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Don Lauria
Trad climber
Bishop, CA
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May 24, 2009 - 02:47am PT
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Doug,
I've always been mellow.
When Allan Bard died and all those friends showed up in Bishop for his memorial, I was approached by someone - I can't remember who - he said he really regretted Allan's passing. He said, "Allan would have made such grand old man."
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MH2
climber
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May 24, 2009 - 04:35am PT
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I too sense phoniness in small yappy dogs.
As for being a human chockstone, not so much, but it is good to finally get an idea of where the attribution came from.
The Pratt legend has spread wide and it is good to see such an able crew wrestle it into better focus.
Since our lives may be mostly behind us, we can write without losing too much.
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jstan
climber
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May 24, 2009 - 11:23am PT
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I encountered Chuck only that one time when Joe Kelsey and I were being snowed off a climb in mid summer. Chuck had hot soup for us when we got down. So I have nothing to add.
Sometimes I think we have it all wrong. We imagine we are like those itinerant bodies of matter from the Kuiper belt far out in the solar system. Our trajectory at least seems fixed within ourselves and is unaffected. But you read all that has been written about Chuck by people, each of whom is clearly more able than most to claim they have issued from themselves, and what do you see? They all were very much affected by Chuck.
Here is the question suggesting nature is mischievous. While we all might wish in some ways we were a little more like Chuck, is it possible Chuck was not at all convinced he wanted to be Chuck? And that was precisely what made him so appealing?
Is not our friend telling us, yet, answers are unimportant? That not having questions is quite a different matter?
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oldguy
climber
Bronx, NY
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May 24, 2009 - 02:20pm PT
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A little more. In 1960 I spent ten nights on bivouac ledges with Chuck, yet, as reflected in many of the posts, there was always some part of him that remained beyond reach. He was unusually sensitive to the absurdities of life, and usually, but not always, they would buoy his spirits, brighten his day. If not, the rage that some have alluded to.
After one night of spirited drinking at his apartment in Berkeley, he decided he wanted to ride his unicyle. We tried to dissuade him, but he hauled the thing out of his closet and headed downstairs. A street light hung over an intersection, and he chose that spotlight for his ride. But he couldn't get on. He would make the initial move and then crash to the pavement. We tried to get him to give up, but he wouldn't, convinced that on the next try he would have his old mastery back. Not that night. But this story is not a metaphor. Chuck learned juggling, unicyle riding, tight and slack rope walking because he thought of running away and joining the circus before he found out about climbing.
Younger climbers may need to know that in the fifties and a good part of the sixties, every lead was onsite. You simply climbed the route or you went down. You might fall, but it wasn't like the hangdogging that came later, just a momentary lapse of attention or will. Pratt rarely fell, and to my knowledge never more than ten feet. Usually a fall was the result of a pin coming out while on aid.
Tales of Chuck stacking wood at his cabin also reminded me that at one point he had rescued a gas stove that, after a few repairs, he intended to use instead of his Coleman that was ageless. The gas stove sat near his doorway for years and was still there, unfixed, unused, taking up space the last time I visited, while he brewed up on the Coleman.
Yes, there was a Beauregard. The bears, by the way, were fairly recent visitors to the campgrounds since the old garbage pit behind Camp Curry had been closed down.
Royal led the Gong Flake on Lower Cathedral. The first pitch involved traversing behind it. I went second and found to my horror that chockstones were shifting and sand was raining down from above. I whispered to Royal that this thing was loose, and he said, "I know, but don't tell Pratt." Royal then led two pitches up the side of the thing. It came off some time in the seventies, I believe, as did Psyche Flake on Half Dome.
By the by, I have written a book about all this and more that awaits a publisher. The more is part memoir of the guys in the Yosemite Climbing Club, part Tahquitz and initial desert climbs (Powell, Gallwas, and Wilson [and Dolt]), and part what it was like growing up in the fifties.
Finally, pace Roger, I really didn't take sides in the early war, but skulked around the wine cellar hoping for a chance to make a move on Helen (sometimes known as Janie Dean).
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Patrick Oliver
Boulder climber
Fruita, Colorado
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May 24, 2009 - 05:19pm PT
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In my last piece above, I mentioned Herbert as being
present on the Twilight Zone, but that was a slip,
because Chuck had told me it was just him and Fredericks.
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hooblie
climber
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May 24, 2009 - 06:42pm PT
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with some reservation in the instance of the one in question, jstan you're ringing true, perspective born of many a mile. this is a proper tribute. though it stikes me, the living deserve the same, in time to chime in.
may we aspire to conduct ourselves in a manner that might have brought chuck to our desired unchecked revelation. cheers with high regard to those who came remarkably close, and then let us in
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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May 25, 2009 - 12:43pm PT
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perhaps Chuck Pratt succeeded, after all, in his desire to avoid celebrity, a Wikipedia search on "Chuck Pratt" turns up no direct reference, though Royal Robbins, Warren Harding, Jim Bridwell, Yvon Chouinard, are represented there... also found in references to El Capitan, Salathé Wall, North Face (Fariview Dome), The Nose and under the "History of rock climbing" entry.
More from Royal Robbins [url="http://www.frostworksclimbing.com/standing%20on%20the%20shoulders.html"]Standing on the Shoulders: A Tribute to my Heros[/url]
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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May 25, 2009 - 01:20pm PT
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from Downward Bound by Warren Harding
Chuck Pratt - Zone 9
Potentially a zone 1 or zone 2 climber, Pratt has participated in and helped engineer some of the greatest climbs in Yosemite valley, but his general attitude and often unfortunate choice of friends relegate him to zone 9. It's possible that an ill-advised association with the unsavory Batso (early in his climbing career) may have gotten him off to a bad start, but there's no proof of this. It seems more likely that Pratt's inherent personal characteristics (which have driven him to squander much valuable climbing time in such dubious activities as hanging around the nurses' dormitories in Yosemite and guzzling copious quantities of cheap wine) are really responsible for the good chance that he may be reclassified in zone 10.
Downward Bound Zone System
Downward Bound has developed the zone system for grading climbers. It utilizes the same principle in evaluating personal characteristics of climbers as the photographic system of describing the ten shades (or zones) of gray between black and white. Since there seems to be such emphasis on high moral values and physical prowess, it's logical to assign the great climbers with lofty ideals to zone 1 (white hats, symbolic of good guys). Then the system continues to descent in order through to the most lowly regarded climbers to zone 10 (black hats, bad guys).
Zone 9. COLOR OF HAT: ALMOST BLACK
Tarnished supermen. Climbers of great ability but of questionable moral fiber. Potentially superclimbers who should be more discriminating in their personal associations and professional efforts.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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May 25, 2009 - 01:39pm PT
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from A Night on the Ground, a Day in the Open by Doug Robinson
p 37
OK, having shamelessly mentioned Chuck Pratt I guess I owe him a word or two, but it's tough. For starters, he won't necessarily appreciate the attention. He is incredibly elusive for such a solid little man. I can cobble together some sort of an image, but his spirit would slip right through its crude shell, and the whole exercise ends up feeling futile and a little embarrassing. There is no doubt that he was the finest free climber of the era, and ahead of his time in even recognizing that free climbing spelled the future. We shared a similar build, and I was flattered when people took us for brothers. I have lost women to him, even one I was married to, without it damping my respect for the man. But it was Pratt the racounteur who left us most in awe. Normally rather quiet, when he finally warmed up to an audience, the result was a brilliant rave, sustained on its own energy, internal logic and moral force. The man became possessed, caught up in inspiration and subject, with listeners fading out of his vision. Something about those monologues made them very hard to recall afterward; maybe it was the lubrication of the audience.
p133
Chuck Pratt, who was probably the first person to walk upright across Thank God Ledge, was once coiling his rope on the summit. He began to complain loudly to no one in particular or more likely addressing his monologue toward the heavens in general, commenting on the perversity of ropes, and the cheerful and seemingly willful way that they become caught under flakes, stuck in cracks at inconvenient times and distances, and generally make life miserable for the poor climber, who is minding his own business and just humbly trying to make a little vertical progress on the rocks of the world, thank you. All the while he was laying on neat coils and shaking out kinks in his meticulous fashion. Having finished both his soliloquy and a textbook mountaineers coil, and having made perhaps too convincing an argument to the fates at large, he flung the coil with all his strength out over the dozens of acres of gently-rolling summit slabs. It sailed directly into a deep crack parallel to and not far back from the Northwest Face, never to be seen again. Someday, in the geological equivalent of a glacier spitting out a climber swallowed by its bergschrund centuries before, Chuck's rope will fall out of the sky into the forest that replaces the meadow that in the next hundred years will replace Mirror Lake.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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May 25, 2009 - 02:41pm PT
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some Sheridan Anderson sketches....
Chuck Pratt
Superhero irreverence
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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May 26, 2009 - 07:37am PT
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Bump! This thread deserves more visibility.
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LongAgo
Trad climber
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May 26, 2009 - 10:16pm PT
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Beyond Pratt
I’m struck by how the best of supertopo comes with tributes and remembrances. Contrast this thread with one of the longest tangling, spitting, firefights on supertopo re the South Face of Half Dome. Both this thread on Pratt and the recent one on Frank Sacherer brought deep, honest outpourings of respect, love and admiration without pulling any punches on foibles and flaws. Chuck nearly strangling Jan. Chuck exuding an enviable union and calm on hard rock, and selflessness in the competitive, ego stoked climbing camp of the day. Chuck listening respectfully to women. Chuck drinking to oblivion. Chuck writing from the heart with incisive perspective on climbing and knowing and reflecting on the power of writing way beyond his years. Chuck saying, “I think I’m at the hard part.” O, the summation of his being in that line. And the parallels with Frank, himself besieged with his own devils, yet so driven and masterful and obviously taken by the mountains.
Me thinks there’s a lesson here for all of us about how to be with climbing and its community on line and off. We are at our best when caring, honest, humble but with critical facilities still cranked up; striving to walk calmly with both the wondrous and the terrible in climbing and in our other lives, eyes wide open, and glistening too along the way, just as we see Pratt doing in our memories and, of course, imaginations. And what else better can the gone figures of Chuck and Frank and more to come do for us than inspire and shape our own paths, our ways of being and thinking, and not just within the climbing world but outside it too? Turns out, if we take time to step back, reflect, share, respect, climbing teaches deeply. We shall not forget Chuck – nor, I hope, what remembering him means.
Tom Higgins
LongAgo
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Peter Haan
Trad climber
San Francisco, CA
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May 26, 2009 - 11:07pm PT
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Tommy Higgins, if only all of us had just read all of you all along. Glad to see you surface like the fabulous Blue Whale, largest of our lives. Our very own Prince.
I would proffer your summary:
Happiness is cherishing others.
If we trace the outlines of what you, Tom, know, this is what we see.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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May 27, 2009 - 12:29am PT
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wonderful, thoughtful words, Tom
Here is the Amy Brennan photo grabbed from the Robbins' AAJ memory
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Double D
climber
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May 27, 2009 - 01:10am PT
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Nice. Thanks for shedding some light on Chuck.
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Patrick Oliver
Boulder climber
Fruita, Colorado
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May 30, 2009 - 01:57am PT
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And Chuck Pratt, the prince of this thread.
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bvb
Social climber
flagstaff arizona
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May 30, 2009 - 02:49am PT
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t*r: exactly. we are blessed.
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Barbarian
Trad climber
slowly dying in the OC
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May 30, 2009 - 04:32am PT
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Joe - Welcome to the campfire!
I've been reading this thread since the beginning and now that you are hear, feel like throwing in.
At age 16, after 3 years of climbing, my dad thought I should get some professional instruction. He booked me into a class at Exum. Joe, you were my guide. I remember a great day, perfect weather, fun climbing, and one of my heroes as my guide. After the session, someone pointed out Pratt sitting at a picnic table, cooking soup on an ancient Coleman. I said something about going over and having a chat. You gave me a look that told me not to. I appreciate that to this day.
I have come to know Pratt through the eyes of others. The second hand revelations I have consumed over the past 35 years tell me that he would not have appreciated my intrusion.
Those revelations continue in this thread which includes some of the finest writings and recollections I have had the pleasure of reading. Pratt may be gone from this existence, but he will live on forever in the words of those who knew and loved him.
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steelmnkey
climber
Vision man...ya gotta have vision...
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May 30, 2009 - 12:29pm PT
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As they say... we stand on the shoulders of giants.
It's good to see all the memories coming out here where they can live and not be lost.
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