with a young Japanese woman named Keiko Ishikawa. Early that summer, they traveled from Japan to Italy to lead a walk in the Dolomites. He and Keiko then flew back to the U.S. to spend some time in Bishop. During the drive home from Los Angeles International Airport, Smoke relinquished the wheel to Keiko and crawled in the back of his small truck to sleep under the camper shell. Somewhere near the town of Mojave, Keiko lost control of the vehicle; it slipped from the road and rolled. She was relatively unhurt but Smoke suffered massive head trauma and after spending more than a week in intensive care, he died of his injuries on June 23, 1989. His friends held a memorial service for him in the Buttermilk Rocks near Bishop as the summer climbing season wound down and before the Asian trekking season started, allowing all of his friends, fellow guides, and loved ones to be there. There was a light dusting of snow on the ground that day and the air was crisp during the service attended by more than two hundred people celebrating the man's life and retelling stories of times shared with Smoke through tears and laughter. Smoke Blanchard was cremated and his remains were scattered up in Big Pine Canyon, California between the fourth and fifth lakes in the Eastern Sierra that he so loved. Miscellaneous details Suffered severe frostbite in his feet in 1955 while climbing. In the summer of 1967 he walked across the state of California, from White Mountain Peak to the Pacific Ocean. The hike was to commemorate his thirty years in California and he called it "the best trip I ever made." In 1968, he led a group of friends and trekkers on an Anderson Pass walk, which took them through the shadows of Mount Huntington and Mount McKinley in Alaska. Less than a year later he completed his almost solo walk of the Oregon and Washington coasts (most of Oregon in 1962, part of Washington in 1963, and the 1968 link up that involved the rest of Oregon and Washington). Was a professed Buddhist and had trekked Gaya to Sarnath to visit two of India's Buddhist holy sites in the mid-1960s. he and Laurie Engel made a pilgrimage trip to all five of the most prominent Buddhist holy sites in early 1968. The pair rented two blue bicycles for