Most influential article(s)?

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Roger Breedlove

Trad climber

Cleveland Heights, Ohio

Oct 18, 2005 - 11:12pm PT

Just caught this--"middle cathedral commentary", mt. mag -- the best of the "commentary" series, and a seminal read that heavily influenced my love affair with all things middle cathedral.--from bvb's post.

Thanks for the compliment.

All the best, Roger

bvb

Social climber

flagstaff arizona

Oct 19, 2005 - 12:11am PT

roger, i can quote passages from that article from memory. the photos of freewheling, quicksilver, east butt, and the writing that to this day evokes everything that makes middle stand out, unique, from every other crag/wall/formation in the valley...

no, thank you, sir.

marty(r)

climber

beneath the valley of ultravegans

Topic Author's Reply - Oct 19, 2005 - 12:22am PT

Yabo's obituary by J. Long

"Poontanga" by Geoffry Childs, and "Janus" (the article with all the b/w photos of 'Death and Transfiguration') by Bob Godfrey from Ascent, 1976
*Actually the whole mag is rad--Chris Jones on North Twin, Rowell on Mt. Dickey, and that classic shot of Robinson at the "get right with god" crack at Mill Creek Station oustide Bishop.

"Justification for an Elitist Attitude" by Marc Twight

Krakauer's profile of Fred Beckey for Outside. Most classic line, "ummm, ummm, not bad...even if it does look like horse dick!" F.B. describing free samples at a grocery store. second best line, "In the morning, Fred is a bundle of aches and wrinkles with legs. It hurts to see him move."

can't say

Social climber

Pasadena CA

Oct 19, 2005 - 12:26am PT

bvb, I ran into Dorworth in Sun Valley ID, a couple of years ago on a ski trip. He's writing for the local paper in Ketchum and looks healthy and skis as great as ever.

WBraun

climber

Oct 19, 2005 - 12:31am PT

And he "could" ski, he was the coach. Taught me a lot. Great man! (Dorworth)

bvb

Social climber

flagstaff arizona

Oct 19, 2005 - 12:33am PT

cool, pat. the guy is amazing writer.

marty(r), for the longest time i had that soliqouly that largo wrote taped to the filing cabinet netx to my desk. aimed straight from the heart, and breaking the heart at the same time.

Ed Hartouni

Trad climber

Livermore, CA

Oct 19, 2005 - 01:40am PT

For those who would like to see some of the above mentioned articles:

Breedlove, Roger, "Middle Cathedral Commentary":
http://www.supertopo.com/images/temp/MiddleCathHistory.pdf

Bridwell, Jim, "Brave New World", Mountain #31, 1973:
http://www.stanford.edu/~clint/yos/brave.htm

NIAD experpt from Jim Bridwell's, Climbing Adventures, ~1998.
http://www.stanford.edu/~clint/yos/nosebrid.htm

Hill, Lynn, "El Capitan's Nose Climbed Free", AAJ, 1994:
http://www.stanford.edu/~clint/yos/nosehill.htm

from the website: http://www.larsonsworld.com/library/articles/mnt_gazette_retrospective.html

We careened along the Idaho/Nevada desert night, through Contact, Wells, Elko, Battle Mountain, Winnemucca - drinking, eating, pissing, laughing and talking our way into some of the first, full-on-but-faltering-steps toward knowing ourselves - and sometime in the morning, after the harsh sun had turned the just-dark land into a glaring sea of changing desert colors, which brought out the shades, we gave our friend Jim Gilbert his worst moments of the trip. Somewhere around Lovelock we emptied the last glass bottle of the case we front-seaters had between us. At this point, we had been driving for about ten hours, drinking for eighteen and awake for nearly thirty; and our fifteen- and sixteen-year-old minds must have seemed pretty strange to our back-seat friend, completely sober and the elder at seventeen. We called to the back for the second case of beer. Jim didn't like that at all, but he eventually passed it over. This presented us with more than fifty bottles in the front seat, since there had been a few beers besides the cases, half of them empty. A crowded situation. Warren, blond and chubby, with an uncombed flattop, saddle shoes, Levis and a T-shirt, peered silently through chic prescription shades into his own endless highway, puffing on the constant cigarette of his habit. As the driver, he had the heaviest responsibility; and it takes a lot of concentration to destroy yourself and still keep things on the road. No company there at the moment. Gilbert, trustworthy and a friend, was on an entirely different track. What to do? What to do? What to do with yourself and a front seat full of empty bottles when you're fifteen years old and blasted out of your brains and barreling down the great American highways of being a teenager in the 1950s when you know - even though you are on your way back to your boyhood home - you know because you can feel you are going to spend long, hard miles on these endlessly lost asphalt paths that appear to lead everywhere but end nowhere and answer nothing because there is no time to change on that lost highway taken by the human mind sighting down a hood ornament at a world moving by so fast it can only be aimed along, never perceived or touched or felt or merged with or learned from. Even at fifteen, you know there are lots of dues to pay on the roads of America and the rest of the earth before the last key is inserted in the last ignition and turned on for the last, last time.

Dick Dorworth, "Night Driving: The Invention of the Wheel and Other Blues"

"I understand the only blasphemy -- to willingly jeopardize my life, which I have done, and it sickens me..." -- John Long

k-man

Gym climber

SCruz

Oct 19, 2005 - 01:51am PT

"Dance of the Woo Lee Masters" -- Yikes!

BTW, thanks for the references to the Bridwell (and other) articles. Does anybody have a reference to:

"the innocent, the ignorant, and the insecure: the rise and fall of the yosemite decimal system" -- ascent magazine, bridwell

Thx...
:- k

Jaybro

Social climber

The West

Oct 19, 2005 - 02:15am PT

"Does anybody have a reference to:

"the innocent, the ignorant, and the insecure: the rise and fall of the yosemite decimal system" -- ascent magazine, bridwell"

Just grabbed it out of the other room

"Ascent-A Sierra Club Mountaineering journal" Volume 2, No 1 July1973

Glad to look at it again, a great B&W collection of classic Offwidths accompany that peice: 1096, The Owl, Pratts crack, Moby left, Crack of Doom. That article seared itself into my brain before I ever even thought about climbing an Ow. I had those photos of Outer Limits runing through my cranium, first time I did that one, though.

slobmonster

Trad climber

berkeley, ca

Oct 19, 2005 - 10:46am PT

"Running Stairs," a little piece in _Climbing_ in the early 90s by Jeff Long (I think) afforded me a perspective I don't think I would have grasped alone, at least at the time.

aldude

climber

Oct 19, 2005 - 03:42pm PT

TRICKSTERS and Tradionalists by Tom Higgins,AAJ.The truth will set you free!

climber

Bay Area, CA

Oct 19, 2005 - 04:45pm PT

Dick Dorworth also gave a very moving tribute to Galen and Barbara Rowell at their memorial service in Bishop.

LittlePinkTricam

Trad climber

Providence, RI

Oct 19, 2005 - 04:48pm PT

Thanks you all so much!! There goes my schoolwork for the next few days...

Largo

Sport climber

Venice, Ca

Oct 19, 2005 - 05:02pm PT

The Lonely Challenge, Herman Buhl

In its own way, the '72 Chouinard catalogue also influenced me (then 18) because it seemed to distill and frame a kind of climbers lifestyle by melding both surfing culture (close to me growing up in So Cal) with Yosemie Big Wall 'tude. Now the copy seems a little smug and preachy but I enjoyed the sermon at the time--a sort of "ain't we cool" vibe that felt rightious as a teenager.

JL

Jaybro

Social climber

The West

Oct 19, 2005 - 05:28pm PT

Yeah that '72 catalog, the cover, and the guy doing a front lever in Dachstein mittens, always stick with me. After reading that, and advanced rockcraft I pretty much gave up on pounding pins on free climbs.
Nice Rolling Stones, & Pablo Casals quotes, too.

maculated

Trad climber

San Luis Obispo, CA

Oct 19, 2005 - 05:37pm PT

Ohhhkay - what's it going to take to get a girl to see this magnificent catalog?

bvb

Social climber

flagstaff arizona

Oct 19, 2005 - 06:18pm PT

i'll show you my copy anytime, you red hot chili mama you.

or, alternatively, they go for about $100.00 these days, depending on the condition. chessler gets 'em in once in a while.