Starr King Peak Registers - Call for corrections, etc.

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BBA

climber
OF
Topic Author's Original Post - Oct 17, 2010 - 12:24pm PT
This is a history project including years 1931-1982 in the peak registers.

Signers of the registers include many well know names in climbing, e.g., Dolt, Wilts, Sacherer, Brower, Harris, and some who currently post on Supertopo, e.g. Boche (who also did first ascents on Starr King).

Go to www.amborncpa.com to see the draft Starr King book. If I transcribed something wrong or added something to which you object, please let me know and I will address it.

When it's done it's a freebie to all. In fact, it is now.

Bill Amborn
Steve Grossman

Trad climber
Seattle, WA
Oct 17, 2010 - 01:37pm PT
Calling all Starr Kings!

Enter and chime in please!
nita

Social climber
chica from chico.. I shall call you..mini moo.
Oct 17, 2010 - 03:42pm PT

Somewhere durning the first two miles, i stepped on a ground hornets nest and the little bastards stung me in a couple of places...Ouch.... The rest of the trip was fun.

Loved the remote feeling... we ran into no one. Reid took me up the easy route.. gorgeous views.. fire burning in the distance..beautiful moon. Oh.. the sweet memories..(-;

edit..Crimpie, I was changing the edit at the same time you posted ...


here's the star king link. link.
http://www.amborncpa.com/starrking/The-Mt-Starr-King-Registers-1931-82.pdf

Crimpergirl

Sport climber
Boulder, Colorado!
Oct 17, 2010 - 03:43pm PT
Cool stuff. Nita, yours also has Mark Blanchard's name on it too! Very neat stuff.
nita

Social climber
chica from chico.. I shall call you..mini moo.
Oct 17, 2010 - 03:48pm PT
Ekat,

Lots of cool stories in the Starr King file..

ps..Thanks for the help....

Edit. BBA, Thank you!!!!
BooDawg

Social climber
Polynesian Paradise
Oct 17, 2010 - 04:34pm PT
Excellent work, BBA! Sorry I haven't met you yet. I passed by your town twice this past summer. If only I'd known... Guido and I are good buds, as you may know.

I've got a new scanning protocol thanks to P. Haan, but it takes a bit longer to get the pix archived as TIFFs, then posted as JPEGs. I'll work on the Starr King slides now.

EKat: So nice to read that you enjoyed the West Face!
guido

Trad climber
Santa Cruz/New Zealand/South Pacific
Oct 17, 2010 - 04:39pm PT
Super! BBA

Rare rainy day in Santa Cruz so I will endeavor to dive into the book and the SK Register. Now that this project is completed how will you spend your spare time?

cheers Joe
BBA

climber
OF
Topic Author's Reply - Oct 17, 2010 - 06:36pm PT
I'll take photos, stories, even for failed attempts! (I have to because mine was a failed attempt - see page 159). Or stories by people who climbed it after the registers were removed.

Bill Amborn
Steve Grossman

Trad climber
Seattle, WA
Oct 17, 2010 - 08:02pm PT
Summit registers are the most elegantly simple historical record imaginable! Always fun to see an intact old one!
BooDawg

Social climber
Polynesian Paradise
Oct 17, 2010 - 09:52pm PT
What follows is a TR on the FA of the SW face of Mt. Starr King which I did with Tim Harrison on 6/14/72.

Photo of RegisterI was actually surprised to see the route was named “The Clean Machine” in the register because when Tim and I talked about the route name, we had decided to call it “Nuts & Bolts,” since it was done during the transition to clean climbing, and we wanted to do it clean. I remember writing up the route as “Nuts & Bolts,” but now I wonder how it is named in subsequent guides. However, I noticed on the Welcome to Ken Boche thread where Roger lists my FAs, that this climb is not included. Ironic that someone just posted a “Statute of Limitations” thread, and I even posted on it about there being none, IMHO.

Did this climb make it into subsequent guidebooks?

As documented in the summit register and in this thread, I’d already done two other FA’s on Starr King earlier. I have more and better photos of this climb than I do of the other two, so I wanted to post this one first.


I like the approach from Mono Meadows since it is a fairly straight forward route with relatively little up-hill humping of stuff.

Tim & I started in one afternoon and made a pleasant walk into the base of the SW face where we camped in the Jeffery Pine forest near the base of the SW face.


I distinctly remember the soft afternoon sunlight filtering through the trees and taking a couple of portraits of him, tho the high contrasts of sunlight and shade made photography difficult.



In the afternoon light, we settled on a route that begins just left of the large overhang immediately left of the SW gully. The route goes directly over a small overhang and more or less up for 4 pitches of roped climbing, up to 5.8 difficulty.








After that, the climbing eased off enough so that Tim and I felt comfortable simul-climbing unroped. It was mostly easy class 4-5 which accounts for the “700 ft of 3RD <- ? ! ?,” in the register.

Unroped climbing

We got to the summit and enjoyed spectacular views all around. Lovely day!

I did take several more excellent photos of Tim that day, but I can’t find them now, and I’ll post them up when I do.
BooDawg

Social climber
Polynesian Paradise
Oct 17, 2010 - 10:11pm PT
The Taco Stand is not allowing me to complete this TR in the above post, so I am going to try to continue it here.

After we unroped, we had many hundreds of feet of lovely face and friction climbing.




We got to the summit and enjoyed spectacular views all around. Lovely day!





I did take several more excellent photos of Tim that day, but I can’t find them now, and I’ll post them up when I do.
Bob Harrington

climber
Bishop, California
Oct 18, 2010 - 12:21am PT
Wow, that goes back a ways, eh Kath? Bill, this is really a fun project. Wonderful stuff from the old days - moccasins soaked in turpentine for better friction? Yikes!

The evolution of climbing culture from crazy UC college students out for the summer and RCS groups to urban children of the sixties and seventies moving to the mountains is so evident. There are so many people in there that I know or have met.

Corrections/information:

The google earth image is most likely an air photo, not "from space."

Schweize should be Schweizer

"Claudius Maximus Erectus" has got to be Claude Fiddler. I recognize the handwriting, and the style is unmistakably the ever-bashful Claude.

I know a Michael Campana who is a well known (among water resources people) and respected professor of hydrology and water resources. He's up at Oregon State now, but taught at U. of Nevada-Reno in the mid-seventies to late-eighties. Might be the same guy.

Great work Bill!
Clint Cummins

Trad climber
SF Bay area, CA
Oct 18, 2010 - 12:42am PT
Thanks for the TR, Ken. Your route is listed in the FA list in the back of the 1987 Meyers and Reid and the 1994 Reid guidebooks (as Nuts and Bolts, with the wrong year, 1971).
For some reason the regular Yosemite guidebooks since the Roper guide do not include descriptions for Starr King.
It is included in Spencer's Southern Yosemite guidebook, with a text description and the correct year, perhaps for this reason.
BooDawg

Social climber
Polynesian Paradise
Oct 18, 2010 - 01:28am PT
Thanks, Clint!! It's interesting that Starr King is included in the S. Yosemite guidebooks now, even though its latitude is about the same as the rim of the Valley from Taft Point to Old Inspiration Point, and it's most accessible from YV or the Mono Meadows trail. Go figure!
JEleazarian

Trad climber
Fresno CA
Oct 18, 2010 - 03:54am PT
Wow, great work, Bill. The Starr King register was the first one I encountered with Salathe's name in it. Reading through that gave us quite a thrill.

One correction:

The August 7, 1971 entry (below Chris Denny's solo ascent) should read Bill Hastrup, not Hostrup.

Thanks again for the great work, and thanks, Boo Dawg, for the great posts as well.

John
Gary

climber
Desolation Basin, Calif.
Oct 18, 2010 - 11:36am PT
Steve Grossman

Trad climber
Seattle, WA
Oct 18, 2010 - 11:54am PT
Great TR Boodawg!

Nice register shot, too! How many of those did the Club set in place, I wonder?!?

Roger Breedlove

climber
Cleveland Heights, Ohio
Oct 18, 2010 - 12:22pm PT
Nice post Ken. I like the portrait shots of both you and Tim.
Clint Cummins

Trad climber
SF Bay area, CA
Oct 18, 2010 - 02:45pm PT
[*RE*-EDIT: I was wrong twice about the deaths on Anchors Away - sorry, I should have been more careful - maybe do a forum search and read my own post?].

In 1973 Tim Harrison rap bolted Willie's Hand Jive on Lembert Dome.

The 1974 "Accidents in North America" lists "Michael Harrison" in the accident on Anchors Away. So apparently his name was Michael Tim Harrison.

10/17/1973 - David Bryan and Michael [Tim] Harrison were the fatalities.
I wonder if they were working on the second pitch or something?

The FA is listed in the guidebook as in 1972 by Tim Harrison and Mike Breidenbach. Probably what this means is that Tim had done it with various partners to a high point where the fatality occurred. Then Mike Briedenbach finished it. Or maybe Mike was Tim's main partner on it? 1972 can't be correct since Tim was still working on it in 1973.

Anybody know more?

(After that 1973 double fatality, folks like Ron Skelton went back and added second anchor bolts to Apron climbs).
BooDawg

Social climber
Polynesian Paradise
Oct 18, 2010 - 03:01pm PT
Steve: I'm guessing there were at least 100, maybe even 200 or 300 scattered on many of the named peaks of the Sierra. It's boggling since each one had its own cast aluminum cover. Probably someone at the Sierra Club or the Bancroft Library knows or could make a more educated guess.
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