Ron left the hospital with a mission—he had six weeks to get his heart back in shape. When he got home he grabbed his stop watch and headed down to the railroad bed. He walked two miles and clocked his time. Each day, he tried to do it a bit quicker. By the end of six weeks, when the doctor hooked Ron up to a monitor, his jaw dropped. "What did you do?" He asked. "This is not the same heart I saw six weeks ago." The heart beating inside Ron and displayed on the screen was triumphantly healthy and did not need surgery. Ron smiled to himself as he walked out the door without a follow up appointment card. This was not the first - or last time - he beat the odds. At eighteen Ron was diagnosed with infectious hepatitis and almost died. Sick and bedridden for two years, the silver lining of that story was a pretty girl named Carol Hoyt who visited him every day. Ron made a full recovery and married Carol in 1955. "I was always so thankful I got sick. If I hadn't, I wouldn't have fallen in love and gotten married," he says. One year after the heart attack, Ron was diagnosed with prostate cancer. More doctors, more tests, more decisions. Radiation or surgery? He opted for the latter and after two operations and three years, beat the cancer. For the cancer, as well, exercising on the rail road bed and pushing himself to do better was part of the recovery. "If I hadn't experienced that adversity of nearly dying young, I wouldn't have dealt as well with the heart attack and cancer," Ron explains. "I knew good things were going to happen." When the level terrain lost its challenge, he began to wonder how he'd do on a mountain. One evening, he looked out his back window and examined Mt. Pisgah. He decided it was a perfect place to start. And that's when the good things began.

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