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Patrick Sawyer
climber
Originally California now Ireland
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Nov 17, 2013 - 08:16am PT
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I wish I still had my Jensen pack, it was great. I still have my North Face Ibex sleeping bag that my mom bought me for my PSOM course. My mom had to sign a waiver for PSOM, as I was a minor, but she was insistent that I received proper training, as my late brother Mac and his friends climbing on Mt Diablo sandstone were not really climbers. But I got the climbing bug there (Diablo). EDIT Actually Mac was a climber but never was serious, only climbing on Diablo and in the Valley.
As far as Don's death, I always thought he was hit by a car/truck, I never heard the flying into a stone wall bit (I've done that on a bicycle, well, shale cliff near Columbia, CA, broken nose, bruises and Tuolumne General).
If and when I get back home to California, I will have to try and do more of Don's routes. More items for my tick list.
I started a thread on the Palisades the other day, but it has not received any traction.
So…
routes I have done in the Palisades
Venusian Blind, Temple Crag
North Palisade via the U-Notch and traverse
Middle Palisade, East Face
Thunderbolt Peak
Norman Clyde Peak via what is now called Firebird Ridge
Starlight Buttress
Thunderbolt to Sill Traverse
Mt Sill, Swiss Aręte (second time)
Polemonium Peak (up V-Notch, down U-Notch)
Doug can you or any Taco Stander tell me if any of these are Don's routes, besides Venusian Blind?
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justthemaid
climber
Jim Henson's Basement
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Nov 17, 2013 - 08:50am PT
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Great bump!
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Dec 25, 2013 - 01:48pm PT
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Merry X-mas folks!
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Mark Force
Trad climber
Cave Creek, AZ
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Dec 25, 2013 - 02:10pm PT
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The Jensen pack is a really cool bit of design. My wife and I recently had ones made for us and we're experimenting with them. They feel like they're part of your body when you pack them right and carry light to medium loads well (up to around 40-50lbs). For scrambling/climbing or skiing with they're amazing. The new technologies in pads, stoves, and such has made the pack a more viable choice for trips. We're looking at doing the John Muir Trail with them.
Ours were made by Eric Hardee who runs Rivendell Mountain Works (http://www.rivendellmountainworks.com). He's great to work with and the packs are very true to the original with some minor additions that make them more trouble-free. They are incredibly well made! They feel like a fine tool similar to having a fine axe or knife in hand.
Eric is also looking into making the Jensen Bombshelter and cagoules. I have a Chouinard cagoule that I got off EBay in perfect shape and in my size! Sent it to Eric to pattern from. His cagoule should be cool.
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Kids these days, they just don't value a good sac! LOL
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26 July
Mountain climber
British Columbia
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It's snowing and blowing and -9C so I took out the 45 year old down parka Don made me and walked the dog. It is in good shape and still fits. It was too warm for sea level walking.
Anyone out there who wants to talk about times in the Palisades?
Joan
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johntp
Trad climber
socal
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plastic rubber and Doug Robinson in the same post is a little scary.
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F10
Trad climber
Bishop
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Jan 17, 2015 - 05:08pm PT
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What a great thread, glad to see it come up again.
I've been going through old slides and found one of my Jensen Pack.
I couldn't believe how well it carried my gear, just needed to be slightly larger.
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Howard C Runyon
Mountain climber
Lake Placid, NY
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Jan 17, 2015 - 06:19pm PT
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Wonderful stuff here, Mr. Robinson. Excuse the formality; you're my senior both in time and in accomplishment, I've been a fan of your writing for years, and I never expected the chance to address you directly. I was just browsing for stuff on Jensen packs, because I got one only this month from Eric Hardee--a late-life locura prompted by the recent Alpinist that featured your wonderful essay on the Palisades. Years ago I studied the Steck/Tejada-Flores book Wilderness Skiing to suck all the knowledge from it that I could, and their stated admiration for Don Jensen's design stuck with me. I wasn't quick enough to pick up one of the packs back then.
Thanks for all the fun reading over the years. I feel a particular debt to you for one little (I think) piece in which you insisted on your right to carry a music box in the backcountry. I used to fall asleep in my tent on Saturday evenings listening to A Prairie Home Companion through earphones plugged into a Walkman radio. Some of my friends were horrified. I was in hog heaven.
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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Jan 17, 2015 - 07:46pm PT
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Amazing!
Cuz this morning I was fixing oatmeal, thinking about what the ST had on the Jensen Pack, cuz I'd been thinking about Rivendell along the way next to Zap comics and R. Crumb and the guy who was responsible for me being able to have new Robbins boots to climb in...then I had coffee.
And now after posting a buncha Crumby sh#t over on the Flames, I get here to find a picture of the man himself, Larry Horton, the naked-climbing guru of Rivendell.
Hasn't been seen by me nor me by he it's going on 45 years now.
I met him in The Mission District of SF, like 1968.
He and Joyce the Dancing Lady came back to their place and found us all zoned and stoned
in the beater Oldsmopile we'd (Jones & Me) had driven up from Merced.
They had just gotten off the Greyhound and the city bus coming home from a trip to the Tetons,
but the life of the climbers' camp scene was ignored (shitty weather, in tents things happening as a result)
because there wasn't much to tell except it was wet and they may or may not have ascended their goal, whatever it was.
A lot of this eludes me cuz of the stoning we kept on with as a welcome back to California thing,
me eventually falling headlong into Larry's cat's sandbox s we were leaving, I was so ripped.
The one subject of lasting memory besides the weed part is the love for the Jensen-style pack.
The two of them had The North Face Ruthsacs, the ones with the single large suitcase-on-your-back look. He worked for TNF, so it came as no surprise that he had these, which were not divided top to bottom, wasn't a tubular affair;
but you could stuff it all in there howevdr neatly (Horton was a tidy guy, everything compartmentalized in baggies and such, rolled just so, and placed RIGHT THERE) and use the tightening straps but you needed to put those on yourself because TNF didn't until later.
I won't stream your conscious any longer, but that SYNCHRONICITY of the old days is still happening.
Thanks, Mark. Here's hoping that we will run into each other again, maybe Oakdale?
MFM
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Gnome Ofthe Diabase
climber
Out Of Bed
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Jan 18, 2015 - 11:54am PT
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right behind da mouse, wowsa for this thread!!
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Mark Force
Trad climber
Cave Creek, AZ
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Jan 18, 2015 - 03:41pm PT
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See you in Oakdale this Fall, Mouse! Sarting a three year sabbatical this April and looking forward to catching up on a lot of playing!
Love the Jensen Pack. Talked with Eric Hardee from Rivendell Mountain Works about making modifications for using it with a tump line. Once it's worked out the bottom end of the tump line will carry weight beneath the two upright tubes and below the bottom compartment. Will post here once I have a chance to use it enough to comment. Pretty sure it will be sweet.
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Urmas
Social climber
Sierra Eastside
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Jan 18, 2015 - 05:27pm PT
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I carried an Utima Thule, based on the Jensen design, across the Wrangell Range in 1976 - with at least 50 lbs in it. It worked great! Of course back then I probably could have carried an 11 foot cotton sack across the Wrangell Range with 50 lbs in it!! I still have it somewhere.
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Fritz
Trad climber
Choss Creek, ID
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Jan 24, 2015 - 12:19pm PT
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I sold the Jensen Packs well in my Moscow, ID outdoor store from 1973 to around 1975, when Jim Donini convinced me and my climbing employees to switch to using Lowe internal frame packs. Of course our Jensen Pack sales suffered, since we were then extolling Lowe packs.
The Jensen packs carried very well, but demanded carefull packing to make them rigid.
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Fritz
Trad climber
Choss Creek, ID
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Jan 24, 2015 - 03:31pm PT
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My 1970's Jensen Pack has held up pretty well. It was borrowed from me by Brad Rassler at Alpinist Magazine for a photo shoot for his article on the history of the Jensen Pack in Alpinist 48.
http://www.alpinist.com/doc/ALP48/26-tool-users-jensen-pack-rassler
There's a lot more to the article than in the teaser the link goes to, and a lot more in that issue of Alpinist, especially Doug Robinson's detailed and wonderful 30 page article on the history of The Palisades, which of course, includes more material on Don Jensen.
And best of all! In the Jensen Pack article, I finally get quoted in a prestige climbing magazine.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Jan 24, 2015 - 06:34pm PT
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Prepping for open heart surgery on my Jensen pack:
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Feb 17, 2015 - 08:03am PT
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Supertopo alert! While we were all caught up in discussing Don Jensen's unique designs, the man's wife posted up!
Jan 5, 2015 - 02:36pm PT
It's snowing and blowing and -9C so I took out the 45 year old down parka Don made me and walked the dog. It is in good shape and still fits. It was too warm for sea level walking.
Anyone out there who wants to talk about times in the Palisades?
Joan
From Alpinist #48, "The Nature of Memory", by Joan Jensen
http://www.alpinist.com/doc/web14f/wfeature-palisades-mountain-profile-joan-jensen
In life, as in climbing, I went wherever his joy for the mountains took us. He was the kind of man you could trust with your health and safety, and I did. In the years after his death, I never found anyone else about whom I felt this way, and so I never climbed again.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Feb 17, 2015 - 08:06am PT
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Welcome to supertopo Joan Jensen !!!
Yes. ... Let's talk about times in the Palisades!
FYI kids: Joan's supertopo handle is "26 July"
Cheers,
Roy
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Feb 17, 2015 - 08:17am PT
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About Joan Jensen:
From Alpinist #48, "Searching for Jensen", by Brad Rassler
http://www.alpinist.com/doc/web15w/wfeature-searching-for-jensen
Given his climbing vita and knowledge of the place, he was undoubtedly the strongest alpinist working at PSOM, or perhaps in the entire Sierra. He had married Joan Vyverberg in July of 1968. The ceremony was held near Glacier Lodge, and they held a feast for a few friends on the so-called Banquet Boulder, an enormous flat-topped erratic up the North Fork of Big Pine Creek. Bob Swift had already posted this 1968 wedding picture upthread:
Joan & Don on the left, Lin (wearing hat), Connie (nee Nystrom), Chloe (reclining), Lin's daughter Lisa.
From Alpinist #48, "Searching for Jensen", by Brad Rassler:
Joan became a proficient climber, and they put up a new route on Temple Crag (Surgicle, II, 5.7), early repeats on the Celestial Aretes, and the first traverse of the fifth-class Palisade Crest.
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Feb 17, 2015 - 08:27am PT
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For those late to this party I think I posted earlier how the late Al Givler credits his Jensen
pack with saving his life when he fell out of a helocopter on a SAR mission in the Cascades.
Yes, you read correctly. Did I mention that he fell over 200'? He landed flat on his back and
he believed that his diligently packed Jensen at the least saved him from a broken back.
You don't argue with a guy who has fallen over 200' from a chopper.
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