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Jello
Social climber
No Ut
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 12, 2009 - 12:50am PT
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Thanks for all the good comments. I'd love to hear others' recollections of their formative family years. Maybe here would be a good place to post 'em.
Malcolm, it's been wonderfull to share a quarter century swath of our lives. You've so impressed, motivated, inspired and in so many ways just plain entertained me with your antics and struggles and dreams and constant good humor and positive outlook. No treasure is equal to your friendship. Keep on living well, my friend, you're proof that it's the best revenge against life's vecissitudes. In the turbulent wake of losing Guy, I'll have to wait a bit before I can get up to posting the Bruno the bear story.
-Jello
Edit:
Woof, I think it was the spring of 1976 that I made my one visit to E-rock. I had been invited by Whole Earth in Austin to come down and do a slide show and weekend seminar out at E-rock. During the seminar I had an opportunity to demonstrate leading on established routes as well as one that hadn't been led yet (I think it's called Fear of Flying), and then finished up with that little roof. I think the store manager belayed me on those climbs, but I can't remember his name. I remember the corner being a perfect ever-widening crack, but the roof was just a scrappy thing, hardly worth mentioning.
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dogtown
Trad climber
JackAssVille, Wyoming
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Dec 12, 2009 - 01:08am PT
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The year I was born.
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Fritz
Trad climber
Hagerman, ID
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Jello: I grew up in Ketchum/Sun Valley. Last winter a friend sent me a jpeg of a Sun Valley Mountain Express from Winter 1967.
There you are: up high in the Junior Expert's ski race results.
John Sabala was a classmate, and Pat Simpson was two years younger. John went to the Air Force Academy and I think Pat made it onto the U.S. Ski Team.
So----ski racing stories??
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the kid
Trad climber
fayetteville, wv
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super cool photo. that is pure climbing!
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Scott Cole
Trad climber
Sunny California
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I climbed in the Caucasus mtns a while back, they were still belaying and rapelling like that. I hadn't seen a Dulfersitz in a very long time, but the art is not lost to the Russians
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couchmaster
climber
pdx
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Jul 22, 2010 - 04:37pm PT
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I wish I had any story like your's Jeff. My mom, now 88, just recently learned that my father was in Germany during the war. He'd mentioned a story of being in England, so she had though he was there the whole time LOL! The letters he'd sent home to his mom finally turned up and it turns out he marched right up the Rhine behind the retreating Wehrmacht. My dad died 54 years ago, and the letters wound up with his brother, who'd recently found them and got them over to my mom.
Nothing as interesting, funny and touching as this:
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From Jeff Lowe:
Dad pursued everything at once, all the time. Back in the 'thirties, when he was 16 and his brother, George was a little older, they worked and lived on a ranch near St Anthony, Idaho. One day, they hitched up a buggy and drove over to the Tetons. The next day they climbed the Grand in cowboy boots, using a lariat as a rope.
During the war, Dad was commander of a Navy fighter squadron.
He met and flew with some guys who were good climbers, like Dick Pownall. Some of these guys worked for Exum in the summer, and after the war, Dad would spend some time every year, climbing in the Tetons. Any of his kids were allowed to go along on these trips, and climb if they wanted to. Dad took me up the Exum Ridge on the Grand when I was seven. He carried a 100' length of 1/4" nylon rope, to keep me safe. I was fully prepared to catch his fall, should he take one, on that little string!
Another time, in the mid-fifties, Dad decided to climb Rainier. At 5pm on a Friday afternoon, he locked the door to his law office in Ogden Utah and climbed into his newly acquired Hudson Hornet, and began the 1,000-mile drive, pre-interstate system. When he arrived at Paradise the next day, the mountain was enveloped in a storm cloud, but the party he planned to join, had started up anyway, so Dad took off after them, arriving at Camp Muir about the same time they did. After a few hours' sleep, the team got up and climbed to the top in really rough weather, but still made it down to Paradise by mid-afternoon. This allowed Dad just enough time to drive back home, and appear freshly showered and shaved to present a case before a county judge at 9am. His old flying buddies used to say that when Dad drove on those long trips, he was really just "flying low". The speedometer would register over 100mph for long stretches at a time, day or night.
My brothers and I did pretty quickly surpass Dad in our climbing abilities. Greg and I took him on a new variation to the Jensen Ridge on Symmetry Spire in 1965. The variation was about 5.9, and it was more than Dad wanted, although he got up it OK. From that time on, he mostly lived vicariously through his boy's adventures. His very last climb, was in 1979, when he went to Ama Dablam with us. He had heart disease and wasn't supposed to go above basecamp, but I wasn't too surprised to see him arrive at camp 2 at about 20,000' one afternoon. After I chastised him for jeopardizing the expedition by this stunt, we spent a special night, along with Greg, who was filming the trip.
Dad had a fatal heart-attack a few years later, while skiing with his daughter, Lil, at our local area, Snowbasin. After the ski patrolmen had loaded him into the tobaggan, Dad, knowing he was dying, begged them to take him over the old Porqupine gelande jump, which was just below where they were at the time. Of course, despite Dad's entreaties, they could'nt really grant his wish. He set a high bar for his kids, and helped us gain the skills and strength to make it over.
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Great stuff, thanks again for sharing it.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Mar 28, 2012 - 08:22am PT
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Aug 11, 2012 - 04:48pm PT
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That last Bump will certainly stop your car! LOL
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Mar 24, 2013 - 02:06pm PT
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Bump for a hump...humpty hump!
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Dec 31, 2013 - 07:37pm PT
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Bump for Jeff and the Family Stone...
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Dweller Underground
Boulder climber
Irvine, Ca
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Sep 16, 2014 - 12:06am PT
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Dude, I just spend like an hour reading this entire thread. I think all this old school ropework is ten times sicker than all the super safe gym climbing lead certification bull, this is what inspires. It was the real mountaineers who overcame obstacles with their minds. Thank you for all the sick pictures!
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Gnome Ofthe Diabase
climber
Out Of Bed
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Sep 16, 2014 - 06:06am PT
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all TACO-LISCHISH comments and all
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Apr 28, 2017 - 07:10pm PT
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Family style portions bump...
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