Chuck Ford was born on June 10, 1946 in San Francisco to Lawrence and Janet Ditz Ford. He attended elementary school in San Francisco and high school in Lawrenceville, New Jersey. Upon graduation from high school, he enrolled at UC Berkeley, where he met and a year later married the love of his life, Elizabeth Bentley. After being drafted in 1967 and serving two years in the Army, Chuck and Liz settled in San Francisco with their first-born son, Peter. A second son, Ethan, followed shortly thereafter.

Disillusioned by the Vietnam War, Chuck joined the anti-war movement and began work at G.I. Help, an organization dedicated to advising and serving in-service conscientious objectors, deserters and AWOLs. After G.I. Help was crushed by the FBI, Chuck turned his attention to photography, studying it first at San Francisco State University, and then independently with Ansel Adams, Ruth Bernhard, and Morley Baer. He then embarked on a 21-year commercial photography career.

In 1973, Chuck and Liz and the two boys moved out of the city to Lagunitas in the bucolic San Geronimo Valley of West Marin. Enamored of the surrounding beauty and strong sense of community, they never left. In their early years there, Chuck served on the Lagunitas School District Board of Trustees, and became deeply involved in Inner City Outings, a Sierra Club program that provides wilderness outings to underserved youth. ICO became a passion for Chuck–a calling, he often said–and that led to his abandoning commercial photography and start working at the Team Program, an outdoor adventure based program of the Tamalpais Union High School District. He led the Team Program for 21 years before retiring in 2013.

After retirement, Chuck was elected to the Tamalpais High School District Board of Trustees and served there for five years. He continued his volunteer efforts at the Team Program and ICO almost up to the end, going on many local day hikes and extended backpack trips. Over the decades, he led young people on over 500 outdoor excursions. In his spare time, Chuck was an avid trail runner and competed in many trail ultramarathons until he blew his knee out. He then turned to cycling, and treasured his weekly rides with the Old Spokes cycling group, still regularly completing 50-mile and longer rides while on chemotherapy.

Aside from his family, the great outdoors was Chuck’s passion in life. Whether it was trail running, cycling, hiking, or backpacking, he was always happiest when he was away from the hustle and bustle of civilization. Though he had travelled to many of the world’s most beautiful places, he always felt none exceeded his beloved Sierra Nevada. He felt compelled to share it and our other beautiful places with those who otherwise might not experience them. That and his decades long advocacy for youth came together when he shaped the Team Program. Team was a perfect fit for his skills and passion, and he considered those 21 years to be his true life’s work. There, he guided students not just through the literal wilderness, but also the wilderness of adolescence. One of his innovations was the creation of the only Wilderness Medicine course taught in a public school in the United States, inspiring many of his students to pursue careers in medicine. He was awarded three Golden Bell awards by the Marin County School Boards Association and was named Teacher of the Year by the Tamalpais High School District.