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daryl_hattens_daughter
climber
saskatchewan, canada
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 29, 2008 - 08:18pm PT
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hey everyone WOW!!! thank you so much for the photo's thats awesome.ya this site really helped in my search to learn about who my dad may have been, or who he was. thankyou all so much. as for me, i am engaged and getting married next summer. we have boughten a house here and are quite happy. anywyas thankyou for all your posts you are all amazing!
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Mighty Hiker
Social climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Aug 30, 2008 - 03:17am PT
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Glad you saw the updates, Janelle. And congratulations on your upcoming wedding!
Perhaps you should save this thread, and the photos, somewhere secure. Someday Daryl's grandchildren may want to know about their grandfather.
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Wayno
Big Wall climber
Seattle, WA
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Aug 30, 2008 - 03:33am PT
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This is IMHO the best thread ever on this forum. It keeps coming back and every time it makes me smile. Janelle, your search must be bittersweet. All these good things about your father and yet you were shut off from him. We all wish you the best in whatever you might choose.
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Stewart
Trad climber
Courtenay, B.C.
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Hi Janelle - glad you came back & sincere best wishes for your upcoming wedding.
Thought you might be interested to know that I've got a couple of Polaroids of you - one of you alone & one with your father & Greg - taken while you were very young. I don't know what happens to Polaroids when they are scanned, so I should make sure I don't wreck them before I try.
You're fully clothed, not drooling, or doing anything else to make you cringe, so if you don't mind, I can try to post them (as soon as I can locate them). Your decision, though, and they don't get posted without your OK.
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daryl_hattens_daughter
climber
saskatchewan, canada
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 10, 2008 - 09:50am PT
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haha thanks everyone. yes i have been saving them. an sure you can post them. thankyou
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Stewart
Trad climber
Courtenay, B.C.
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Sep 16, 2008 - 07:30pm PT
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Hi Janelle. I'll post them ASAP. Try to forgive me the delay, though - I'm having a lot of trouble with my eyes these days & my photos (probably a thousand or so) are all piled into a box unsorted. I'll get onto the search soon. If my memory serves me properly, they'll probably be a bit underexposed. Sorry about not having lots more of you, but I moved to Squamish very shortly afterwards and didn't see too much of Daryl afterwards.
All the best for you in the meantime.
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Stewart
Trad climber
Courtenay, B.C.
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Sep 16, 2008 - 07:30pm PT
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Hi Janelle. I'll post them ASAP. Try to forgive me the delay, though - I'm having a lot of trouble with my eyes these days & my photos (probably a thousand or so) are all piled into a box unsorted. I'll get onto the search soon. If my memory serves me properly, they'll probably be a bit underexposed. Sorry about not having lots more of you, but I moved to Squamish very shortly afterwards and didn't see too much of Daryl afterwards.
All the best for you in the meantime.
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daryl_hattens_daughter
climber
saskatchewan, canada
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 17, 2008 - 12:42am PT
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thats ok, ill keep checking back. actually i keep looking every day hoping for more replies so come on guys keep the stories coming haha
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Mighty Hiker
Social climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Sep 17, 2008 - 12:44am PT
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Janelle, you may want to look at the thread "Climbing at Squamish in the 1970s". It's currently on the front page, and is about a time when your father was very active at Squamish. There are stories and pictures, some about Daryl, but mainly about our little community then, and all the people who were there. It may give you a little more flavour regarding one part of Daryl's life, and his friends.
http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.html?topic_id=668163
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Stewart
Trad climber
Courtenay, B.C.
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Sep 20, 2008 - 08:28pm PT
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Hi Janelle - OK - here's some stuff: I found the Polaroids of you, but they're not very well exposed. I'll ask around for ideas to improve the resolution, but try to remember that I don't know or care much about computers and I don't want to accidentally kill the images if I scan them, so please be patient.
Back to Daryl, and try to remember that he was a tough guy who wasn't particularly well known for his sensitive character traits. Your grandmother Kate as well as I knew her was very good-humoured and apparently enjoyed playing jokes on him on occasion. Anyway...
Once, we were about half-way up Zodiac wall and getting ready to go to sleep, and Daryl was taking stuff out of his pack, which I don't think he had opened since we left Victoria. I wasn't paying much attention to him until I heard him make a strange noise - sort of an amused squawk. I turned to look at him just in time to see him pulling the cutest stuffed mouse you ever saw out of his pack - by the tail. I'm sure that if he had some tongs handy, he wold have used them. Somehow I ended up with the mouse and finally gave it to your aunt Darlene at his memorial in Squamish.
Another time back when all the cool climbers wore knickers with long socks (including Daryl), I must have been visiting the Hattens around Christmas, as I remember watching him open a present from Kate. It was a new pair of knicker socks, which was fine, but these ones had individual toes in bright pastel colours - something no self-respecting climber would dare be seen in, even at gunpoint. Maybe you had to be there, but the identical expressions on his face when he discovered these surprises was priceless - the amused fury of someone who knew that his mother still loved him regardless of how tough he was.
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daryl_hattens_daughter
climber
saskatchewan, canada
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 27, 2008 - 01:47am PT
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haha hey everyone i told my brother about this sight and he said he even climbed with my dad...well tried to. anywyas i told him to check out this site so hopefully he;ll share his stories as well....
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Stewart
Trad climber
Courtenay, B.C.
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Hi Janelle - the bad news is that I'm going to be out of circulation for about a week. The good news is that I got a camera store to clean up the polaroids and scan them for me. The quality isn't great, but they're not too bad. For what it's worth, you're holding something in one of them: a #9 Hexcentric. It was the first thing you grabbed in my house - a piece of climbing gear.
The other guy in the picture is Greg - one of your father's most loyal friends.
Catch you later.
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daryl_hattens_daughter
climber
saskatchewan, canada
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 21, 2008 - 11:19am PT
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oh ok , well i look foreward to seeing them!!
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survival
Big Wall climber
A Token of My Extreme
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Oct 21, 2008 - 02:23pm PT
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Janelle,
I didn't know your dad well, but had a couple interesting contacts with him.
It was 1977 I think, one of my first trips to the valley.
I had been partying late with some friends in Camp 4 when your dad came storming into the campsite roaring about some evil deed the rangers had commited against us poor rockclimbers and how we HAD to get back at them. He was talking about all kinds of questionable shenanigans and making a hell of a racket. I thought "Hell, this guy's going to get us all arrested!" and made myself scarce. He kind of scared me!
The guy in the photo inside the car (post 122)lighting the smoke was Bob Williams (deceased) and my partner for the Pacific Ocean Wall when we did I think the 9th ascent. Bob was with me the second time I met your dad and he was much friendlier and giving me all kinds of info about big walls I was interested in. I mentioned our previous meeting and he said "AWW man, I was just blowing off steam." or some such comment. After that first meeting, all I remember hearing about him is how hard he partied when he climbed, something we all strived for!
He was a real character and part of the fabric of Yosemite in my early days there.
Good Luck to you,
Bruce Birchell
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Stewart
Trad climber
Courtenay, B.C.
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Oct 29, 2008 - 12:49am PT
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Hi Janelle & sorry for the delay. I checked out the scanned photos, but they are HUGE. I suppose they've got to be scaled down, but I'll have to get some advice on how to do it... tomorrow, I hope.
Computers are a bit of a mystery to me, but I'll find a way to get them to you as soon as possible. Again, my apologies for the bungling at my end.
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Stewart
Trad climber
Courtenay, B.C.
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Nov 18, 2008 - 09:37pm PT
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Hi Janelle. I sent you the photos at your e-mail address. I hope you got them. Feel free to post them for your fans.
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daryl_hattens_daughter
climber
saskatchewan, canada
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 8, 2009 - 11:11am PT
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yes i got them! sorry i havent been on here for so long, i got them thats awesome thank you so much
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Perry Beckham
climber
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Mar 29, 2009 - 11:20am PT
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Janelle,
I'd heard about this forum for some time and finally took the time to read through the posts.
I met Daryl on Psyche Ledge in the spring of 76. I had just hitched up from Vancouver and was planning to rendezvous with Dave for a weekend of neophyte shenanigans (it's a wonder either of us survived that first season). It was late afternoon with the western sun finally warming the Grand Wall and the forested old highway and as I approached Psyche Ledge I saw two trolls sitting in the grass doing troll stuff. I mean, they had to be trolls, they had long shaggy hair and dirty headbands and were communicating in some hard to understand language while passing a bottle of straight Dark Navy Rum back and forth. I cautiously approached them and said hello. The red haired troll responded with a gruff but cheery, "Hi, how's it going man? I'm Daryl and this is Stewart, have a drink."
So began my friendship with the late great Daryl Hatten, aka Doug Fir, Chrome Molybdenum Man, Darly Halfweenie, PO Solo or whatever colorful moniker best suited the occasion.
Daryl and I became regular climbing partners through the late seventies and early eighties. He taught me many of the fundamentals of big wall climbing and was totally trustworthy.
Daryl was also an excellent free climber and a five hour romp up the Grand via Cruel Shoes back in the mid eighties stands out in my mind. Daryl and Eric Weinstein were the strongest rockclimbing team in Squamish at that time. Among their many accomplishments was the second ascent of the PO with Java and Kim, at that time, the hardest big wall in the world.
Daryl had a sharp wit and great sense of humour. He loved plays on words. We were bivied on the Artery Ledge while starting up a cool overhanging unclimbed wall. Daryl thought it looked just like a mini Shield Headwall and suggested we call the wall "The Panty Shield". We liked that and kicked around names for our yet unclimbed route. It was quite rainy and we felt a bit amphibious in our endeavours so a frog theme emerged. I was reading some Kurt Vonnegut at the time and he made reference to a character known as the Pan Galactic Straw Boss. As we lay there mouldering in our sodden bivi gear, smoking bunk we merged the amphibian with some Vonnegut and came up with the Pan Granitic Frogman. We laughed so hard we cried.
We left ropes fixed to our high point and before I could come back to finish the route, sprained my ankle taking a sixty footer of Rainy Day Dream Away while Daryl was holding the rope. Dary went back and finished the aid route with John Simpson.
I have so many fond memories of Daryl and the one that stands out in my mind was us riding borrowed bicycles from No Name Road to the base of the Chief for a one day ascent of the complete Black Dyke. It was four in the morning and we were wearing headlamps and packs and ropes, riding down the highway. There was Daryl pedaling furiously in front of me with his shaggy hair blowing in the wind, cackling back at me, "Beckham..... You're light!....Ha Ha Ha."
Another one that comes to mind was my arriving at the Apron Parking lot some time in the late seventies to find a distraught, elderly woman looking up at the rock. Feeling real concern, I asked her what was wrong. "I wish he wouldn't do that" she wept as she pointed up at a lone figure racing up Diedre unroped in the late afternoon sun. I knew it was Daryl climbing and immediately put two and two together. Daryl was soloing Diedre for his mom, with the remains of a six pack clipped to his belt.
Daryl and I went our separate ways and I hadn't seen him for a few years. I was saddened to hear of his death but not surprised by the nature of his demise. We'd expected to hear the word of an overdose, illness or foul play that went with the lifestyle. That Daryl died trying to save a cat stuck in a tree says everything about his huge heart and good qualities.
As I stood on top of the Chief with old friends, passing around Daryl's hammer and remembering him, I couldn't help notice the lives this gruff, sometimes trollish colorful character touched and inspired. Would that we could all be so well remembered.
I feel privileged to say that I knew Daryl Hatten and that we were friends and climbing partners.
Janelle, you can be proud of your dad, we all loved him and miss him.
Perry Beckham
Squamish BC
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Mighty Hiker
Social climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Mar 29, 2009 - 08:30pm PT
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Thanks, Perry - glad you've joined us here, and looking forward to more stories. The "Climbing at Squamish in the 1970s" thread may interest you - http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.html?topic_id=668163
Bumped, to make it more likely that Perry will see it, plus SteveW has gone a bit bump-crazy.
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Chris2
Trad climber
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Mar 29, 2009 - 08:49pm PT
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Janelle I climbed only one day with your father. Much older, he kept calling me "kid." Out of respect, I had no problem with this. At one point he asked me if I had any children, I said no. He said he did and..."no climbing and no adventure could ever compare to the love and pride that I have from the birth my child."
Those words stayed with me. When my first daughter was born, I thought of his words.
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