Discussion Topic |
|
This thread has been locked |
jstan
climber
|
|
|
Oct 31, 2008 - 01:11pm PT
|
We all choose different things that we allow to affect us. Many were much affected by the "White Spider", a book I never encountered. The French ascent of Annapurna alpine style affected me.
When you get into marginal situations, invariably the dangers begin to roll up and multiply. When your fingers get too cold to button your coat you have to choose to let core temperature drop long enough to get your hands working. When you have not got the strength to remove your crampons, you know you are sacrificing your feet to frostbite.
If you choose to visualize it this way, climbing can be nothing other than you and your relationship with a rock. The rock has no feelings. It is neutral. You own it all. if you manage it properly and think ahead things don't tend to roll up.
The rock and you both come out ahead.
|
|
rbob
climber
|
|
|
Oct 31, 2008 - 01:13pm PT
|
wow! makes the bugaboos these days seem like a a fully-furnished alpine crag... oh wait...
|
|
Alan Rubin
climber
Amherst,MA.
|
|
|
Oct 31, 2008 - 01:25pm PT
|
It should be noted that rgold's incantations to The Master had little long term effect, as soon enough he too was "corrupted" by the Vulgarian ethos---and spread it to Devil's Lake where he infected a yet newer generation of innocents---such as myself----must've been the Teton Tea!!!!
|
|
rgold
Trad climber
Poughkeepsie, NY
|
|
|
Oct 31, 2008 - 04:09pm PT
|
Yes, as Al mentions, only a few years later I went over to the Dark Side. But it should be noted that, as was the case with so many of the 60's revolutionaries, the Vulgarians almost universally ended up as conventionally successful members of society. I remember Dave Craft, owner-manager of The North Light restaurant, shaking his head incredulously and saying, "I just threw out a bunch of guys acting just the way we used to act!"
One can't help wondering whether the Vulgarians weren't, in some sense, the creation of the conservative forces that fueled their rebellion, and that when they eventually ``won,'' they extinguished the foil required for their outlaw identities and so simultaneously lost both the context and pretext for their activities.
A few historical observations about Claude's account. I'm fairly sure it was Bob Kamps, not Ken Weeks, who caught Chouinard's 160' fall on the North Face of the Crooked Thumb. It was many years before the route was completed, I think by Pete Cleveland and Don Storjohann. Ken Weeks was, I think, hiding out from the FBI in the climbers' campground. He was AWOL from the US Army and had no intention of going back. The climbing rangers knew about this and looked the other way, but the FBI tracked him to the climbers' camp anyway and Weeks was arrested by supervisory ranger personnel.
|
|
Alan Rubin
climber
Amherst,MA.
|
|
|
Oct 31, 2008 - 04:33pm PT
|
It was Cleveland and Storjohn who finally finished the Crooked Thumb route in 1966. One other factoid about Chouinard's fall is that he was wearing a swami belt (a few wraps of 1" tubular webbing around the waist usually knotted with a bowline on a coil--with no leg-loops--the rope was then either tied -in directly to the swami or clipped on with a locking biner), which was at the time an avant garde technique--most climbers simply tied-in by wrapping the rope directly around the waist. Chouinard attributed his lack of internal injuries to this system--appropriately, it seems--so that this eventually became the normal method of tying-in for a number of years (with various modifications to add leg-loops to the system for some)until decent harnesses became available in the early '70s.
|
|
jstan
climber
|
|
|
Oct 31, 2008 - 04:39pm PT
|
Now I never heard of tying a swami with a bowline on a coil. The rope yes, not the swami. After we started using a swami we used what looked like a follow-thru fisherman's.
Still do.
|
|
Geno
Trad climber
Reston, VA
|
|
|
Oct 31, 2008 - 07:57pm PT
|
Glad you all enjoyed Claude's stash of pictures and the journal. It may be a rough draft but it's enjoyable to read what those college boys dared to do. Thanks to Rgold, Al Rubin and Jstan for filling in some of the blanks. Here's another couple pages:
"Vulgarian Chronicles jugernaught [continued]
Fall: The fall of 59 saw the first climbing death in the Shawangunks. A fall on High Corner. It was pretty shocking, but even more shocking was the use that the AMC attempted to make of it. Apparently increasingly unhappy with the activities of the "independents (e.g. Vulgarians primarily)", the AMC saw this as an opportunity to regain the power that they seemed to feel slipping away. On the other hand the Vulgarians were feeling rather feisty as they now included many of the best climbers and they had also survived their first encounter with "serious" climbing, i.e. the "mountains".
Here's an early bouldering photo.
Claude Suhl
Uberfall crowd.
In addition to ignoring the strictures that the AMC attempted to place on them, a new weapon now emerged, the "Rave". The Rave, a term probably coined by Craft who sort of used it as his "War cry" at the very loud drunken Saturday night parties that began to take place. These parties, often accompanied by makeshift musical instruments, such as metal guard railing, logs and an assortment of plumbing remnants, were used to drive the AMC crazy and out of their traditional nesting ground at the Wickie -Wackie camping area, which the Vulgarians then took over as a sort of war trophy. Not content with driving the AMC from Wickie-Wackie, the Vulgarians continued to occasionally harass the poor buggers at whatever place they chose to camp. It was unconventional and asymmetric warfare at it’s best.
December: Winter attempt on Wall Face Al D, Gran, Geiser, Suhl. Packing in on snow shoes to sleep in a lean-to in the artic cold. Upon awakening in the morning with the temperature about -10F and a snow covered wall in front of them, discretion seemed the better part of valor, so they backed off and spent the remainder of the day in the New Paltz bars.
1960
Craft moves to California
1961
Summer:
Yosemite Climbing Camp 4, Arches, Washington Column. Lost Arrow with Chouinard.
Suhl on Lost Arrow:
[note: This photo may actually be Dick Williams who was known for his gymnastic athleticism and for doing handstands in improbable places. I will ask Claude].
Suhl and Geiser go to tetons via Rail (Death) and Preacher Jim. Climbers camp and return.
Fall: Chouinard makes the eastern scene. Arriving without any visible means of support other than a chest full of his new chromoly pins, Yvon sells them like hot-cakes to the local climbers. Holy cow! And Great Gugamuga! A piton that you can use more than 2 or 3 times and that doesn’t take 15 minutes of pounding to remove! It was a whole new world. Whoever said the “East is the east and the West is the west and never the twain shall meet.” Couldn’t have had it more wrong. The west bringing high technology to the east and the east recriprocating with some classically steep climbs, Vulgarianism and several great Raves including one that that culminated with one of the most spectacular Aurora’s that anyone had seen, and Yvon was made an ex-officio member of the VMC. "
More to follow...
|
|
Geno
Trad climber
Reston, VA
|
|
All,
The "Vulgarian Chronology jugernaught" from Claude Suhl I have been posting is slightly different than Dick Williams' Climbing History that is published in his: The Climber's Guide to The Shawangunks. One must really read Dick's history along side this rough draft. Dick Williams does a fabulous job describing the Vulgarian Era in the context of climbing in the Gunks and in American mountaineering.
So if you can, review: The Cimber's Guide to The Shawangunks, The Trapps, by Dick Williams, p 15-22. 2004.
The best price I found is at the Rock and Snow site:
http://www.rockandsnow.com/store/product/2987/THE-CLIMBER%27S-GUIDE-TO-THE-SHAWANGUNKS%3A-THE-TRAPPS/
It is also contained in his earlier guides.
|
|
Don Lauria
Trad climber
Bishop, CA
|
|
The Original Vulgarian
John Hansen
1937-2005
By Don Lauria
I met John Hansen in the fall of 1961. We were both working as engineers at North American Aviation in El Segundo, California. I had just returned from vacation and my first excursion to the summit of a Sierra peak. The traditional routine was to pass around any photos from one’s trip for all to see. One of my colleagues, upon returning my box of slides, mentioned he knew a guy in the Computer Department who was an avid mountaineer and asked if he could show the slides to him. I said okay and a little later he returned with John Hansen.
Hansen was not too tall, maybe 5’ 9”, but very wide, very fit, built like an ape. He had a New York accent, a cauliflower ear, a mischievous laugh, and a great gift of gab. He immediately needed to know of my entire personal mountaineering history (which at that moment involved a single non-technical Sierra peak). He asked if I was interested in learning to climb. I asked if he meant with ropes and stuff. He answered that, of course, ropes, pitons, ice axes, crampons - all that stuff! I replied that he must be kidding – I was definitely not interested. He insisted I go with him to Stoney Point and do some bouldering. Bouldering? I politely said no. He insisted. I said no again. He questioned my sense of adventure and suggested the coming weekend would be ideal for my introduction to rock climbing. For more than 15 minutes he parried my refusals. His persistence won out. That weekend would change my life.
I drove 35 miles to the San Fernando Valley where John lived with his wife and infant son and arrived at 7:00 AM, as agreed, to find him still in bed. He came to the door naked. “Oh man, sorry. I overslept. Come on in. I’ll be ready in a minute.” He returned to the bedroom. I could hear an infant crying and his wife’s complaining. He had obviously forgotten to tell her of his plans. He immerged from the bedroom wearing a beige wool sweater, brown corduroy knickers, mountain boots, and a navy blue beret. “Come on, let’s get something to eat.”
We stopped at an IHOP for pancakes. John’s beret and knickers got a few looks as we entered, but I was so absorbed in interesting and enthusiastic conversation about rock climbing, I soon forgot the stares.
I spent the entire Saturday climbing at Stoney in a pair of John’s mountain boots two sizes too small for me. He took me around the entire area, climbing everything in sight. By the end of the day I could barely lift my arms. I was exhausted - but was I stoked!
That evening at John’s apartment, he found a “not-so-dear-John” note from his wife – she had packed up and left with child. Seemingly unperturbed, John filled me with Gerwurztraminer and tales from his Vulgarian Shawangunks days. Well into the evening he talked about mountaineering – famous European and American climbers and climbing history. He pulled six mountaineering books off his shelf and insisted I take them home and read them. By the time I got home I was already planning my next weekend at Stoney Point.
I climbed four more times with John at Stoney Point, and then, on New Year’s Day 1962, he took me out to the Devil’s Backbone on Mt. San Antonio with my brand-new boots, brand-new ice axe, and brand-new crampons. He tied me into a 9mm rope and told me to take a running leap off the ridge down the steep north face to practice a self-arrest. My first attempt ended abruptly at the end of the rope. I had not only failed to slow my descent, I had forgotten to put on my brand-new leather gloves which left all the knuckles on both my hands bereft of skin. My second descent, with gloves, was successful and I figured that I had mastered the art – no need to do that again. My life as a mountaineer had begun.
John was a gregarious sort and he introduced me to many well known climbers including Yvon Chouinard, Bob Kamps, and several of his Vulgarian buddies like Jim McCarthy and Art Gran.
One November evening in 1961, we visited Chouinard in his little room in back of his parent’s home in Burbank. It was Yvon’s 23rd birthday. The evening could have been a bit more cheerful, but Yvon was due to report for his pre-induction physical the next morning and was not happy about it. However, Yvon had a plan. He heard that a sufficient amount of soy sauce consumed prior to a physical exam could raise one’s blood pressure to 4F levels. So John and I went out and bought a six pack of eight-ounce bottles of soy sauce and returned to watch Chouinard down as many as he could stand. The birthday party ended and later that week a very sick Yvon was inducted into the U.S. Army. The experiment had failed and Yvon ended up in Korea for two years. Yvon mentions this happening in his new book Let My People Go Surfing.
John and I climbed together just a few more times at Tahquitz Rock and in Yosemite through 1964 and then saw each other on mostly social occasions, some of which were memorable - and somewhat Vulgarian. Like the night he and Dave Huntsman went out in Dave’s VW to try out John’s new small caliber pistol. After attempting to shoot out a few street lights, John accidentally fired a round into his calf and refused to go to the emergency hospital fearing the required police report. Later, Dave forced him to seek treatment. Then there was the night at a small gathering in Dave’s home. John was challenged to an arm wrestling contest with a complete stranger at the kitchen table. After many seated minutes of stress and strain without an apparent winner, the two adversaries, still locked in combat, rose to their feet and fell across the kitchen table breaking the table’s legs and careened into the matching chairs doing irreparable damage to them also. It took three of us to pry them apart and three years for Mary Huntsman to forgive him.
It was in the early 70s that John’s profession became more important than his passion and after his second marriage to an assistant district attorney, he quit engineering and the sciences to become lawyer himself. A few years of individual practice tending to needy clientele and he realized he could not afford the profession. He quit law and returned to science. We remained distant friends for the next 41 years until his death in 2005.
Though not an exceptional climber, John was an exceptional person. He was an engineering physics graduate from Columbia University, a champion collegiate Greco-Roman wrestler, and a fierce liberal - politically and socially. He had the strength of an ox and intelligence bordering on genius. He could overhaul automobile engines as casually as he discussed celestial mechanics. He was conversant in the calculus of variations, a connoisseur of fine wines, and generous to a fault.
I’m relating this to you because, although few people have heard the name John (Jack) Hansen in connection with climbing or mountaineering, after all these years, I discovered something about John that he never shared with me – something that should be known. Something that should be part of climbing history.
Most of us that climb, or have climbed, have heard of the “Vulgarians” – the outrageous Shawangunk climbing cabal of the late 50s and early 60s. Here’s a little history from the gunks.com website - an excerpt from a conversation in August of 2004 with Dick Williams, one of the early Vulgarians and one of the many reputable climbers to come out of the Gunks:
Dick Williams - So, that particular morning we were all at the base of Never Never Land and [Jim] McCarthy is trying to do the direct finish. So anyway he’s up there - I don’t think I’d ever belayed anybody before - it was my first time, so I’d been watching some people belay and they’d belay over the shoulder with the rope under your armpit, like this, you know.
Interviewer - Wow.
Dick Williams - And Jim’s about to do this final bit and he looks down and he sees how I’m belaying. And he says, “You don’t belay someone my weight like that.” I said, “Ok.” and just dropped the rope. “If you don’t like it, get somebody else to do it.” Everyone goes racing to the rope. Jack Hansen gets a hold of the rope and puts him on belay. Jack Hansen was the guy who coined the phrase, “the Vulgarians” - he gave us that name.
Interviewer- He puts him on hip belay, right?
Dick Williams - Body belay, yeah. So Jim goes up, sure enough he falls and that big tree that’s there now was just a little sapling and the rope was behind it and it really broke the thing. John didn’t let any rope go through his hand - he probably [held] about a 30-footer.
So now you know what it took me 41 years to find out. Not only was Hansen a Vulgarian, John Hansen was the “original” Vulgarian.
|
|
Geno
Trad climber
Reston, VA
|
|
Don, Thanks very much for your post! It is a really fine contribution to this thread and to our understanding of the history of the Vulgarians. Jack Hansen was quite a unique and interesting individual. Geno
|
|
Steven Amter
climber
Washington, DC
|
|
Wow, its really great, and important, that the pieces of the early gunks history/Vulgarians are being perserved and posted. Facinating! Hats off to Grossman for starting the thread, and all the great posters, particularly those who lived it. Big thanks to Geno for keeping it going.
way to go!
|
|
Mighty Hiker
Social climber
Vancouver, B.C.
|
|
More Shawangunks stories and photos, please!
|
|
richross
Trad climber
gunks,ny
|
|
For THE IDLE RICH, In earlier sections of this thread is a photo you took of a climber leading Coexistence scanned from the Dick Dumais Shawangunk Rock Climbing book. Everyone thinks the person is Barbara Devine. For twenty plus years I have wondered if that was correct. I always thought it could be Spaff Ackerly? Can you shed any light on the subject? From another Rich.
|
|
rgold
Trad climber
Poughkeepsie, NY
|
|
Uh, Rich, Rich has already said it was Ackerly.
---Rich
The Gunks has, for some time, had an embarrassment of Riches.
|
|
rgold
Trad climber
Poughkeepsie, NY
|
|
One year, McCarthy went out on a 90 degree 90% humidity windless summer day to do what anyone seeking a break from the oven-like conditions would do: burn the brush around his house. So he takes a can of gasoline, saturates a large area of brush, waits a bit for the fumes to fully envelop the area, and then, standing in the middle of it, lights a match.
Measurements taken later of the take-off footprints and landing butt-print suggest that Jim was then and probably still is the world's record-holder for the standing backwards broad jump.
After weeks of non-stop celebration of this feat of athletic prowess, hosted by the Columbia Presbyterian burn unit, Jim emerged, somewhat pinker than before, and also, thanks to enforced incactivity and hospital cuisine, just a tad on the heavy side. For his rehabilitation activity, he decided to join a group of us in the Needles in South Dakota.
Unfortunately, the Great Designer had not considered, when drawing up the Needles nubbin-load specifications, that anyone of Jim's post burn-unit avoirdupois would be entrusting their considerable heft to those tiny crystals. And so it was that the pine forests of Custer echoed with the snap, crackle, and pop of nubbins giving way under Jim's attempts at upward progress. Entire faces were left glassy smooth by his repeated efforts, mostly in vain, to find something to stand on that would hold him up long enough to take the next step.
And let us now speak of those who undertook to belay Jim on these forays into the realm of pinnacle-polishing. Imagine them seated on top of the spire du jour, sitting on a cushion of ever-so-unpolished Needles granite, like mystics on their bed of nails, awaiting that hemorroidal impact as Jim's footholds sheared, eyes beseeching the heavens for a quick end to the suffering they were about to endure.
Both the Needles and his partners were saved from extinction by the fact that the rehabilitation effort was successful, Jim's weight melted away, the nubbins stayed under foot, Jim rose up as in the days before, and all was right with the world again.
And yes, his brush problem was, at least for a while, solved.
|
|
Geno
Trad climber
Reston, VA
|
|
Rgold, you are a master of visual imagery in telling the story of Jim McCarthy burning bush around his house. Jim was certainly a survivor of many harrowing adventures, some of which as you confirm were of his own doing.
Those who know Jim McCarthy will attest that he has many admirable traits that are revealed in his climbing as well as in his relations with others. Jim McCarthy was at the fore front of free climbing and mountaineering in America. He actually started climbing years earlier than the independents. Although he embraced them and is widely known as a member of the Vulgarians, Jim McCarthy’s climbing career actually spans from his association with Hans Kraus in the early 1950s to his present day leadership in access and other climbing causes. Here are a few notes that Art Gran wrote about Jim McCarthy in the first Climbing Guide to the Shawangunks, American Alpine Club Press, 1964, pages 17-18.
“The year was 1951, and a small group from Princeton arrived at the cliffs. One of the beginners mistakenly got paired with a much better climber; they set out to do Baby and, of course, the beginner would had to be “hauled up.” The leader never realized that the beginner would take this as a personal challenge. Jim McCarthy was there to stay. Jim worked his way up the scale with his close friend, Jim Ewing. While climbing at Sleeping Giant in Connecticut, Ewing took a leader fall, dislodging a rock which struck and killed him as the second was checking his fall. Jim was on another climb and did not see the accident. Crushed by the death of his close friend, he was forced to decide just how much climbing meant to him. The news of this reached Hans Kraus, and it reminded him so much of a similar catastrophe which had happened to his closest friend when they were climbing together in Austria, that he went out of his way to befriend Jim.
Jim, who had little, if any, equipment, started using the best, which Hans readily supplied. But Hans gave him much more than pitons and Karabiners; he taught him climbing lessons gained from years of climbing in the mountains under all conditions. This was the start of the golden age in the Shawangunks. In the a relatively short time, Jim became the best climber in the area and, together with Hans and their small group of friends he put in many of the prettiest routes on the cliffs. His small band made him a legend by convincing the AMC’s best climbers that he was climbing at a much higher level than they could ever reach. Actually his climbing was a shade higher; however, he was putting in the bulk of new routes.
The fall of 1958 saw the next major milestone: Retribution was put in on lead, using one stirrup., and a new higher standard was reached, heralding in the modern age of the Shawangunks. Never Never Land advanced the standard even further. Then Jim McCarthy put in his greatest classic, M.F. which achieved the top of the scale and stood at the dawn of a still higher standard. This new higher standard was reached in 1962 with the climbing of Retribution [5.10] without aid, and soon after that other very difficult climbs were done free.”
|
|
richross
Trad climber
gunks,ny
|
|
Thanks RGOLD, That info from THE IDLE RICH must be on some other page. (Coexistence photo)
|
|
the idle rich
climber
Estes Park, CO
|
|
Good eyes rich...you're probably the first person that picked out that climber as spaff ackerly and not barb devine.
|
|
Alan Rubin
climber
Amherst,MA.
|
|
I'd just like to add a few additional comments on Jim McCarthy's significant role in US climbing. For us old-timers it is often easy to forget that newer generations of climbers, or even those from other regions, might not be aware of the contributions of those figures who played important roles in the history and development of our sport. In the Gunks, Mac played a (and often "the") key role in the advance in standards of every grade from 5.8 to 5.10+(read would be 5.11 in alot of areas). And much of this was done during a time and in a place, where even the idea of advancing standards was viewed by many in the then local climbing establishment as almost subversive. He was also one of the first to train in the gym specifically for climbing. His climbing achievements weren't limited to the Gunks as he claimed important new routes in other east coast areas such as the Adirondacks and Seneca Rocks. In the west, relatively early in his career he made the first ascents (with aid) of the North and West Faces of Devil's Tower, and with Hans Kraus and John Rupley made the first ascent of the West Face of the then legendary Snowpatch Spire amongst other significant climbs. At a later stage of his career he organized an expedition, at the behest of the American Alpine Club, to bring the then-new Yosemite bigwall techniques to a remote alpine area resulting in the first ascent of the East Face of Mt. Proboscis in the Cirque of the Unclimbables in Canada, following this up a few years later with the first ascent of the classic line on Lotus Flower Tower in the same area. During the same time period he participated in the now much-discussed, but then top-secret, CIA expedition to Nanda Devi in India. He has long been very active in the American Alpine Club, serving as its president during an important period of transition, and always working to make the club to be truely representative of and of service to American mountaineers. Existing alongside these (and other) accomplishments, he also has somewhat of a reputation for being accident-prone. In addition to the fire "mishap" described by Rich, he is well-known for certain dramatic leader falls. The most famous occurred in the Gunks, when he was caught by the rope just as he touched the ground at the feet of a newly-arrived, for his first visit to the Gunks, Yvon Chouinard. Mac's first comment upon regaining his breath was to say to Yvon "Welcome to the Gunks". Oh, and with all this he had a highly successful career as a civil trial attorney in Manhattan. For those of us climbing in the Gunks in the 60s and early 70s (and those of the 50s generation as well)Mac was The Man. It was great to see and chat with him during the reunion last month and I look forward to seeing him at future gatherings.
|
|
|
SuperTopo on the Web
|
Let us know!