Dee Molenaar
Dee Molenaar (June 21, 1918 – January 19, 2020) was an American mountaineer, author and artist. He is best known for The Challenge of Rainier, published in 1971, a key history of climbing Mount Rainier.
He was born in Los Angeles to Dutch immigrant parents, Marina and Peter Molenaar. During World War II, he served as a photographer in the U.S. Coast Guard in the Aleutian Islands and the western Pacific.
In 1950, he earned a Bachelor of Science in geology from the University of Washington. He later worked as a civilian adviser at Camp Hale and the Mountain Warfare Training Center.
Molenaar worked as a park ranger and mountain guide in Mount Rainier National Park, climbing Rainier more than 50 times, on personal trips and as a guide. He explored more than a dozen routes and completed three first ascents. He also took part in the 1946 second ascent of Mount Saint Elias in Alaska.
He joined the Third American Karakoram Expedition to K2 in 1953, a trip that faced a severe storm and dangerous conditions. In 1965, he joined Jim Whittaker and Robert F. Kennedy for the first ascent of Mount Kennedy in the Yukon, named after Kennedy.
His career with the U.S. Geological Survey took him to Alaska, Colorado, Utah and Washington, and he retired in 1983. On April 7, 2012, the American Alpine Club inducted him into its Hall of Mountaineering Excellence.
Molenaar met his wife Colleen on Mount Rainier, and they had three children. He turned 100 in 2018 and died in 2020 at a care home in Burlington, Washington.
As an artist, Molenaar painted in watercolors and oils, often depicting mountains and deserts in an impressionist style. He painted the highest watercolor in history, creating a memory painting of K2 over 10 days from a tent at 25,000 feet during the 1953 expedition, even as fuel for melting snow ran low and teammates urged him to drink the remaining water colored with pigments.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 12:31 (CET).