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Oli
Trad climber
Fruita, Colorado
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Aug 22, 2007 - 01:41am PT
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When Larry and I did the first ascent of C'est La Vie, I led that first pitch. We didn't know how to place bolts, and we had two or three of those strange bolts that had jagged, saw-like little blades on the end. So you would screw the drill into the bolt and use the bolt itself as the cutting tool. Then once the hole was drilled, you had a little tapered bit (like a tiny space capsule, narrow at top and wide at bottom). You would slip that bit into the hole at the jagged end of the bolt, set the bolt back into the hole, and hammer it in. The little bit thing would expand the bolt, and usually far too much... so the bolt would never go in as deep as you thought you had drilled. It was hard work. I managed to stand there somehow and reach above my head in balance to drill one of those. But I only drilled the hole about a third as deep as it needed to be. Oh well, I was out of patience, getting tired, and I hammered it in, clipped it, with one of those curved, silver death hangers, and led on. The bolt was sticking about an inch out of the rock and remained there proudly for years, as the whimsical protection for that tricky move above, before someone at last placed a good bolt there. After that, climbers were missing some of the exhilaration of running it out above that awful looking bolt. Larry and I were just kids then, and every Eldorado climb was an adventure.
We had always been aware of free climbing, as our early mentors, such as Baker Armstrong, were actually good free climbers, relative to their day. And we heard stories of people such as Corwin Simmons or Ray Northcutt bouldering on Flagstaff. But aid was fun too, and we were happy to be learning both free and aid, and either at any given time. Sometimes we would free something pretty difficult, then aid something you could probably free at 5.8, well within our abilities, just being in the mood to aid at that moment.
Sometimes we climbed at night, as when Larry and I did that south face, inside overhanging red wall of the Amphitheater. We had our pocket transistor radio with us, as always, and they were playing the hit tune "Moon River" over and over, and we had the bright light of a full moon. Larry free climbed right above my head on that solid 5.8+ overhanging stuff, as loose chips of rock fell on me...
Layton's philosophy in general was go fast. If you had to think about a move, start aiding... in order to keep going. He was a tremendous free climber, as good as anyone in the country probably, other than Gill, but speed was his desire. I often wanted to take the time to look at a move, and Layton would instantly run out of patience and insist I do it the quickest way. I recall stopping to examine the holds of a section he had led, and feeling that pause he yelled down, "Climb the rope."
I had that very mentality on Vertigo. I led the 5.11 part of the dihedral solidly (1966 or was it 65?, might have to look), and then on the 5.8 dihedral above, which I knew Larry had already freed easily, I thought... "Man we're moving slow, we need to get up this thing," so I grabbed a carabiner to rest and to start moving up faster, knowing I could do that section easily if I wanted to waste more time... and of course you know the story of how later people accused me of cheating and all that. So I learned that kind of style was unacceptable, the mixed European variety, where grabbing carabiners was still viewed as "free."
The person who really began to help me in my way of viewing free climbing was Dave Rearick. When Rearick arrived in Boulder, and we became climbing partners, I idolized him and his beautifu style. He was very slow compared to Kor, and he wouldn't mind standing on a foothold with a hand in a pocket for fifteen minutes, just looking around at the sky or the trees, or the weather, and at the next moves. That tried my patience a bit, since I was used to moving fast with Layton, but Rearick would find ways of free climbing things, such as that overhanging Coffin Crack on Castle Rock, or the third pitch of Athlete's Feat, and many other climbs. He had already established himself as a fine free climber at Tahquitz and in Yosemite. I watched Rearick lead the first free ascent of T-2 one day, as I climbed across the canyon on the west side of the Bastille, and I was so enthralled. That was the beginning of the free climbing era in Eldorado, even though Kor and Dalke and I and Culp and a few others had done some free climbing of reasonable difficulty for the day. Rearick was that person with the mystique. He and I together started specifically training for free climbing. He fed me protein shakes, and we did gymnastics together. We did a lot of hand-balancing. That is, he would lay on is back on the floor, and I would do a handstand into his hands, and he would press me up, etc. He was far less competitive than a young soul, because he was far more mature, so he coasted along abilitywise, at a high level of expertise, whereas I improved a whole lot as the years went by.
Rearick would see climbs, and instead of claiming and doing them would bring me to them, because he knew I would enjoy a new challenge. He discovered Supremacy Crack and brought me to it. I'd never done a handjam before, so I had to learn how to do that sort of thing if I were to have a chance of succeeding... Larry and I became mildly competitive with one another, and all of us (maybe not Rearick, but certainly Layton, Larry, and I) were a bit jealous of one another's achievements. If I did something free with Rearick, Layton and Larry would find something to do free, in response. Then that would make me envious, and I would do something again. Larry did XM free, because I had been doing a string of hard free ascents. He realized he could stem out, with his long legs, and reach those finger holds on the second pitch, and with that critical move doable, the rest of XM was merely to focus on one move after the other. Larry was naturally gifted.
Free climbing for me was more a process of learning about technique, what worked, what didn't, and learning about style and honesty of approach. Larry had all that style stuff from the start, although one day when he and I went to Yosemite he showed he was human. I did the Kor boulder right off, and he for some reason had trouble figuring it out. He felt discouraged. I walked away to some other boulders and couldn't see him. He came rushing up to me, and said, "I did it." I was happy for him. He couldn't live with a lie, though, and within the hour, with his head drooping down like a sad dog, he admitted he hadn't done it. I love him for his honesty and the fact that he could no more live with a lie than could he live with a brain tumor.
I was, on the other hand, hugely immature for my age and sometimes would exaggerate my accomplishments, in the interest of acceptance and winning the love of my friends. It never failed to work to the opposite effect. Finally, though, by the time I was doing Super Slab free, I was careful to get everything right. And after climbing quite a bit with Robbins and having him take me to Yosemite, and the like (in '64), as his protege, I began to get very serious about free climbing and style. I learned from Rearick about Higgins, who was Kamps' protege, and Higgins and I had a friendly competition going at a distance. When Higgins and I met there was no more sense of competition, because we simply liked each other and laughed and had fun climbing together.
In '67, Layton and Larry joined their religion, which published an article about how it was a sin to climb and to risk the precious gift of life, so they pretty much cut back to near nothing, in the way of climbing activity. I was just coming into my own, however, as a free climber, and met Gill... and became his friend and disciple... Being in the presence of the master, simply by osmosis, raised my ability greatly. And that's the rough overview... with tons left out...
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Oli
Trad climber
Fruita, Colorado
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Aug 22, 2007 - 01:42am PT
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Sorry for such a long post. I started typing and didn't realize I'd written a book...
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wiclimber
Trad climber
devil's lake, wi
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Aug 22, 2007 - 11:42am PT
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It's fun to read the details. Even though I don't live there anymore, Eldo is still my home crag.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 22, 2007 - 12:31pm PT
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Long post Oliver?
Sheesh, any time you're ready to start up again, we'll be right here.
Pure historical reportage is of great value and is a foundation, a framework, and a nice place to start, but more often deeper insight comes through storytelling, through rumination and a slower dwelling upon the subject matter.
As it happens I was just doing a little Google searching and stumbled across a 1979 American Alpine Club Journal review of Godfrey and Chelton's CLIMB!
A brief passage from the review:
"more regrettably CLIMB! lacks the effort and analysis -at thinking about its subject- that enriches Smythe's Rock Climbers in Action in Snowdonia or Jones Climbing in North America, a preoccupation with heroic deeds leads to historiography of inevitable shallowness"
Okay, maybe that was a bit harsh, for instance: your book Pat, A History of Free Climbing in America, sets out explicitly to record a chronological list of a accomplishments; given the time frame involved something of greater scope would produce a work of comparatively immense proportions.
But it is this "thinking about the subject" that has me going right now Pat and your candid recollections of (and reflections on) free climbing in the 60's are helping to enrich this pursuit.
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Oli
Trad climber
Fruita, Colorado
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Aug 22, 2007 - 02:28pm PT
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I personally felt "Climb!" and "Climbing in North America" were not up to the standard of or anywhere near "Rock Climbers in Action in Snowdonia..." Both books were wonderfully illustrated with classic photos yet were wrong in so many aspects, wrong context more often than not, sensationalized, feeding on how rivals would describe someone, printing rumors that were plainly false, painting in mean ways someone rather than getting to know that someone, throwing in stories that weren't checked out and are/were simply wrong or never happened... There was a lot of bad dictation or something in the original Climb! For example, when interviewed about XM, I said, "Layton had gone to a movie the night before, and it was a movie about outer space, and on a rocket ship were the letters X-M. So he thought, since our climb was a direct line up to the route Outer Space we would call it XM." When the book came out, my words were transformed into, "Layton AND I went to a movie, CALLED XM, and we thought how wonderful it would be to name the route that, AND WE LAUGHED HYSTERICALLY ABOUT IT." My goodness, that hit me strange when I saw that. Lots of things of that nature. Yet there is good stuff in both books, enough to make them of some value... I would like to have seen Climbing in North America revised, getting rid of all the errors that offended so many people of whom I was aware, such as Robbins, Sherrick, for example. Strangely it never happened, and the book was re-released in its original form. I have come to believe that Chris is a good guy, and I've long forgiven whatever happened in that book, but at the time of the re-release, I wondered if he thought he was above criticism, and his statement to his critics was to keep the book the way it was. I must be more forgiving, as I see people all the time making dopey mistakes in their reflections on history. Recently in an interview with Jim Logan, he states how he did the free ascent of Crack of Fear, and how it was a route Pat Ament had been desperately trying to free. Oh dear. I was the third person to lead the route, its third ascent, in a single straightforward ascent, and did not try at all, really, yet did grab only a carabiner on a fixed piton at the one awkward move left, which turns out not even to be the crux if you're facing the right way when you get to it. I had nearly worn myself out hauling my two companions, literally. I did nothing "desperate" at all, and it wasn't even a big issue way back then, whether or not the route went free. But when Fredericks a year later learned that it only had that one piton, he went up and trained his focus on removing that point of aid. Logan followed, a very skinny kid who could fit clear inside the off-widths... I soon did the climb all free, as well, wondering in fact why I'd used that small bit of aid. Anyway, it's nice when we run into those who care about at least trying to get the details right. It's a rare encounter. Godfrey's book was revised not too long ago but lost much of its original spirit, strangely, in a worthy attempt to clean it up and put all the historical climbing into a lesser context... Can't win for winning... I must add that I too make mistakes, and there are a few little ones in some of my historical works, but I try really hard to get it right and do the best I can to check the source. I think I've said this before, and I'll add it just for fun, that I sent my history of free climbing to Gill. He read it and liked it and sent it back. Then right after it came out, he sent me a small list of minor corrections! I haven't let him forget that.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 28, 2009 - 10:39pm PT
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Nice views out there...
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SteveW
Trad climber
The state of confusion
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Mar 29, 2009 - 08:08pm PT
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bumpity bump bump
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 30, 2009 - 11:57am PT
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Good day for a walk
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 31, 2009 - 08:33pm PT
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While knocking around the compound, "Macho Acres" as it was once known,
I unearthed these unfinished examples from Colorado Nut:
It seems there still exists some promotional posters for the business along with a picture of Ray Jardine and Jimmy Dunn working in the Colorado Nut factory.
Somewhere down the line, perhaps we will have a look...
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Mar 31, 2009 - 08:46pm PT
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Very cool, hope you find those posters (and maybe Local adds the story).
You gonna be around Nederland early July?
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 31, 2009 - 08:53pm PT
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Around AND in!
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Mar 31, 2009 - 08:55pm PT
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I might be visiting Golden, so who knows....
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 31, 2009 - 08:58pm PT
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I'll see if I can find a rope!
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philo
Trad climber
boulder, co.
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Mar 31, 2009 - 11:37pm PT
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Ropes we don't need no stinking ropes.
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JLP
Social climber
The internet
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Is someone working for MSR? I'd drop a contractor if they were posting pix of any sort of our products on the internet, good, bad or otherwise. Just a thought. Seems someone got a cool and fun gig. I'm extremely surprised there wasn't an NDA with as much clearly spelled out, if you are actually working for MSR. MSR has paid out 10's of 1000's - likely way more - to stoned retards who couldn't figure out their stoves and burned off their dreadlocks. Pix like this just can't help.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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You're going to give Stephane a heart attack with pics like that and talk of posters...
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jul 11, 2013 - 01:11am PT
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bump
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