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Fritz
Trad climber
Hagerman, ID
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Bump
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mark miller
Social climber
Reno
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Sweet story and nice to Hear that the rangers were tools even before my arrival in the 70's.
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TripL7
Trad climber
san diego
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If I may digress(although in support of Mr. Suhl's proud stance).
Spring 74' late evening and I am walking back to C4, stop to take a leak. Gazing up, admiring the the heights when suddenly a blinding light is shining sideways, catching me in the middle of the act. Startled I shuffle to the other side of the tree.
"Come out with your hands up!!"
I should have, maybe I would have even got a little on one of them. But with mind racing, wondering "is it illegal to pee on a Doug Fir" I try to rush it, finish the job...but it doesn't work!!
Suddenly, one of them has me in a choke hold and I'm doing the old 'funky chicken', going in and out of consciousness, arms and legs flailing, gasping for breath.
"Why didn't you come out from behind the tree when we asked you." I here someone ask as I regain my senses, face in the dirt, hands cuffed behind my back. "I was taking a leak" I confess. Wondering what the charge was going to be, was I going to spend the night in jail?
The dude with the portable torch goes to inspect the tree I had been watering.
"Un cuff him Dan, he's not our man!"
WTF I mumble..
"Some guy just broke into the market" one LEO replies, as they walk back to their cruiser.
Not a "we're sorry/you OK"...nothing, zip. They wouldn't have even offered an explanation if I hadn't asked.
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Jan 17, 2010 - 01:44pm PT
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Great story, Joe! Just about piss myself laughing every time I read it!
A shot of the Smokin' Duke and fellow Vulgarian, Joe Kelsey from Glen Denny's superb Yosemite in the Sixties, 2007.
Among a long list of accomplishments Claude also got the great Bev Johnson into climbing seriously. The rest, as they say, is history!
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Reilly
Mountain climber
Monrovia, CA
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Jan 17, 2010 - 03:58pm PT
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"but such behavior doesn't belong in a place like Yosemite"
I agree, in principle. I don't go into an indoor cathedral and whoop and holler. That said, we've all enjoyed acting like adolescents and it is a great story! This one belongs in the Yosemite Pantheon along with the Tenaya Lk Water Skiing Festival.
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FangnClawed
Ice climber
High Falls, NY
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Jan 18, 2010 - 12:09pm PT
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especially in light of those who fear that one should not behave thusly in Yosemite, and there were plenty of them, even back in the 60's:
note the behavior of the RANGER :!!!
follows a response to some who pointed out this fine LEGENDARY observation
DOODS & DRUIDS,
thanks
grate story just like Kelsey would quote Ken Kesey - "it is the truth , even if it didn't happen" (not quite a great story - just a little bit raspy)
essentially true in nature
but how I remember it was:
1st of all
it was Art Gran's VW
driving on the bumper was only me
inside was Art, at least one other eastern climber
and, I just found out last spring, Jeff Foott was on board or aboard. (he lives near Raivo in Castle Valley and we always see him when we go to Moab)
Mort Hempel is another good candidate for being present.
I remember being very peaceful and driving very slowly from Camp 4 to the Village (where Degnans and the Ranger Station were)
the Ranger who came out to greet us was only moderately belligerent and authoritarian BUT he was interrupting a very composed and peaceful reverie that threatened NO ONE ! We were mindful of someone riding on the outside of the car AND had to do this because 6 or however many of us there were could not fit in to a VW bug. Here comes this brash MF making a big deal about nothing - the Valley was very uncrowded and very bucolic that morning.
Upon my telling the Ranger " I negate your authority" in Neitzschian fashion, (after having told him "f*#k you")said Ranger proceeded to go inside the station and come out with his handgun held high overhead. A few hours later after cooling my heels in the small stone and steel nearby jail cell I was dragged into court. The judge obviously saw the humor in this great offense and calmly remanded me back to jail for a sentence of a day , I believe. Having just left the cell and having found it impervious and extremely contrary to my earlier totally free and peaceful state of mind - as we exited and marched back to jail - I was in the center with four rangers at each quadrant - so I bolted, or perhaps boogied, right out the side of this confinement and fled deep into the vast meadows to the south. As I heard sirens wailing and saw flashing red lights of ranger cars circling around the end of the mile wide meadows I jammed myself deep in to the center of a centrally located bush. Half hour later the dogs found me - straining at their leashes-savage fangs menacing- saliva showering in all directions as if to pre-digest an upcoming feast - I think they were actually trying to lick me, being Lab like. So I earned an extra 24 hours in the clink. I was told by those in the know that Wayne Merry interceded in my behalf. I had met him via Hemming before he had become a ranger a few years before.
Any way I will not fight the legend - may it grow - certainly there were raucous trips around the valley with many scoundrels riding outboard , perhaps not that particular time AND I did tell that ranger, who was from Brooklyn originally !! as I later found out from him, I did tell him to go f*#k himself as well .......but who knows mammaries and memories fade and coalesce .... what the f*#k?
also I believe I was wearing baggy old corduroy Gunksian knickers that were extremely ventilated throughout and a Roperian very dirty once white T-shirt.
Now I've got to find out who wrote the article in Stupor Topo.
clawed
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FangnClawed
Ice climber
High Falls, NY
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Jan 18, 2010 - 12:23pm PT
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to Eric Beck and others:
to me a more incredible story of birth and death is my first trip to the valley with :
Eric Beck !!! whose trip to the valley was also his first.
He was a hot young promising high school climber from San Diego area. So.....
Gary Hemming gets his buddy George Schlief - a rabid incessant high speed tailgater - to leave Friday night for the way northerly Yosemite. George tail gates his way behind enumerable vehicles -
as newbie Eric and I are trying to sleep at about 5AM on the way down into the valley from the Wawona tunnel - we are pestered by Gary and Schlief - "hey look at the big valley - see the big rock walls - hey wake up "
I just hunkered down deeper in to my seat - the walls seeming to pervade the sky with ominous fear spasms. Hours later , in camp 4 - i peered from the tent - saw gray distant Sentinel looming frightfully almost overhead across the Valley - it was a mental disfiguration for me to emerge from my tent. I recall, perhaps 12 hours later cringing my way up the massif of Sunny Side Bench - still in fear and trepidation! I think Eric faired quite a bit better.
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guido
Trad climber
Santa Cruz/New Zealand/South Pacific
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Topic Author's Reply - Jan 18, 2010 - 03:36pm PT
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Ah Clawed-how to wreck a good tale!
Arlo Guthrie has been hounding me all week for an interview and now I have to refer him to you. Be nice as you are throwing away untold royalties and fame. Perhaps it is a compilation of several VW rides and numerous wild excursions but as we both agree, "it's the truth even if it never happened."
I have sent off copies to some of the usual suspects and we shall see. Of course you realize this will drag out other potential nefarious expeditions of record and we both may be hauled off to jail. The "man" is not so forgiving in this era of fear, fear and more fear. In the climate of today you would be doing "eleven years in fourworth" as Groncho would say.
Well, we got you posting on ST and that is a coup in itself.
Funny thing, my lady was driving to town here yesterday in the Bay of Islands and what song suddenly come up on the radio? Yep : "Duke. Duke, Duke, Duke of Earl...................."
So now and forever whenever anybody hears that song they will think of Clawed. Kind of like not thinking of the Lone Ranger when you hear the "William Tell Overture."
Alas, as the saying goes, "A Legend is a Lie with the Dignity of Time".
So may the legend grow!
Guido
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MH2
climber
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Jan 18, 2010 - 03:40pm PT
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Well, we got you posting on ST and that is a coup in itself.
second the motion
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Fritz
Trad climber
Hagerman, ID
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Jan 18, 2010 - 04:53pm PT
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Bummer Guido: That is a real problem with telling your version of great stories on the Taco.
You never know when the actual perpetrator is going to post up his memories as "the truth."
Happened to me last fall when I recounted a great story about WSU Alpine Club members mooning Canadian Mounties trying to rescue them.
http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.php?topic_id=977914&msg=984774#msg984774
Oh Well-----it does pull in new posters!
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David Wilson
climber
CA
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Jan 18, 2010 - 05:18pm PT
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great story ! thanks for posting
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oldguy
climber
Bronx, NY
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Jan 18, 2010 - 10:48pm PT
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I wasn't around for the Duke of Earl scene, but I do remember that Art Gran had a VW. Also, Claude (hi, Claude, hi Joe, hi Dick) showed up in the Valley in 1959, by himself as I recall, a sort of avante guarde of the Vulgarians. And he seemed so un-Vulagarian at the time, soft spoken, respectful of the local talent, and wasn't really interested in climbing, just being part of the scene. He came back in 1960 with Dave Craft and Art. Art used to borrow Craft's Triumph so that I could take him on a Le Mans type ride on the dirt backroads that led out of the Valley. When I think now of doing four-wheel drifts on dirt switchbacks in someone else's sports car, I shudder, slightly.
As to the rangers, there were a few like Rick the Reckless Ranger and later Wayne Merry (who of course was a climber) who understood climbing and climbers, but for the most part it was just another counter-culture scene. We didn't have jobs, we did have beards (almost unheard of in those days), we scrounged food in the coffee shop and from other campers, we stole showers at the Lodge (although I thought they would be happy that we were keeping clean), and in general we just weren't good Americans, as anyone could see just from looking at us. There was a fine tradition of the ranger-naturalist, Carl Sharsmith for one and Wayne was another, but the new rangers were just law enforcers and quite liked the power that seemed to give them. Plus, they were on the side of the Curry Company whose minions also weren't fond of our lollygagging around the Lodge and dreaded the day we might show up at the Ahwanee. And if truth be told, later on some of the climbers did go a bit beyond the line, not Claude, of course, but some who shall remain nameless, or so I have been told. As all of you now have been.
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rgold
Trad climber
Poughkeepsie, NY
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Jan 19, 2010 - 01:26am PT
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My first encounter with Claude and the Vulgarian tribe occurred in the climber's camp in the Tetons, I think around 1961. I've extracted part of a post I made to Steve Grossman's Shawangunks-Cornerstone thread, since it seems to fit in with the combination of history and legend here.
I arrived in the climber's campground via Trailways buses from NYC and a bit of hitchhiking. I was a senior in high school, and my impressionable adolescent psyche had been deeply influenced by the purple pro---uh, the lyrical writing---of Gaston Rebuffat. From his books I learned about the beauty of the mountaineering experience, the brotherhood of the rope, the necessity of being fashionably attired at all times, and the imperative that under no circumstances was the leader ever to allow the perfect geometrically vertical lines of his rope to be broken by pictorially distracting protection points.
Thusly stuffed to the gills with matching-patterned-sweater-and-knicker-socks idealism, I made my way to the climbers' camp. Oh, the horror! The place was infested with badly dressed, apparently unwashed, and thoroughly unkempt vermin, drinking, copulating, disrupting Teton Tea parties, roaring around the loop road in their Triumphs, sounding the Vulgaraphone, and indulging in all manner of activities impossible to carry out in woolen knickers.
I feverishly consulted my copies of Neige et Roc and Etoiles et Tempetes (you don't think I would deign to read bad English translations of The Master, do you?) for protective incantations against these alpine demons, no doubt the same ones feared by the early French peasants venturing into the heights for the first time. But now these werewolves and satyrs were somehow transplanted from Chamonix to Jackson, screaming like the hounds of hell in the throes of a feverish blood lust, apparently stimulated by the scent of my dry-cleaned climbing outfits.
As I cowered behind Orrin Bonney's teepee, watching the End of Days in progress before me, I realized that the apocalypse had arrived, probably during my AP Calculus class, and that Fire and Brimstone, rather than Starlight and Storm, would be the new essence of the American climbing experience.
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survival
Big Wall climber
A Token of My Extreme
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Jan 19, 2010 - 04:18pm PT
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DUKE!!
Hoh mahn....now we have Clawed and Old Guy posting on here??
I'm getting this Guido character figured out, a Slippery Salty Sea Dog indeed.
These old geezers are holdin' out on the REAL tales of DeBoch, I just KNOW IT!!
C'mon you guys. Quit hiding out and let some more shizzle fly!!
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Don Lauria
Trad climber
Bishop, CA
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Jan 19, 2010 - 06:42pm PT
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These are the stories that make this site worthwhile. Bring back the good old days. I love it.
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BBA
Social climber
West Linn OR
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Mar 18, 2010 - 08:04pm PT
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I saw what Oldguy said about Sharsmith being one of the few OK rangers. From the peak register I noted Sharsmith climbed Mt. Starr King in 1931 in his first season as summer ranger help. He then went to graduate school at Berkeley and is mentioned by Richard Leonard's in his notes as a member of the Berkeley Rock Climbing Section of the Sierra Club in 1933 on Chicken Skinner's site (YCA). So of course he had to be OK! He was a seasonal naturalist for 25 years while professoring here and there.
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donini
Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
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Mar 18, 2010 - 09:04pm PT
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Great story Guido! Whatever happened to Claude and Mort?
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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Mar 18, 2010 - 09:45pm PT
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I've been told by Pat Ament that Mort has lived a quiet life in Boulder now for many years.
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guido
Trad climber
Santa Cruz/New Zealand/South Pacific
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 18, 2010 - 10:10pm PT
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Mr Donini Sir!
You can find Claude several posts above you, ie. "Fangclawed". We had some behind -the- scene fun with this one. More to come by the way about a continuation of similar "we" vs "them" back when there was a serious social problem with the interphase.
Mort-I have some contact with recently, yes living in Boulder and maintaining fairly well.
cheers
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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Mar 18, 2010 - 10:35pm PT
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I first heard the term Vulgarian and the names Art Gran, Claude Suhl, and Gary Hemming from Layton Kor who was greatly impressed as a result of his climbing trips back east.
He noted that neither Boulder nor Valley climbers could hold a candle to the east coast when it came to having fun and being outrageous. It seems as usual, that Layton knew what he was talking about in that regard.
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