The family roots of Flora Bertrand Huber in this area go back to before there was an Oregon. In 1809, just a few years after Lewis and Clark had explored the land, Flora’s great-great uncle, Etienne Lucier, moved north from California to a territory occupied by French and English settlers and the various First Nation tribes of the area.
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Two generations later Flora’s father was born in Portland to a family whose business was building sternwheelers to navigate the local waterways. On a trip to Washington state in 1930, he met his future wife and Flora’s mother-to-be on the Quinault reservation on the Olympic peninsula. She describes her father as French, Chinook and Cowlitz and her mother as English, French, Cree, Quinault, and Sioux. The couple returned to Portland and settled on the Willamette River, on the west bank across from what is now Swan Island. Flora was born there in 1935.
She grew up in a Portland far different than we know today. Bordered by the river in front and Forest Park out her back door, the natural world was Flora’s playground from an early age. She hiked the trails of the park, took the family rowboat out on the river to explore, hunted, dug clams, and picked “hundreds” of trilliums.
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Flora enrolled in the Portland State Extension Center (now Portland State) with an interest in chemistry and enjoyed strolling downtown to the Mazama clubrooms, then in the Pacific Building at 5th and Yamhill.
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Flora finally returned to climbing in 1992, making it up Mount Adams on a Ray Sheldon-led climb. From then on it has been gung-ho. Flora estimates that she has participated in at least 40 successful Mazama climbs and received her Guardian Peaks award in 1992. She became a hike leader in 1996 and is on the schedule several times a month to this day. One of the benefits of joining Flora on a hike is that she draws from a lifetime of experience in the woods and has extensive knowledge of the plants and trees of our bio-region.
In the Mazamas Flora has served on the Trail Trips committee, First Aid Committee and currently leads the Classics in their many activities. She is also a proud recipient of a 50-year membership pin.
But Flora does not just rest on her climbing and hiking laurels. She has volunteered at the information center at Multnomah Falls Lodge for twenty years, and knows more about ice hockey than any 83 year old woman you’ll ever meet, having had season tickets to various local teams since the 1960s.
And Flora is very proud of her Native American background. She is considered an Elder (“that just means you’re old” she says) in the Quinault tribe and travels to the reservation with regularity to attend events there.
Climber, hiker, skier, native Oregonian, mother, nurse, naturalist and adventurer, Flora Bertrand Huber has led a rich life in the Northwest.
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