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Steve Byrne
Trad climber
Flagstaff, AZ
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Topic Author's Original Post - Feb 13, 2012 - 07:04pm PT
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Hey everyone.
Especially, Hello, and I'm sorry, to all my old friends I've lost touch with for so long. I learned hard lessons turning something I loved into a business. Sometimes I try to hide from it all, but it was incredibly formative. It was a rich experience, worth reliving at least one more time, for posterity. Hopefully this will be good therapy for me and maybe... well, we'll see how it goes...
I'm just going to write and post as I am able. This may take a while and might even be boring. I suppose we post things for ourselves. I've been meaning to write for a long time. This way it'll be saved no matter how many hard drives crash on me. My climbing stuff will start on the next page.
Well, I can say a couple of things for now...
My first notion of the sport of rock climbing came with the news to my mom, that our neghbor across the street's 19 year old son had broken his neck "rock climbing". I must have been 8 or 10, and thought it curious that someone would climb just a rock, but I was told that it happened at Smith Rocks, in Central Oregon. So I guessed it was a really big rock and must have been part of practicing to climb mountains. His name was "Dan" or "Dave" Ferries? Much later got the details that he had been doing an aid climb on face of "The Monument", and after his fall, had hung upside down for about 3 hours before he could be rescued. I remember seeing him once after that with a halo thing on his head, but walking down the sidewalk, so I assume he recovered, possibly fully.
The thing here was not that climbing was always that dangerous, but that statistically, to my mom, of all the people she knew of, who ever climbed, 100% of them had broken their neck before reaching the age of 20. Me and mom is a 2 volume tangent and I'll just clip it here by saying that my climbing certainly never pleased her.
Fast forward to home room class... maybe 10th grade. Kent Benesch was in my class by virtue of alphabetic proximity. He lived on my old paper route and was someone I always liked, but never hung out with. I was a dirt bike stoner and he must have had climbing friends or something... Anyways, one day I look over and he has what must have been a really early "Climbing" magazine with Pat Ament on the cover doing some sick overhanging boulder problem with just a chalk bag and nothing but air behind him. I was amazed, but kent assured me that although he was very strong, that there were little edges and things you can grip onto. I could kind of see it, but geeze! I didn't give it much thought until later. Kent and His brother Craig were climbing partners for some time, although later, when I got into it, it seemed Craig was elsewhere. Kent was a big part of the early Smith Rock scene, back in Alan Watt's point system days (oh yes, I will spill...).
Finally at age 19, my best skiing friend "Boyt" (Ross Horton), took me hiking at Smith Rocks, which is a real playground that most people only see a small fraction of. I was curious if we'd see any rock climbers. When we arrived, we could see across to the base of Parking Lot Wall, 2 figures doing something at the bottom of the wall. We made a rough plan and went to investigate the climbers as our first destination. At this point I had never seen a carrabiner or a rope or harness or anything. I saw a movie once about someone climbing The Matterhorn and that was it. I still assumed for roped climbing that you pounded an axe into the rock to climb up.
Upon approaching the wall, I remember seeing Alan Watts slowing rappelling down from the overhanging first pitch of the old aid route "Unfinished Symphony". It all seemed very technical. Two ropes, a bunch of criss-crossed carabiners, harness, taped and chalky hands, and he didn't seem to even care about the fun of the rappell. I think Tom Blust was there with Watts that day and Alan had just "freed" it (512b, pin scars with a stupid crux reach and say goodbye to the nerves in your left pinky for a while), but I didn't know what that meant. It only occurred to me as we were walking away to ask what "freed" meant.
Boyt told me "It means climbing by just using your hands and feet, and it's how MOST climbing is done. The rope is just so you don't fall and die..." (I was incredibly naive)... "He holds on by sticking his finger tips in the little holes!"
Unfortunately, we had just missed the event, otherwise the whole affair may have actually seemed real. I was truly blown away. My brain now had a first hand data point on what rock climbing was. Alan Watts climbing 5.12b, five minutes from the car. This was the spring of 1982...
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hairyapeman
Trad climber
Fres-yes
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Feb 13, 2012 - 07:10pm PT
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Good start! Keep em coming!
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ncrockclimber
climber
The Desert Oven
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Feb 13, 2012 - 07:14pm PT
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Cool stuff. Thanks for taking the time to share. I look forward to reading more.
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michaeld
Sport climber
Sacramento
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Feb 13, 2012 - 07:16pm PT
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Great read, +1
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couchmaster
climber
pdx
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Feb 13, 2012 - 07:17pm PT
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Welcome Steve. Thanks for sharing your tale (s)! We've met briefly at Smith Rock back when you were (still are?) a badassed climber. Frank Cornelius drug me along to you to borrow one of the little new TCUS you'd made. I couldn't afford one. I might have actually used Franks...it's all kind of hazy.
Holy crap though! The memory of what a game changer those were never left me though. Great climbing invention. Nutting the East Face of Monkey (or any steep shallow pin scarred crack) on aid before Alan put in newer bolts to free it was out there in crazy land till TCUs showed up and it seemed a bit more..... survivable...and fun, they were a game changer for harder free thin crack routes as well:-)
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Jaybro
Social climber
Wolf City, Wyoming
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Feb 13, 2012 - 07:20pm PT
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Staying tuned.....
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slabbo
Trad climber
fort garland, colo
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Feb 13, 2012 - 07:28pm PT
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Steve- i still have a TCU from WAY back- works perfect and must be 30 years old or close. i think it was $18 ????
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Rankin
Social climber
Greensboro, North Carolina
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Feb 13, 2012 - 07:35pm PT
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Very nice writing. Thanks Steve!
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mucci
Trad climber
The pitch of Bagalaar above you
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Feb 13, 2012 - 07:54pm PT
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Welcome Steve!
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k-man
Gym climber
SCruz
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Feb 13, 2012 - 08:00pm PT
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Thanks Steve!
But I can guess from the way you left us hanging, that Watt's dude had it all wrong. Blfff, fingers in the little holes.
What a riot.
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drljefe
climber
El Presidio San Augustin del Tucson
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Feb 13, 2012 - 08:35pm PT
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Yeah man, can't wait for more.
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R.B.
Trad climber
47N 122W
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Feb 13, 2012 - 09:01pm PT
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Hey Steve, good to hear from you. I still remember the 0.75 tcu I found on Mescalito that you placed on your solo ascent.
Say hey to all the Flag boys. RB
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Steve Byrne
Trad climber
Flagstaff, AZ
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 14, 2012 - 06:09am PT
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After the encounter at the base of Picnic Lunch Wall, my interest grew a bit. Ross had moved to Bend and we made a number of excursions... some to Smith for more exploring and scrambling, but more importantly, to Awbrey Meadows, A superb bouldering area with lots of variety and problems in the 5.8 to 5.12 range. It was popular with all the locals and a great place to meet other climbers. We had top roped a 5-8-ish layback using swammy belts and an old twisted Gold-Line rope that was stiff, like a fishing pole, but got the job done.
I could see immediately that the system was safe. It allowed us to go where we would die otherwise, and that was very, very cool. Shortly, I bought a harness... a white, wrap around Choinard that served me well for a couple of years. I climbed in tennis shoes for almost my whole first year. I'd blast through the toes pretty quick and just kept fixing them with shoe goo. I had cut all the knobs off the soles to make them less flexy.
It was all really fun in those days... I was getting up new things almost daily and doing things that were impossible weeks earlier. Ross's brother Dana had a better rope he gave us, and we top roped a few other short things. I met another kid who had a harness and a few biners and we combined our stuff to make a rack of 8-10 carrabiners and went to Smith to see what we could do. I remeber leading a bolted 5.9 face climb, clipping each bolt with a single biner and arriving at the belay with one to spare. I was a rock climber!
Those days at Smith seem surreal to me now. You could just show up at the parking lot, meet climbers and ask what they were going to do and if you could tag along and get a top rope. It seemed completely normal. Everyone was friendly and I don't remember ever being blown off. Pretty soon, I knew some people with gear, and even had a guy I'd just met, loan me his rack for a week. At that time it was all hexes and stoppers, but now we could climb cracks too! That was a very big deal.
Somewhere in here I met Rick Dierckson bouldering and was taken under his wing. He was quite a character, who I'm sure, is well remembered. He told me to "Never buy hexes, "friends" are the ticket. One friend is better than a whole rack of hexes". He took me to Smith and led me up a 5.10. I remember yanking the gear as I climbed and leaving it on the rope. As I neared the belay, I had 7-8 pieces dangling in front of my legs. Rick was happy I made it without falling, but just shaking his head at what a mess I was. He taught me my first lessons of trad climbing in good style, a little ettiquette and how to just be less embarassing. He also showed me how to self belay up a rope with a jumar. I think he was living with Brooke Sandahl.
I finally made the trip to Portland to buy some real climbing shoes. Now I could actually find rests and place gear on lead. I still had almost no rack, but was meeting lots of people and getting top ropes wherever I could. It was the steep part of my learning curve and I would try anything, it didn't matter how hard it was. I remember watching a guy trying to lead Whartley's Revenge at Smith and noticing that his belayer was tied off, as if to keep him from flying upward if he had to catch a fall. Whartley's is a steep, strenuous (5.11b) crack climb with the crux at the top. The climber failed at the crux and took a short whipper, but offered me a try... I got up the strenuous part by just moving through it quickly. It wasn't pretty and at the rest before the crux, my leg wouldn't stop sewing-machining. I was still losing strength so I went for it... No real thought, just pulling on jams and paddling with my feet. Flailing to where my hands simply would not clutch a hold anymore. I made a faint stab at the crux reach and immediately flew off backwards. I may have tried again, but was so arm-pumped by then, there was no way, and lowered off. I think Watts and (Chris) Grover had shown up and seen a bit of the spectacle... the new (5.10a) kid, trying to lead Whartley's. After that I was part of the scene and climbing had become all that mattered. Soon I would even lead a 5.11a and make my way onto the locals' points list...
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Steve Byrne
Trad climber
Flagstaff, AZ
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 14, 2012 - 07:22am PT
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Some of the Smith Rock locals back then were Alan Watts, Alan Lester, Chris Grover, Tom Blust, Kent Benesch, Craig Benesch, Frank Cornelius, Brooke Sandoval, Steve Mrazek, Dana Horton, Rick Dierckson, Chuck Wheeler, John ("Deucie") Middendorf, Sean Olmstead and Doug Phillips. The local business was the "Juniper Junction", 100 yards from the parking lot, which sold ice cream and later the "Fire" (fee-ray) shoes imported by John Bachar. At Terrebonne was a mexican restaurant that made superb chimichangas.
Climbing with Frank (Cornelius) one day in the basalt gorge, he told me, "If you can make number 1/2 sized friends, they'll sell like hot-cakes in The Valley". I'd taken machine shop and welding classes all through high school, then, in college, I had access to the machine shop there. I decided to do a batch of 50 as a manufacturing project. They had fairly bendable steel stems and tubular brass triggers. It was before I knew anything about swaging wires, so I think I used bicycle cable and swages made from copper tubing, with a swager made from a pair of plyers that I would hit with a hammer. I didn't know what a logarithmic spiral was, but I knew that a friend cam decreased 1/3 in radius each 90 degrees. I juggled numbers until a certain percent added each 15 degrees gave me that, and machined lengths of cam stock, that was then sliced to make cams. Springs were made from guitar string. They were pretty crude, but worked well and sold quickly enough when Watts took them to Yosemite and sold them off in the Camp IV parking lot.
At that point, I had been to the valley one time, for a week, with Sean Olmstead. It was an odd fit, because he was straight as an arrow and I had a weed habit, but we had lots of fun bumbling around and tring to find good climbs we could do, which was maybe mid 5.10. It was an adventure just being there. For our first climb we went to Reed's Pinnacle wall to do the highly recommended "Reed's Direct", but it had people already on it and more people waiting, so we went down the wall to a thing called "Stone Groove", which is maybe 5.9 or 5.10a. It's the first time we've ever been on granite and the stuff feels like glass. It wasn't even vertical, but it was pretty hard for us both. It felt slippery and awkward. We both came down a little fearful and humbled as to what we may have in store for us on anything harder. As we reassembled our gear, Werner Braun walked up in just shorts, shoes and a chalk bag. He mumbled something and proceeded to free solo up and then down the climb we had just struggled with, then moved on before we could even get our packs on. We just stared at each other in disbelief. It was the only climb I can still remember from the whole trip.
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nutstory
climber
Ajaccio, Corsica, France
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Feb 14, 2012 - 08:34am PT
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Feb 14, 2012 - 12:35pm PT
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Welcome Steve!
As a fellow Aridzonian I look forward to your tales of business and pleasure!
I still proudly carry several of your TCUs going all the way back.
Several generations shown here and still in service!
Thanks Mr. Byrne!
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Steve Byrne
Trad climber
Flagstaff, AZ
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 14, 2012 - 01:43pm PT
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The scene back at Smith was really fun. On weekdays it was best to make plans with someone, but on weekends you just showed up and headed down to the dihedrals. The base of Moonshine Dihedral was the standard place to dump your pack. Typically most of us would warm up bouldering on the easy traverses at the base of New Testament. This is also the base of Whartley's and just a little over is the base of The Shoes of the Fisherman. Eventually all plans and preferences were known, and we'd split up accordingly to go do our projects. Generally, later in the day we'd head back to the dihedrals and depending who was around either hang out or head up the hill to the parking lot. One of the great things about Smith is how much of the area can be surveyed at a glance from the parking lot.
The (basalt) gorge was a little different. The parking for it is down at the end of the road and you can't see anyone until you're right on them. For me, the place had a completely different feel. More forbidding and dark and humbling. The river also goes through some rapids there and makes some noise. You just don't notice the birds twittering like other places in the park. The rock varied from slippery smooth to open celled obsidian foam that will shred your taped hands just by touching it. Most of the rock is in between. Awesome columnar lines, with an amazing variety of climbs.
Alan Watts was the mastermind of the Smith Rock points system for hard climbing. In retrospect, I'm sure he has mixed feelings about it, since climbing is not supposed to be competitive. Somehow it wasn't taken that way, but we were still curiously motivated by it. I remember the incredible satisfaction I felt one day when (Chris) Grover had conceded that I probably had more points than him. At this point I don't remember how many points anyone had except that Watts had like triple that of anyone else. Alan Lester was the established number 2 local and the rest of us were all packed tightly somewhere down the list (Yes, Alan kept track!).
The way it worked is this: To get on the list, you had to lead a 5.11- or harder climb with no falls and all pro placed on lead. Once you were on the list, you could get points by just top roping... the base scale was 3 points for 5.11-, 4 points for 5.11, 5 points for 5.11+ and so on. If you led the climb, there were bonus points available. Nothing counts unless it was freed. To count as a lead, all the pro had to be placed on lead and not fallen on. If you yoyo'd, it counted the same as a top rope. So you got 1 bonus point for leading it, 1 more for leading it on-sight and 1 more if it was a first free ascent.
In retrospect, there were quite a few things would never have gotten climbed without the point system. Obviously ugly, hard things that can really take some skin off your shoulders. Shoes of the Fisherman has this awkward section, with slot groveling, shoulder gripping, snagging rack etc. Really not fun. The other one that was just horrible was Tarantula. Innocent looking thin crack undercling left under a roof and then around the corner into the flared slot. There's a bolt out on the face to keep the rope out of the slot. Awkward with lousy painful jams. It looks pretty easy, but is hard because there's just no good way to pull on anything. 6 points though, and right off the trail... you can't pass that up! For what it's worth this was all very good training and taught us to be creative and deal with stuff that was unpleasant (Thanks Alan).
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Steve Byrne
Trad climber
Flagstaff, AZ
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 14, 2012 - 03:55pm PT
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I met Doug Phillips just after making my first batch of point fives. He had just finished developing his Slider Nuts. He passed a bunch out that we were all playing with and they were the only thing to this day that would work in the gaps between the bricks of the bathroom buildings there at Smith. They worked really well in paralell cracks, but were a bit heavy and could get stuck pretty easily. Doug needed help making Sliders and had seen my point fives, so he offered me a job. I had been faced with the dilema of moving to Klamath Falls to continue my engineering education, when I really just wanted to climb. A year off of school while working at Metolius Mountain Products seemed like a good answer.
Doug is extremely soft spoken at first, but we had a lot of fun working together in the shop across the driveway from his old house. He has a good sense of humor and things were all in all, pretty good. We climbed together occasionally, although he didn't seem so obsessed like some of us. Sales were good. All the stores seemed to be buying them and Metolius had a good foothold for launching anything new that may come along. Unfortunately this only lasted about a year, by which time the stores must have all been stocked and the real market demand from climbers took over. In any case, my job had dried up and I was let go the next summer.
My next decision was to move back to Bend and take a few more classes and get access to the shop there again. I made another batch of small friends (3/4" this time) and was climbing and bouldering a lot. Alan Watts moved into the same apartments and we started training and bouldering together more regularly. We agreed to take a ballet class to improve balance and flexibility. It was good. Within two weeks I was placing my feet statically where I had to swing them before. We took it for two quarters. There was another guy in the class that we never quite figured out.
One day we decided to run down to Awbrey for some bouldering. I had been getting close to working out the crux of Chris Grover's thin crack problem, but hadn't done it yet. It starts with a couple of non jamming moves and then a little pinky jam you can lay off of a little. higher up it widens to a finger lock and then a handjam. When the time came we went over to it and I felt pretty good and finally pulled through the crux. Alan was "spotting" me sort of. What this meant was that at the critical moment, he almost couldn't get out of the way. I had my eyes glued on the bomber fingerlock where the crack widened and fired my hand up there as soon as I thought I was in range. I was! I had it! but just as my finger slotted into the jam a foot slipped and it was yanked out, leaving ugly flappers on both sides of my index finger. The fall was only six or seven feet, but I must have been really focussed, because somehow my tongue was all the way out when I finally hit. My feet hit in a way that didn't help and I landed hard on my butt. My tongue was instantly numb and I knew this was not good. I'd never been aware of sticking my tongue out before and this was a nasty wake up call. Alan gave me a concerned look as I brushed off. My finger was my only functional problem. I tell him "I vit my vongue" or something, and have him look at it. He says it doesn't look too bad and we laugh it off a little, except for my finger... that was unfortunate and would affect my climb selections for a couple of weeks. We bouldered for another hour and then jogged the mile back to the apartments. Upon inspection in the mirror I realized I'd need some stitches and went to the hospital. Eight stitches... two on the bottom and six on top. To hear Alan tell it later, he says when he looked at my tongue it was barely hanging, but he wasn't done bouldering, so he played it down. It left a very nasty scar that I carry with me to this day.
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jfailing
Trad climber
Lone Pine
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Feb 14, 2012 - 05:51pm PT
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Steve - keep it coming! Thank you for writing these great stories about Smith in the early days!
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