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Oli
Trad climber
Fruita, Colorado
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Aug 15, 2007 - 12:17am PT
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Dalke and I played in a band when we were in 9th grade(1961), and between sets one night in suits and ties and polished street shoes, we sped up in the dark to Flagstaff Mountain and simultaneously free-soloed the direct middle of Campbell's Cliff, a near-vertical wall above the road. The route is maybe a hundred feet long roughly, and it was about feeling in the dark for holds, getting those state-of-the-art dress shoes to stick on edges, smearing with the smooth bottoms of those shoes. The only light came from the city, below. We had to hurry, to get back to the gig... The band leader didn't like the stickers all over our pantlegs...
We also did a lot of night bouldering on Boulder High School. Larry's Hush Puppies were good smearing shoes, and he was like some kind of spider in hyper speed up those flagstone walls. I played also in the school band, and at Friday football games I'd lure some band mate over to the school to climb. Tom Deland, who hadn't ever much climbed at all, but was game, followed me up one of those tall school walls in dark, in our band uniforms, and suddenly he fell but miraculously caught his hand on a light fixture six feet or more down and to his right, grabbed it, and swung there like a chimpanzee, spared a cruel cement landing 20 feet below. I down-climbed and rescued him...
What we could have done in those days with the shoes climbers enjoy today!
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 15, 2007 - 12:51am PT
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From A History of Free Climbing in America:
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Oli
Trad climber
Fruita, Colorado
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Aug 15, 2007 - 01:13am PT
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Just when I think I'm done with climbing, someone like Roy comes along and fills me with desire, makes me remember those good times in a special way again... That feeling of first seeing a climb and wanting to do it, for its beauty above all, but also for the joy of being with the people right there with you at the time. I loved all the people in that photo. Each of them was a friend and mentor to me.
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Aug 15, 2007 - 12:05pm PT
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Tar, way back there on pitch 2 you wrote that
It was in that "more to work with" bit that Sibley and I began to show some coordination issues, but that's another story.
Do tell!
In 1970, Bill Roos and I ran into Jim Erickson and Duncan Ferguson hiking up the talus to attempt an early repeat of Green Spur, which Dalke had freed in 1964. We asked them how hard it was going to be and Jim answered "We'll find out!" The route still had some mystery and they were approaching with respect.
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Aug 15, 2007 - 12:17pm PT
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This page needs some color ... the Erickson/Dalke conversation just mentioned took place, I believe, as Bill and I were hiking down on the day pictured below, after a fall 1970 ascent of Green Slab Direct.
But speaking of route mysteries, I recently looked up Green Slab Direct on Mountainproject.com, and was surprised to find a cacophony of confusion and hyper-beta about exactly which cracks, holds and fixed gear define this route. It's a wonder we found anything in the old days.
http://www.mountainproject.com/v/colorado/boulder/eldorado_canyon_sp/105754933
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bob d'antonio
Trad climber
Taos, NM
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Aug 15, 2007 - 12:40pm PT
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Funny...the Green Spur was my first 5.9 in Eldo. Pretty classic.
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Oli
Trad climber
Fruita, Colorado
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Aug 15, 2007 - 03:48pm PT
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I did Green Slab direct with Layton one sunny winter day with snow on the ground but warm rock. The crux has a nice thin crack system going up a steep slab. The system peters out, and you make a delicate traverse right, about 10 feet (the crux, which Layton stepped right across without difficulty, with his long legs).
I did one of the first repeats, if not the first repeat, of Green Spur, right after Larry told me he'd done it. When I was a beginner, before you all were born, Steve Komito and I tried to climb Green Spur. He led up to a ledge not too far above the ground. We called that the first pitch, and I started up the main crack above. I wasn't any good at cracks or too much of anything yet and didn't know how to climb that kind of crack. I couldn't get anything to work too well, but I thought my problem might be my shoes. I asked Komito if I could try his. I came down, we switched shoes, with him being very cynical and making fun of me, and I went back up and couldn't get any farther. I never quite lived that one down, as not but a few years later when I did the route it seemed so straightforward and logical. But then I knew how to climb by that time. Komito was really chuckling that day, and as I said, giving me a hard time, as was always the case. When he tried to lead the pitch, he got no farther. So that silenced him, for the moment...
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Doug Robinson
Trad climber
Santa Cruz
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Aug 15, 2007 - 04:46pm PT
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As this shoe thread was developing, I was off leading Pratt's Crack for a photo session. I led it in my Mom's old Cortinas. Same shoes Pratt used on the FA:
I'd been saving these shoes for years for just this opportunity! My Mom, now 91, had moved on to modern hiking boots. Her Cortinas were tight on me, even tighter than the ones I wore climbing OW with Chuck in the Sixties, so I had to go with no socks. Thanks to Bruce Willey for the photos.
This pair had been resoled with the beefier Vibram lugs, in case they don't look quite right. They were pretty dynamite OW shoes, ratcheted up nicely in heel-and-toe mode. This is the shoe that got Pratt up the Twilight Zone, the Valley's wide crack of the decade.
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Inner City
Trad climber
East Bay
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Aug 15, 2007 - 04:54pm PT
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Tar,
What a stunner! Just got back from an exciting back country trip and stumbled onto your inspiring thread. It has eased the peril of reentry considerably.
Thanks!
Dave
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Oli
Trad climber
Fruita, Colorado
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Aug 15, 2007 - 05:55pm PT
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Doug,
I'm glad you pointed out that they were resoled. I instantly thought, "Those don't look like Cortinas." The original sole is a delicate smooth thing and was good right from the day you put them on, without having to break them in much. Those don't even look like the tops, though, either, from this angle below. I'll trust you on that. Kamps liked them too. I used them quite a bit for a time. Now the real question. What the heck are you doing with that great big FRIEND?!! (just kidding). You gotta lead it Pratt style.
Your friend,
pat
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Doug Robinson
Trad climber
Santa Cruz
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Aug 15, 2007 - 06:21pm PT
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Hi Pat,
You would notice my "cheater" #6 Friend. I had led the climb twice in total Pratt style before anyone even thought of cams. Including the second ascent, which around Chuck also meant no beta. It's basically 200 feet of 5.8+ enduro-fest, run out a long way to the first sling around a chockstone. Higher is a detached pillar which later trapped a leader, breaking his arm and forcing a rescue. The interesting thing this time, in the mondo-cam age, was several new chockstones, seemingly added just for pro.
Yes, but why carry that thing? I'm past 60 with two teenagers. I wish I were more fit. I wish I still spent hours every day cruising stone. I wish I didn't feel guilty about dragging that silly cam. I wish I wasn't whining here.
But, who cares? I was glad to find it opened up so wide that courage-on-a-carabiner no longer helped.
And I liked the way my shoulders and my cortex throbbed in afterglow.
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Oli
Trad climber
Fruita, Colorado
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Aug 15, 2007 - 09:51pm PT
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You know I was only foolin you. You have paid your dues and can climb anyway you want, for sure. I never doubted you in the least. Someday I'll show you the "clapper" Rearick made for me, a wooden version pre-dating the Friend, for wide cracks... He made me take him up the Crack of Fear, to test the thing. I used it a couple of times whimsically...
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unimog
climber
windy corner in the west
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Aug 16, 2007 - 12:33am PT
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Jesse
I have been on this off and on for a year or so .
Congradulation on the Wed and hope to see you soon gt my # from Gabe .
Sasha
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 16, 2007 - 01:44am PT
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Toes pressing downward
Finger tips clutching
Mind lifting
Ament bouldering on Flagstaff Mountain circa 1970.
From A History of Free Climbing in America
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Oli
Trad climber
Fruita, Colorado
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Aug 16, 2007 - 11:57am PT
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Mind lifting? Probably just thinking about a plate of spaghetti at the old original Gondolier on Broadway...
For a few years that was where anyone could find me, every night and more often than not all by myself up there on Flagstaff bouldering. I did my best bouldering from '65 to '69. By the photo I suppose I was clearly on the downslide... though in the future I would on occasion get back in shape for a short time (women, too many creative projects, and spaghetti poisoning...).
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Oli
Trad climber
Fruita, Colorado
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Aug 17, 2007 - 10:00pm PT
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One time Larry Dalke and I made the first ascent of Le Void during a rainstorm. We used some aid up and over that big roof that now can be done free. I was much smaller and lighter than he, and when seconding those aid knife-blades and RURPS, one he'd stood on with his full weight pulled under mine. Later, after we descended, he went to get his walking shoes over near the base of Birdwalk, and he tripped over a small boulder and broke his ankle -- a clean break all the way through and really painful. This was the nature of some climbers. Huntley Ingalls stepped off the curb outside the Sink one night and broke his ankle. Flat ground was always more dangerous than steep rock. I carried Larry all the way down the canyon on my back (in a piggy-back ride), as we had been dropped off and had no car and were the only people in the canyon that day. Another day, a few years earlier, when we were attempting the first ascent of C'est La Vie, Larry led up to the big lieback flake 60 feet up that vertical wall, and bent over in excruciating pain. I lowered him and had to carry him down that day too. He just made it to the hospital in time, with a ruptured appendix.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 21, 2007 - 10:17pm PT
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Pat,
These are such enlivened memories of your friend, so human! I am glad I requested recollections from you in an open-ended way and asked nothing specific about Dalke.
Isn't it nice to be able to speak extemporaneously?
On this human aspect of historical reportage, which is so fun to rediscover in these passages which you have offered about your time with Dalke: below I have attached a nice quote, which captures that notion of the human factor, and nicely rounds out the end of your book, A History of Free Climbing in North America:
Ha ha ha, I love the use of that Brando quote!
I am scantly aware of the attempts and efforts during the early 60s to free aid routes, and I have been ardently reading about them in your book, A History of Free Climbing in America.
I do have a more pointed set of questions which stem from my appreciation of Dalke's experience with free climbing XM in Eldorado Canyon in 1967:
For Larry and for you Pat, what was the sense of context for freeing aid routes during the 60’s?
How did this idea of freeing aid sections evolve to be something worth extending, driving, and striving towards, as a notion of pure free climbing singularly pursued?
What did it feel like at the time to go out and slay those dragons?
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bob d'antonio
Trad climber
Taos, NM
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Aug 21, 2007 - 10:41pm PT
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On Pat...It took a genius to see genius (Master of Rock) and write that great piece of work.
Thanks Pat for all you have done to inspire me.
Tar wrote: I am scantly aware of the attempts and efforts during the early 60s to free aid routes, and I have been ardently reading about them in your book, A History of Free Climbing in America.
Just a little note. There were 38 aid routes in the old Gunks guide. John Stannard freed 31 one of them.
Amazing.
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wiclimber
Trad climber
devil's lake, wi
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Aug 21, 2007 - 11:43pm PT
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Pat, great stuff. The hike down is ALWAYS the most dangerous part of the climb.
Funny, from all the days of soccer early on, taping and pain killers after injury, ankle sprains have always been something I've dealt with. From falling off the curb, or spraining my ankle at hole #16 golfing in Vail, the "quick release" follows me.
C'est La Vie is one of my favorite climbs in Eldo.
Hey, did you guys place the bolt before the flake?
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