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lucasignorelli
climber
Torino, Italy
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Feb 17, 2009 - 04:59pm PT
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Hello Doug:
>Anybody could piolet trax that, waltz right up and get on with it. But sheath your hammer there, boys, and follow me. Can I do this half-French stepping in pied toisieme? He seems to have coined the term, and maybe invented the technique itself. I don't know. Having viewed the rest of the history, it's an open question. But pushing it like that on such water ice (I was there, tasting it), downshifting his grip to piolet ancre and balancing on those points while he rocked it out of the ice, all the while without pro above a very nasty drop into the bergschrund...that is applied esthetics.
Precisely. That what was Bonatti said to my friend - doing the north face of Grand Pilier D'Angle step cutting is nasty, brutish work, doing it in piolet traction is just cheating (you can basically climb it anywhere). But doing it THAT way, the way of the great French pioneers of the 30's - the way the legendary Couloir Lagarde at the Droites was climbed in 1930, withouth pitons or any other protection, but more than any other route, the way Lagarde itself climbed in 1926 the couloir of the Breche du Caiman (in the Aiguilles du Chamonix), average steepness 65°, not a single ice piton used. This line was unrepeated for 35 years!
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lucasignorelli
climber
Torino, Italy
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Feb 17, 2009 - 05:33pm PT
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Steve:
>Lucas - Having looked closely at the careers of many alpinists, do you consider Bonatti to be the greatest of his generation?
What would your short list look like?
Steve:
it’s undeniable Walter is the closest thing to a real “rock star” mountaineering has created in the last century. His ability to capture the imagination of the great public, and to inspire people to follow his path has not been replicated again (despite Messner). I was in Zermatt at the Alpine Club 150 year meeting in 2007, when Bonatti got the honorary membership, and when Walter stepped on the Riffelberg terrace at sunset to read a salute and open the meeting dinner, everyone there (and I mean, some of the best British climbers of the last 50 years were there!), everyone was all “ooooohhhh”, absolutely star-stuck. The scene was incredible – the sun setting down behind Matterhorn on the longest evening of the year, Bonatti reading his salute, and the absolute silence around. You could really touch the reverence he has inspired. It’s not the type of charisma anyone can produce, particularly in climbing.
This said, I believe he’s been the last giant of the past (I mean, the past in this case are the 30’s, and era that in climbing has produced many real giants), rather than the first new climber of (some) future. His greatest climbing merit was to have broken a lot of psychological taboos (particularly with the Dru solo), and to have injected a healthy dose of individualism into a climbing scene (the Italian one) who was dying of asphyxia because of the stranglehold imposed by CAI and the long shadow of those other “giants” of the 30s (Comici, Cassin, Gervasutti above all). But he was following their steps, not breaking out their trail. When the young Italian climbers of the following generation “rebelled” in the 70’s against the climbing establishment (the “Nuovo Mattino” - at it all began because somone read Doug Robison "The Climber as Visionary", of course!), they were rebelling against Bonatti too.
If for “his generation” you mean climbers born between 1930 and 1938, my list probably would be:
 Walter Bonatti (for the reasons mentioned above)
Georges Livanos (because of his intelligence and sense of irony, and because he was really the initiator, at least from a cultural point of view, of “modern” climbing in Europe)
Renè Desmaison (because in many ways he took Bonatti experience one step beyond – for instance the winter ascent to the Freney Pillar was an astonishing exploit - , and because he was one of the coolest guys on Earth!)
Royal Robbins (because I believe that when he took the Yosemite practices in Europe he gave worldwide climbing a technical and cultural “jump forward” that I believe the sport hadn’t experienced since the late 30’s.)
Joe Brown and Don Whillans (because they were in many ways real Bonattis, but without all the Nietzchean/Lammerian trappings of "vintage" Bonatti)
Gary Hemming (because he had an influence on my generation that greatly exceeded his actual contribution to climbing. At some point, we all wanted to be like him, even if we didn't really know a thing about him)
Boris Korshunov (because he's the closest thing to a real superman I've ever know, and because he represent all climbers - not only Russian - of that age who did incredible things - and no one knew/knows)
Two additional points:
1) The list above is limited to Bonatti's generation. But before and after there were people who - my humble opinion - did thing even more visionary and interesting. For instance (just to remain in Italy), Giusto Gervasutti, the most elegant rock climber of the 30's. Its route on the East Face of the Jorasses remained the most difficult and beautiful rock climb in the Western Alps until Robbins and Harlin opened the American Direct at the Dru.
2) We're speaking of giants here, famous climbers. But - again, my opinion here - I believe there's been many lesser know names who're as interesting to know and study. I'm particularly interested in extremes - "nice" people like Francesco Ravelli, who climbed for 70 years harder than anyone else, opening dozen of routes (like the Hirondelles ridge, or the Innominata), ran a succesful business, a happy and large family, fought in WWI, died 100 years old, never had an accident, and had always a lot of fun. Or, on the other hand, iconoclasts - for instance Warren Harding (finding a copy of "Downward Bound" was a huge satisfaction for me), or Ivano Ghirardini (occultist, programmer, climbing pants designer, enemy of Chamonix, and the man who has deliberately soloed the Croz spur and the Shroud in a storm - to see what it was like.)
The list is huge!
:)
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lucasignorelli
climber
Torino, Italy
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Feb 17, 2009 - 05:39pm PT
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Gordon:
> Was Vaucher a bit of a 'prima donna' type? The stories from the Dyrenfurth Everest exped were not too complementary about him and his wife.
I don't know really, but I think that in any case it's quite easy to argue with Walter - the recently departed Luciano Ghigo (who climbed the East face of Capucin) was one of the few person who always got along with him, even after they stopped to climb together. Another was Carlo Mauri.
> BTW have you ever tried to get Black Nick's story about his ascent of the Amitie with RBJ? I'd really like to hear that one!! I bet they had an absolute epic, nutting their way up steep, crappy rock for 5 days (though of course they would be stiff upper lipped about it)!!
As you know I'm starting "that other project", but in any case I'm looking forward to contact Colton. Of course there's the MacIntyre to discuss, but deep down I'm more curious about L'Amitiè, the main reason being that it's a route whose quality (rock, beauty etc) seem to be impossible to decide. Half of the people who climbed it think it was absolute and total crap, the other half think it's the best big wall of the Alps! I'll keep you informed.
There's a picture of a certain wall going your way...
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Ain't no flatlander
climber
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Feb 17, 2009 - 06:15pm PT
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Regarding the first curved pick on an ice axe, the earliest photo I've seen that clearly shows one in action dates to around the mid-30s in Germany. It had significantly more droop than a Chouinard and a relatively short shaft (maybe 60 cm). Perhaps a one-of-a-kind but somebody was way ahead of their time.
FWIW Bonatti was a great climber but gives a terrible slide show. Desmaison gave one of the most thrilling shows due to the incredible imagery.
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 17, 2009 - 10:52pm PT
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Thanks for the nuanced response Luca! A couple of the other names that you mention are unfamiliar to me. I hope that your upcoming book goes into the kind of amazing detail that your posts do.
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Wee Jock
climber
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Feb 18, 2009 - 12:00am PT
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Hi DR - you come from Santa Cruz? Wish I'd known you when I lived in Boulder Creek!! Mind you I was into running and swimming in those days (late 80's - mid 90's) rather than climbing ...
Luca - Nick Colton is the nicest of chaps - nowadays!! In the Biolay days he was 'Black Nick, Hooligan in Chief, leader of the Biolay Boot Boys'!! I always wonder why the MacIntyre-Colton is always so referred, or 'the MacIntyre Route' - surely it should be the Colton-MacIntyre (Alphabetically)?? It would be understandable if Black Nick was just a mobile belay that Dirty Alex took up the route - but Black Nick was a hell of a climber, in those early days (technically much more advanced than Alex on rock and his equal on ice, IMO). I believe Nick is again showing the world what us old farts had it in us to do, even now!!
A story about the Colton-MacIntyre - or about before it so became. Alex and I went up to do it a couple of weeks before Alex and Nick actually did it .... we got to the top of the ice-field, just below the goulottes, when an afternoon storm broke (we were going to climb most of the route at night - it was summer, you see) and all hell broke loose - bolts of lightning, peals of thunder, hail and snow, rocks flying about everywhere!! I got scared so down we went. Suddenly, as we were clinging to an 'ilot' of rock on the way back down, there was an enormous flash, a mega-crash of thunder, and a bunch of rocks rolling over us all at the same time. Like something out of Gotterdamerung but for real! I had already been hit by several rocks - which was why I was so scared. I also discovered i that flash of lightning why I always seemed to be the one getting hit - Alex never seemed to get touched .... he was hanging right underneath me - the dirty rat!! Rather ironic, given the way he was later to die! It must have been the only rock that ever hit him!! I didn't get to go back with Alex as I was broke and had to return to Switzerland to work. Oh well! It was a great coup for Dirty Alex and Black Nick!
Just curious - Did Jello and folk like Duncan Ferguson - a couple of the original ultra-hard ice-men from the US - ever take to French Technique? I used to use it quite a lot on less steep ice - saved the legs quite a bit, but it was a bit counter-intuitive. The toes had to face more and more downhill the steeper the ice, so that eventually on the steepest you could go you were reversing up the slope like a truck with its beepers going! I was never elegant like Mons. Chouinard. More like a sack of tatties backing up a hill!!
Another point for Luca - Do you think that people equate difficulty too much with quality ... the Amitie may be a bunch of incredibly steep crap and very hard to climb - which make it great sport to some (extremely masochistic) folk??
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Rick A
climber
Boulder, Colorado
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Feb 18, 2009 - 12:33pm PT
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Luca,
Desmaison was paid by the day when he completed the Desmaison/Gousseault, so he might have been deliberately taking his time?! Incredible! I do understand that the Gousseaut was establihsed using the prevailing techniques of the day, but what you are describing with regards to the media circus surrounding the Gousseault exactly supports my point: the contrast in the style of Tobin and Gordon’s ascent with Desmaison’s is illustrative that the “Scala di Seta”, as it has recently been named by Gordon, was a landmark ascent in its audacity and minimalist ethic.
Desmaison spent 14 days (342 hours divided by 24) on route --being paid handsomely by the day---with the spotlight of French media on him every step of the way. A few years later, Tobin (who was 21 years old at the time) and Gordon pack up some ratty, thin ropes, a bag of dried soup mix, and a handful of pins and screws and quietly establish a new direct line in a little over 48 hours. In contrast to Desmaison’s lucratively-sponsored circumstances, Tobin didn’t even have a tent to call his own in Chamonix that summer, as was related by Rob Muir on ST in another thread. Rob and his wife-to-be Candy returned from a trip to Italy that summer to find Tobin making himself at home in their tent at Snell Field. They had to evict the poor lad!
Just imagining Tobin taking repeated, lengthy leader falls on that icy buttress as Gordon describes, like it was some bolt protected slab at sunny Suicide, makes my palms sweat.
I am not denigrating Desmaison at all; he is a giant. But the more one understands the epic story of the first ascent of the Gousseault, the more one can only shake one’s head in admiration for what Gordon and Tobin accomplished.
Rick
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lucasignorelli
climber
Torino, Italy
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Feb 18, 2009 - 03:30pm PT
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Rick:
>Desmaison was paid by the day when he completed the Desmaison/Gousseault, so he might have been deliberately taking his time?! Incredible! I do understand that the Gousseaut was established using the prevailing techniques of the day, but what you are describing with regards to the media circus surrounding the Gousseault exactly supports my point
I'm afraid I've been creating some huge misunderstanding here, so I'll rephrase it in order to clear my thinking on the whole thing - as the LAST thing I want is to give the impression that Desmaison and Gousseault were the culprits (and not, as it really was, the victims) of the 1971 mess.
While the rescue was underway, and immediately after, Desmaison was accused, with the support of some part of the press, (with the usual mix of direct accusations and insinuations)
1) to have deliberately slowed down the climb and delayed the request for rescue in order to create a greater media interest around the climb
2) to have underestimated the difficult of the climb and Serge Gousseault less than ideal physical conditions (and lack of direct winter experience) in order to "bag it" before someone else could claim the line.
It's true that the first ascent of Linceuil in 1968 had lasted so much PARTLY because Flematti and Desmaison had accepted to haul up a transmission device over the mountain in order to make daily radio contact "live" from the climb. And it's true that Desmaison (as every jet set climber of that age, including Bonington, Bonatti, Mauri, you name it) had press sponsorship who were paid "per day" - the longer the climb, the more money one it got.
However (and I want to stress the "however"!) Desmaison replied, and, in my opinion, reasonably demonstrated that
1) If Gousseault illness and the bad organization of the rescue had not intervened, the climb would have been completed in no more than 7 to 9 days, which was perfectly in line with the tecniques of the age and the type of climb;
2) He had not underestimated the ascent (as the material he had was in line with its seriousness)
3) He had no idea Gousseault had some health trouble - probably due to an undetected metabolic disease.
Most importantly: if rescue had not been botched to such a monumental extent, and - according to some - had not DELIBERATELY botched in order to "teach a lesson" to Desmaison (because of some problem he had in the past with the Chamonix establishment), Gousseault would have survived.
It's very important to note that the 1973 ascent (who was done under meteo conditions even worse than 1971) lasted 9 days. One year before, Chris Bonington, Mick Burke and Dougal Haston had spent 22 days trying to climb the Central Couloir (and they ultimately didn't summit). And the Japanese spent, the same winter TWO MONTHS besieging the deeper gullies of the same Central Couloir, and they definitely had no "pay for climb" sponsorship
>Desmaison spent 14 days (342 hours divided by 24) on route --being paid handsomely by the day---with the spotlight of French media on him every step of the way.
That's not exactly the right way to describe his ordeal. He spent 14 days on the wall seeing his partner slowly descending into illness, then madness, then death, waiting for a rescue that didn't materialize until the 11th hours (and probably just because of a lucky turn of events), when he was himself few hours away from death for kidney failure. And afterwards had to endure months of insinuations, accuses, a huge sense of failure and guilt over Serge's death. Media spotligh in that was was - to make un understatement - a mixed blessing.
I've a picture of him few minute after having been hauled up the summit - he looks like someone who has been freshly dug from premature burial.
>A few years later, Tobin (who was 21 years old at the time) and Gordon pack up some ratty, thin ropes, a bag of dried soup mix, and a handful of pins and screws and quietly establish a new direct line in a little over 48 hours. In contrast to Desmaison’s lucratively-sponsored circumstances, Tobin didn’t even have a tent to call his own in Chamonix that summer, as was related by Rob Muir on ST in another thread. Rob and his wife-to-be Candy returned from a trip to Italy that summer to find Tobin making himself at home in their tent at Snell Field. They had to evict the poor lad!
I've no doubt that what Tobin, Gordon and the rest of the Snell's Field crew did was great, and and I've no doubt that they changed the sport forever, and I've no doubt that they (and the young climber who were operating at the same time on the opposite side of the Alps, and who had similar motivations and similar lack of money!) changed climbing in the right direction, saving the activity (in continental Europe) from a decade of stagnation, that wasn't doing anyone a favour (and to be honest, one of the people who was screaming out loud against that malaise was Desmaison!)
But there's no point making comparisons between "Scala di Seta" (an astonishing, visionary, ahead of its time route) and the Gousseault (another astonishing, visionary, and ahead of its time route), as they were simply different, non-comparable items, climbed with very different tecniques and, even, if just 4 years had passed, in a completely different age. Insisting that there's some kind of ethical superiority in the latter compared with the formed is greatly missing the point.
You can rightly do that ethical comparison between "Scala di Seta" and the Directe de L'Amitie, or with the Harlin at the Eiger, or with the Saxon Direttissima at the Cima Grande di Lavaredo, or with any other relic of the siege style era (even if I'm convinced that any climb is just the results of its age - what will people thing 20 year on from now of Ueli Steck?). But you can't do an ethical comparison between "Scala di Seta" and the Gousseault - that's simply not the case.
Hope to have stated my point with a bit more clarity this time.
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lucasignorelli
climber
Torino, Italy
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Feb 18, 2009 - 03:53pm PT
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>Another point for Luca - Do you think that people equate difficulty too much with quality ... the Amitie may be a bunch of incredibly steep crap and very hard to climb - which make it great sport to some (extremely masochistic) folk??
Unfortunately yes, these days the equation is pretty much "great rock, great climb". Which of course (my opinion) misses half of the point, as the reality is that this mythical "great rock" is not that easy to find, even on Mt. Blanc. And by the way, what's really "great rock"?
Some people seems now to accept only ultracompact rock as it's considered more "climbable", I believe it's another part of the sport climbing era fallout. But the irony is that most of the great classics everyone says they love, don't have that "great rock". As for Mont Blanc, there are only two places where you can find that special granite everyone talks about:
Grand Capucin
http://www.summitpost.org/images/original/349770.jpg
and Tour Des Jorasses
http://www.summitpost.org/images/original/340443.jpg
(this is one of my pics)
Everywhere else in the area the rock is not as solid as in those two places. But this doesn't mean climbs aren't great!!
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Wee Jock
climber
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Feb 18, 2009 - 08:09pm PT
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Luca: I think Desmaison has been very much misunderstood!! I've no doubt at all that the problems between him and the Cham establishment are responsible for this (as well as the rescue scandal on the Goussault). I stand with you on the issue that Desmaison was climbing in a visionary way ... From you I get the understanding that the original attempt was a very 'pure' attempt, particularly with the techniques and ethics of the time, and for that (if nothing else) Desmaison should be revered instead of denigrated. Even the 1973 success was in relatively good style when compared to the Amitie and Harlin circuses. The Bonington/Haston attempt on the Walker was, in my opinion, rather in the same vein as those other media circuses. Dunno anything about the Japanese route. But it is important to recognise that for Desmaison it must have been hard to go against the grain!!
Rick: Be honest ... you are 'sensationalising' Tobin to a certain extent. What you said in your last post makes me cringe - and I know pretty damn well that it would have made Tobin cringe also!! Tobin, you, Steve Shea and Jack Roberts, Kingy, Dirty Alex, the two Nicks, me (though I was different, I was the king of scruffy) etc etc (including all the young scruffs on the other side of Mont Blanc that Luca alludes to) we were all just ordinary chaps in our milieu and the climbs we did were really 'just ordinary, non-visionary' climbs in the style that we all espoused.... WE didn't think we were going out to do anything special!! Any notability has come only after the fact (30 years after the fact), and as a reaction to the hype of the circuses you are contrasting us with, and perhaps with the hype of modern, 'professional' climbing also. Tobin and I did not have a 'minimalist' approach - we just had minimal gear!! If we had had more, we would have taken more!! If someone would have given us money to climb, we would have taken it - and bought some more food!!(it's why I (and Dirty Alex and Joe Tasker etc etc) worked at ISM after all - easy money to go climbing).
Luca: I saw 'Mort d'un Guide' in Chamonix - must have been in 1976?? - was a lot of it filmed on the south face of the Midi??
Just think, YC and his curved pick ice axe have created an explosion in ice climbing and alpinism .... how many of us would have hacked our way up the Bonatti-Gobbi in the old style (or even Point Five, for that matter)?? They have also created an environmental problem - particularly in Scotland. Too many punters on the hill scratching up the rocks!! The hills are alive with the sounds of scratch, scratch, scratching!!
Anyway, I think that we are getting hung up with personality issues, referencing the Goussault too much, when what is more interesting in this thread is the evolution of techniques, equipment and ethics, with reference to the MANY ice and alpine climbs that posters have personal knowledge of.
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Rick A
climber
Boulder, Colorado
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Feb 18, 2009 - 11:20pm PT
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Gordon,
Cringe all you want; you are too modest. Sure, Tobin was my friend and that makes me biased. But what prompted me to want to write about Tobin’s 1977 season was an email I received last year from a writer for the French magazine La Montagne who asked me for a picture of Tobin to use in an article entitled, “ Desmaison/Gousseault, Chronique d’un Voie Mythique”. That article was accompanied by individual photos of every climber who was involved in each of the ten known ascents of the route to date, including yours. So even some other, more objective observers have a high opinion of the route’s significance. At least I didn't call the route "mythical!"
Sensationalized? I’ll just note that you had a similar response up thread when Luca had high praise for your climb, and Luca is clearly an expert. I’ll let others be the judge of whether I exaggerate. You are not exactly an objective party, yourself, mate!
Rick
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Wee Jock
climber
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Feb 18, 2009 - 11:59pm PT
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Blooming heck, that was a quick response, Rick. Look, Tobin was a great climber and his boldness on that prow pitch was impressive (and I'm telling you he is more fit material for a full biography than others I have come across in the climbing world (hint, hint) but don't turn him into a comic superhero). And the Goussault is a great climb. Desmaison was a great climber. I figure the line Tobin and I followed turned out to be quality route. Blah, blah, blah. But we did not deliberately go out to climb following a special 'minimalist' approach that was pure etc etc. We didn't even go out to better Desmaison and do his route in an out of the ordinary style. We certainly didn't go out to climb a new route! We were just climbing within the standard ethics and techniques of our day and group (which included YOU - look at the Dru Couloir route you did and the style you did it in - and Luca's 'other side of MB' scruffies!!). Desmaison DID try to do something out of the ordinary, and in a sense minimalist, for his time and culture. And when it didn't quite work he got nailed for it!! He WAS visionary!!
Don't be fooled by Black Nicks comment that 'we had these three climbs listed that the previous generation had f*cked up and that we were going to go out and do them properly' ... It wasn't quite like that - I just had this obsession with the Desmaison from reading an article about the epic in Paris Match as a school boy, we wanted to do the Amite because it sounded hard, and we wanted to do the Harlin because it was famous. And we wanted to snag the first 'Alpine Style' ascents of the three (Were Harding, Chouinard, Pratt and Robbins less visionary because their walls are being freed now?). It seems, also, that the Desmaison wasn't really a sieged circus like the others - if Goussault hadn't collapsed the climb would just have been a straight visionary climb that prefigured our generation!
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Todd Eastman
climber
Bellingham, WA
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Feb 19, 2009 - 02:21am PT
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Hmmm... I would guess that we Yanks were blessed with a certain distance from the Alps and the rivalry that existed between the Brits and the French. Until the mid to late 1970s the two climbing cultures had little in common. With Brits and French using Chamonix as a proving ground, the competition for routes must have been intense. By the mid-1970s the alpine climbing styles were more similar though the Brits seem to have been more prolific.
Unencumbered by the history the Brits had with Chamonix, when we came over we did what looked reasonable compared to what we had been doing back in the States. The skills we had gained in various parts of the States were enough to get some Yanks up some very fine routes. Sharing the same language and having a similar climbing philosophy with the Brits helped some of us in our introductions to Chamonix. Wee Jock and his friends showed to me that normal (only slightly crazed) people could climb extraordinary routes. The concern that Wee Jock showed when Jack Hunt and I were two days late returning from a climb is something I still remember.
Having climbed with Tobin only once I will add that he was great fun to climb with and he had an exceptional sense of optimism that was infectious. Isn't the shared sense of optimism what alpine climbing success is based on?
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 19, 2009 - 11:00am PT
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As we have strayed momentarily back into classical flatfooting, was anyone better than Armand Charlet? A brief look from Mountain 50 July-August 76.
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lucasignorelli
climber
Torino, Italy
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Feb 19, 2009 - 04:06pm PT
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>As we have strayed momentarily back into classical flatfooting, >was anyone better than Armand Charlet? A brief look from Mountain >50 July-August 76.
Not many. He invented the tecnique as we know it, and (besides doing a billions of great climbs in a time many current "athletes" would only dream of), he did what no one else could try in the 20s and 30s - twice attempt - without pitons - the NF of the Jorasses following the most direct and elegant route - in 1935!.
He was a real god of climbing in its age, with a special status among its peers. Here's what - again in 1935 - Renato Chabod (Gervasutti's best friend and longest climbing partner - he climbed with him the Croz spur in 1935, few hours after the first climb) wrote:
"I've spoken of "idols", and now I'll have to explain myself. I had two "idols": the north face of Grandes Jorasses, and Armand Charlet. I tried to climb the wall, and I thought it was climbable. But I was still afraid of it. I considered it something devilish, different than any other mountain wall, as if some there was some witchery behind its charm. Do you remember Christian Almer answer to Edward Whymper, when Whymper asked him to participate to the Matterhorn race? "Anything you ask, mon cher monsieur - but not Matterhorn - anything you want..."
Now, don't want to put myself at the same level of the great Almer. But my idea of the NF of the Jorasses was the same he had about Matterhorn. With one difference - crucial: he didn't even try, while I did. Do not take this comparison as sacrilegious: but that's like someone thinking he deals with an "impossible" girl, and waste a lot of time on stupid tricks to get to know her, but she's actually just waiting for the first "real" attack, and in the end will concede herself to the some resolute passer-by...
My second idol was Armand Charlet. I wasn't afraid to get in competition with him - but he was for me of god of sort, which couldn't be beaten on "his" Jorasses... I was tormented by doubt, under the influence of the "god" Charlet. I did believe so much to my idols, that I ended up making their evil influence felt to my friend Gervasutti..."
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lucasignorelli
climber
Torino, Italy
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Feb 19, 2009 - 04:18pm PT
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Rick
>Sensationalized? I’ll just note that you had a similar response up thread when Luca had high praise for your climb, and Luca is clearly an expert. I’ll let others be the judge of whether I exaggerate. You are not exactly an objective party, yourself, mate!
Well, unfortunately I'm not an expert - I'm a climbing history enthusiast, and to be honest, I would probably exchange all my nerdy knowledge for a bit of your climbing curriculum - I mean, the first ascents!
This said - I think that a point that was probably lost in my posting was that Tobin and Gordon did something very, very special because they didn't limit themselves to repeating a great route in great style - they created a great new line out of nowhere.
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 19, 2009 - 04:19pm PT
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Wonderfully considered response, Luca.
Was Charlet directly involved in the development of superior pick shape and character to allow his single axe technique to evolve? His name still persists as Charlet-Moser if I am not in error by attribution and I am curious if he had direct commercial involvement during his career?
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lucasignorelli
climber
Torino, Italy
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Feb 19, 2009 - 04:29pm PT
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Gordon:
> I think Desmaison has been very much misunderstood!!
True, he was really doing his own thing when no one else was, organizing the Dru rescue in 1966, getting to be a good friend with Gary Hemmings and Mick Burke, making somehow politicized statements in the 60's, being friendly with you climbers - that was something a lot of members of the local establishment wouldn't like.
>Luca: I saw 'Mort d'un Guide' in Chamonix - must have been in 1976?? - was a lot of it filmed on the south face of the Midi??
Yes, standing for the West face of the Drus, who it turn stood for the NF of the Jorasses (oh my).
The legend says that in Trento Mountain Movie Festival on 1976, when "Mort D'Une Guide" won the first prize, Rebuffat stormed out the theatre screaming "C'est ignoble!!!!" because of the subject matter.
>how many of us would have hacked our way up the Bonatti-Gobbi
Not many Gordon, but this wasn't the point. According to Giancarlo (Grassi), all the new tools point was to go WAY beyond what Bonatti had done!
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lucasignorelli
climber
Torino, Italy
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Feb 19, 2009 - 04:45pm PT
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>Was Charlet directly involved in the development of superior pick shape and character to allow his single axe technique to evolve? His name still persists as Charlet-Moser if I am not in error by attribution and I am curious if he had direct commercial involvement during his career?
"Charlet" (and Bettembourg) are well known families in Argentier with plenty of ties. But Armand (who died in 1970) had not influence om the development of the curved pick. What I'm being told is that "Charlet Moser" got directly influence by Chouinard, who convinced them try the 55 cm shaft, curved pick axe.
Just for the record - Grivel (who invented 10 points crampons in 1909 together with Oscar Eckstein, and, on their own 12 point crampons in 1929) did develop a line of modular (interchangeable) picks few years later as a completely independent design. This said, the idea of a curved pick came first from outside continental Europe - I believe that was YC idea first.
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lucasignorelli
climber
Torino, Italy
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Feb 19, 2009 - 04:54pm PT
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Gordon:
>Don't be fooled by Black Nicks comment that 'we had these three climbs listed that the previous generation had f*cked up and that we were going to go out and do them properly' ... It wasn't quite like that - I just had this obsession with the Desmaison from reading an article about the epic in Paris Match as a school boy, we wanted to do the Amite because it sounded hard, and we wanted to do the Harlin because it was famous. And we wanted to snag the first 'Alpine Style' ascents of the three (Were Harding, Chouinard, Pratt and Robbins less visionary because their walls are being freed now?)
Very interesting point Gordon. And as I'm a curious fellow (you may have noticed this), I did a search on my own database (computers make everything sooooo easy these days!) of notable 2nd and 3rd ascents of classic line made by Brit climbers during the 70's.
Results (which I'll post tomorrow - too tired now!) quite interesting, as it looks like:
1) You were quite discriminating in your climbing choices
2) You were more interested in "cool" lines rather than in famous ones
3) You were actually reading guidebooks
and
4) You did spent a lot of time on MY side of Mont Blanc (Italian) as over 17 climbs I've "extracted" from my DB, only 4 were done on the French/Chamonix side (but on the other hand, new routes seems to have been climbed more often there)
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