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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Feb 17, 2015 - 08:29am PT
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Yes Reilly, you posted that way upthread.
I took note again as I was scrolling through: what a great story!
We can imagine the vertical tubes of that pack creating space for the spine and cradling it with impact buffers!
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Gnome Ofthe Diabase
climber
Out Of Bed
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Feb 17, 2015 - 08:41am PT
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All love for the Taco stand!!
you men and women can not possibly understand the warmth
The strength of resolve that the hand sown gear, inspiration of design
And over built burrlyness of your stuff helped to focus climbers every where thank you from far away now and then,
Does any one have a picture of the Owl that a gunks Man Jim Munson carried around in a Jensen,Pack like that?
RRoss, rgld?,fatradad2?
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Feb 17, 2015 - 01:59pm PT
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Joan Jensen a.k.a. 26 July said:
Anyone out there who wants to talk about times in the Palisades?
Joan
Okay Joan Jensen: you're on for some conversation about times in the Palisades!
I'll start ...
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Feb 17, 2015 - 01:59pm PT
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Coming-Of-Age in the Palisades
Doug Munoz and I were childhood pals. Crib mates really, almost like blood brothers. What with ready access to Pop Warner football and Little League baseball … Isn't it only natural we became climbing partners? It helped that we grew up in Sierra Madre, just blocks from Southern California’s rugged San Gabriel Mountains.
Our first trip to the Palisades was in summer of ‘77. Doug and I were both 16 years old. Hoisting beefy frame packs jammed with two week’s food, rope and rack, we slowly wobbled forth into a backpacking and mountaineering quest. We contracted altitude sickness after crossing Lamarck Col. Too sick, too green really, for an attack of Mendel Couloir, we moved lower. While Doug recuperated, I celebrated my 17th birthday exploring the fairy lands of Darwin Bench.
The Evolution region was everything we hadn't read about in J.R.R. Tolkien's books. That's right, who needed fiction when the guidebooks to Taquitz Rock, Joshua Tree National Monument, and the Climber’s Guide to the High Sierra pointed the way? With that first look at Mount Huxley we knew this was the real Middle Earth.
Up and over Bishop pass. Doug pitched his A-frame mountain tent below the boulder encrusted eyelids of the Black Giant. We demurred while my Primus stove fluttered and hummed. The freeze-dried beef stroganoff dinners were getting blander and our bodies were becoming burnt and sinewy. Black Giant glowered over all. We stretched out on the chartreuse verge of a small tarn, sipped tea and smoked marijuana.
Agassi Col was a staircase of tumbled dice. 50-60 pound external frame packs were cumbersome when scrambling. A NOLS Crew attacked our flank. With their burly quadriceps muscles pumping up and down, they went thumping around us and into the rising gully. Their boxy green soft packs swayed side to side and up and out of sight, disappearing through a keyhole of cobalt sky.
Struggling down off of Agassi Col, I took in my first view of the alpine spectacle of the Palisades. We had entered a serrated amphitheater of chocolate colored walls, savagely torn with cracks and gullies. Rubble was everywhere. We stepped onto a pocket glacier. The wool knickers we wore made us itchy and hot. Stones hurtled down Clyde Couloir on an as-needed basis. In comparison to the west side of the Sierra, it felt like the North Cascades. There beneath the mighty ice encrusted Palisades, the beautiful NOLS leader sat on a boulder and slowly lowered her shades to take stock of us. She was fetching, but I felt she could have snapped us apart for kindling!
Where did we camp? Is there a place called glacier camp above Sam Mack Meadow? In the afternoon, twin boxcars rolled down the U-Notch and the entire glacier shook when they grounded. We packed our rucksacks with food, water, clothing and climbing gear. Our young bodies were repairing and gathering energy, so we had no trouble sleeping.
We got the predawn start. We'd learned about these things in books and through Mount Adams Wilderness Institute in the Pacific Northwest. Our headlamps lit the way over icy boulders into the glacial moraine. Doug scrambled ahead, hoisting himself up onto the glacier proper. The soles of my stiff leather Galibier boots felt slick as I followed. Palisade Glacier was splattered fuchsia with morning alpenglow.
The U-Notch Couloir was straightforward. We each carried a second tool. Summer of 1977 was in a drought cycle, so already in late August things were getting plenty icy. We strapped on our points, pulled our axes from our rucksacks and tied in. Leading and following, we clipped the rope to the mountain. Ice screws and runners and chocks and hip belays: oh yeah! The broad ice channel softened in the middle section and the anchors came out too easily.
Somehow it was nearly midday when we stowed our ice tools beneath the fourth class rock which hung above the U-Notch. A couple of guys doing a Palisade traverse appeared from the east. Moving quickly, they snaked toward us through the shattered granite. They played through. Real men. Light racks, small packs. Up, over and gone. Alone again, using belays and anchors, one by one Doug and I carefully chose our hand and footholds in the steep depression of the shady wall. Feeling the altitude, we un-roped and threaded the ridge leading to the top of North Pal.
Our first summit experience in the Palisades was overwhelmed with jagged features. Everywhere was rock and ice and sky. It must've been one or two o'clock in the afternoon when we topped out. Schooled by the big rock fall the previous day, we dared not re-enter the U-Notch gulley so late. We rappelled in to the notch and deliberated. Then we scrambled down the other side into Dusy Basin for an unplanned bivouac!
I had a down parka with box construction baffles. A Snow Lion Behring: very warm. Doug's sewn through down jacket required supplementation. He wrapped the rope around himself like a mummy and cursed me for sleeping soundly throughout the night. I awoke face down in a dry meadow. Rusty little rocks scratched at my hips and elbows and tiny multicolored succulents struggled through the hard ground. The sun was bright and everything was quiet.
Our return to camp required an end run around the backside of Mount Sill and over Glacier Notch. It was an arduous trudge over desolate fields of talus. I think we overshot our goal somewhere. The plan was to snake through the crest and find a scrambling descent back onto the Palisade Glacier. We wound up making a couple of rappels off of slung horns, also leaving behind some perlon strung hexes.
Without fail, the walkouts from these adventures always came with the bonus of lighter backpacks, for all the food had been eaten away from the load. Still, that feeling of dusty fatigue, straining limbs, and onerous packs completely drowned us. From the trailhead we hitchhiked into town. From there we rode the bus back to LA via Highway 395. The bus was packed: not a seat to be found. It was hot. We stood out the ride all the way south to Mojave. By the time we settled into seats of our own, we'd never felt so tired, so good, or so real.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Feb 17, 2015 - 02:04pm PT
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Also from the Alpinist #48 article, Searching for Jensen, by Brad Rassler:
http://www.alpinist.com/doc/web15w/wfeature-searching-for-jensen
I opened a third box to find a papier mache model of the Ruth Gorge and the Mooses Tooth constructed on panel of cardboard cut from a wine box. On the bottom [Don] Jensen had written, "Done to keep sane while studying for PhD exam." Doug Robinson mentioned upthread that Jensen had made 3-D models of mountain ranges.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Feb 17, 2015 - 02:17pm PT
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Joan,
I'd love to hear more about Don Jensen's 3-D models of mountain ranges ... and all things Palisades.
Cheers,
Roy
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Feb 17, 2015 - 06:57pm PT
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Herb and Jan Conn supposedly did one for the Needles of South Dakota too but I didn't get a chance to see it when I visited her for an interview last year.
I will certainly be back and hopefully get a good look at the contents of the Conn Cave if she will let me.
Welcome Joan!
A little tidbit from the May 1966 issue of Summit magazine to nudge the conversation.
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Studly
Trad climber
WA
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Feb 17, 2015 - 08:16pm PT
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The Ultima Thule used to be THE PACK! Rad history lesson, thank you.
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crøtch
climber
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Feb 18, 2015 - 10:57am PT
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This is a great thread. Thanks to Doug and all others who contributed. Threads like these should be archived for historical content on a non-supertopo server with the permission of the authors.
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Doug Robinson
Trad climber
Santa Cruz
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 18, 2015 - 11:09am PT
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Warms my heart right up full to see this new surge of interest, opinion and flat out love for the Palisades and its -- can't stay away! -- habitues.
Especially great that Joan has joined the conversation. I fondly remember you at Third Lake, Joan, wearing that handmade down jacket. Thank you again, Brad Rassler, for not giving up on finding her last summer!
A few years ago I was invited to a UCLA Outdoor Leader's get-together at Trilogy Rock in the Needles. I was yarning away, teling a Don Jensen story, when one of the young climbers got this wide-eyed look and floored us by announcing that he was a relative of Jensen's, and had been searching for more info on the ghostly mentor who had become a family legend. I won't out him here just at the moment, except to say that he is now applying for a "Live Your Dream" grant from the AAC, and with benefit of that or not, we are going to meet up in the Palisades this summer and share reclimbing some Don Jensen classics.
Gotta run to the coast to visit my kids, but...staying tuned here. And thanks to all.
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larryhorton
Trad climber
NM
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Feb 18, 2015 - 06:40pm PT
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The last time I visited this lovely thread, the last post was dated 4 January 2014. Seeing the topic come up again in today's ST newsletter, I realized the thread must have gotten more activity since Alpinist's recent coverage of the same topics. I was floored to see Joan's understated introduction on 5 January 2015.
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
But not as amazed as I was to see that it took over a month before anyone noticed Joan had joined the conversation! Nice to see you here, Joan. I hope you're inspired to share a little more about your experience of those times. I'm sure readers would appreciate seeing a photo of that parka—I, at least, would love to see it.
On my way through the new entries, I had to laugh at this post by Mouse.
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.
Hate to burst your storyline, Mouse, but I'm pretty certain this picture is of Eric Hardee wearing a Jensen Pack of his own manufacture. But I think I understand. It's good to hear your voice again, nonetheless.
When you met us in the Mission district, Mouse, Doug had yet to approach me with an offer to use Jensen's design. I was still working at North Face, and I'm impressed with the pieces of the story you did remember. Just to keep my record clean, however, that was Joyce's cat.
And that naked guy you mentioned? He looked something like this when I saw him in the Cirque of the Towers, shortly after you met him.
But then, maybe there is a resemblence.
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26 July
Mountain climber
British Columbia
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Feb 23, 2015 - 03:37pm PT
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Well, THAT'S a difficult act to follow but here goes!
First, thanks Tarbuster , for posting the welcome and alert. A month had gone by since my original posting and there hadn't been any responses, so I thought there was no interest. My opinion has now changed! BTW, Lin's daughter's name is Lisa.
I want to respond to so many of the posts that I think it will take me several sessions. This is a start:
F10 and Fritz - It warms my heart to see the photos of the Jensen pack being used. Other than mine and Don's, I haven't seen one in use before.
Mark Force - I'm sure Don would have loved to see new developments using his earlier design. Will wait impatiently to see what you think of them. Also a photo?
Reilly - thanks for posting again the story of the life-saving pack! Who would have thought of this potential new use. Think of the advertising possibilities!
More later
Joan
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Feb 25, 2015 - 06:04pm PT
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not my image: needs photo credit!
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Fritz
Trad climber
Choss Creek, ID
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Feb 25, 2015 - 08:16pm PT
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Tarbuster! Great & Granitic photos!
Joan: Thank you for sharing your thoughts and memories on this thread. Hopefully, we are writting climbing history.
I did really love my Jensen pack 1973 to 1975. It fit like a very-slight hump on my back while leading.
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scuffy b
climber
heading slowly NNW
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Feb 26, 2015 - 10:14am PT
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Going back a week to Larry Horton's post, I was semi-floored to see photo
credit to Dan Ake. I haven't seen Dan since maybe 1974. Anybody able to
give an update on him?
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