Milton Hildebrand
Milton Hildebrand died on Nov. 28. He was 102 years old.
Milton and his three siblings grew up in Berkeley in a family that provided varied outdoor activities and exposed them to science. (Their father was an eminent chemist on the UC Berkeley faculty.)
Starting at age 8, Milton participated in many Sierra pack trips with family and friends. The children all became proficient at camping and packing burros and mules. When he was 11, Milton and his brothers attended a boy’s boarding school in Switzerland for six months, learning skiing, German, and how to be pals with international classmates.
As an undergraduate student at UC Berkeley, Milton majored in zoology. He skied in the winters (he was captain of the university ski team, and, on skis, made winter ascents of several peaks, including Mount Shasta), and spent most of his summers in the Sierra. He was the manager, and nine times leader, of the burro-trip outings of the Sierra Club (20 people and 12 burros f