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SteveW
Trad climber
The state of confusion
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Jan 23, 2011 - 04:23pm PT
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Bump for Larry, and of course, for our historian,
Mr. Grossman!!!!
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Topic Author's Reply - Jan 25, 2011 - 12:17pm PT
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Bump for more Dalke stories!
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ydpl8s
Trad climber
Santa Monica, California
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Jan 25, 2011 - 12:41pm PT
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Goss, I still remember that pic of him in that down coat, looking frozen on the winter ascent of the Diamond.
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Bobert
Trad climber
boulder, Colorado
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Jan 25, 2011 - 01:23pm PT
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I've been trying to remember some Dalke stories. We climbed together quite a bit, but the climbs were all uneventful. We picked a route and Larry climbed real fast. That's about it. I do recall a day when we did T2 and then the 4th Flatiron. I think he wanted to do more.
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survival
Big Wall climber
A Token of My Extreme
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Jan 25, 2011 - 01:26pm PT
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I can't believe Pat hasn't gotten on this thread yet......
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donini
Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
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Jan 25, 2011 - 01:29pm PT
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Steve, thanks for shining the light on another unsung virtuoso.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Jan 25, 2011 - 02:30pm PT
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That picture of Gill in Pennyrile was the trip that basically got climbing going in SoIll.
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Topic Author's Reply - May 13, 2011 - 08:40pm PT
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Anyone actually seen "X-M?"
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 25, 2012 - 05:17pm PT
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Dalke Bump...
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Rick A
climber
Boulder, Colorado
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Mar 25, 2012 - 05:45pm PT
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Met his son recently in Boulder, who is in the wood flooring business.
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Bob Culp
Trad climber
Boulder, CO
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Mar 25, 2012 - 07:40pm PT
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Not only was Larry a brilliant climber, he was (is no doubt)a really nice guy and a great companion. He apparently climbed only for the fun of it and seemed to have no ego, as far as climbing was concerned at least.
I met him and Pat Ament when they were little more than children up at the Flagstaff boulders and recognized immediately that they were both going to be really good climbers.
I did a lot of climbs with Larry and was dismayed when he dropped out of the sport. I'm sorry - I really despise religion.
Larry and I were planning a trip to the Alps one summer. I had been working at the National Bureau of Standards and when I quit I had enough money coming from some retirement fund or other that I thought I could manage a trip to Europe. Naively I supposed I would get the money in short order.
Not.
We had to scrub the trip. I have often wondered what my life would be like now had we made it.
I took the money I eventually got and put it into starting a retail shop, The Boulder Mountaineer.
I wish Larry and I had gone to Chamonix.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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Mar 25, 2012 - 09:57pm PT
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We climbed together quite a bit, but the climbs were all uneventful.
We picked a route and Larry climbed real fast. That's about it.
Great summation. For the life of me I can't remember what we talked about when we were out climbing except for music.
Pat and I on the other hand, never shut up, always saving the world with great ideas!
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Toker Villain
Big Wall climber
Toquerville, Utah
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Mar 25, 2012 - 10:04pm PT
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I had a 2 hour talk about religion with him 39 years ago.
I don't think either of us convinced the other of anything.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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Mar 25, 2012 - 10:10pm PT
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I knew Larry in his prereligion days.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Mar 26, 2012 - 12:01am PT
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We had to scrub the trip. I have often wondered what my life would be like now had we made it.
I took the money I eventually got and put it into starting a retail shop, The Boulder Mountaineer.
I wish Larry and I had gone to Chamonix.
You would have made more history.
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Dick Erb
climber
June Lake, CA
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May 26, 2013 - 10:22pm PT
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Larry was a wonderful person and an extremely talented yet unpretentious climber. At one time I thought he and Jim Madsen might become America's two best climbers. It's hard to predict the future.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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May 26, 2013 - 10:28pm PT
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Steve, say hello to everyone at the Diamond gathering for me! Wayne Goss just got in contact with me recently after all these years (thanks to ST) and reminded me that I was the one who introduced him to Layton. Layton was climbing something in Eldorado while I was sunning myself at the base and along came Wayne. We started talking and I suggested he meet and climb with Layton. When Layton got down from whatever he was on, I introduced them and the rest is history!
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Patrick Oliver
Boulder climber
Fruita, Colorado
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May 26, 2013 - 11:59pm PT
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Godfrey, of course, wasn't there and knew nothing of the real
history, other than what he could glean through rumor, gossip,
second-hand opinion, jealousy, outright lies, and bad memories....
He did pretty well, all that considered, but each time I read
through his book I see the errors, one after another, even just
little errors in emphasis or context, and all the usual clichés
that aren't quite accurate, such as, "He was doing things before
anyone else." Well, in a way, that's true, because he fit with
a small group of us who were doing that sort of
stuff, and each finding some personal path.
Larry did more climbing with me than he did with anyone, so I
know where he was mentally and in terms of his ability. I knew
ever one of his weaknesses and every strength and gift. These
were strange times. We were caught between eras. For example,
for a time it was all about speed: just get up any way you can,
the faster the better. Sometimes we simply hammered pitons in
quickly and used them because it was fast, even though we often
found when the focus changed that we could return and easily
free climb such things. There was a lot of friendly competition.
When Rearick and Culp did T2, that was a kind of breakthrough
into the next era, not that T2 was so very difficult
but it meant we no longer were training for the big walls,
trying simply to get up. When Dalke and I did Jules Verne, a route I
discovered and named, we wanted something to practice aid on. We
would have been disappointed were there holds all over and the
free climbing obvious. Yet almost any climb in Eldorado, we
quickly learned, could be free climbed... with a little focus and
determination. Even the most overhanging routes had enough holds
to go free, if one decided to make the route free. When people
started writing that the new generation were doing free climbs
beyond our comprehension, it wasn't true. I actually had thought
about doing the Edge free and, one day on a whim, "gave" the
climb to Jim. I knew it would go, and I was capable, but at that
time I was going through some painful stuff related to the '60s.
Later I came out of that and free climbed most of the routes
that were done by the '70s generation. I sight led Kloeberdanz
one day, for example, including the Dalke second pitch.
We were still working out our styles during the
golden 1960s. All of us had good and bad moments.
Dalke had as many little infractions of style as did I, but mine
became somewhat more publicized, since I was the free climbing leader
at the time and the only person pushing into the 5.11 realm. Larry had
gobs of talent, and moments of brilliance, a real natural ability.
But he could be kind of goofy at times. We were climbing Ruper
one day, and I decided to belay at the bottom of the crack and
let Larry lead it. He went up 15 feet, his foot slipped off, and
he fell straight onto me, legs straddled around me. Had I not
belayed there, he would have gone a lot farther!! We all liked
each other, and respected each other, but there were these
competitive jealousies, for lack of a better way to describe them.
After Layton and I made the first ascent of XM, on which we had
used very little aid, and had done simply in Kor fashion, i.e. go
fast, get up, well Larry then eventually set his sights on
that route he had been left out of. Maybe he could polish off those
few points of aid. It was logical, and the only question was the
second pitch, which he found he could stem out onto with his long
legs and virtually reach those finger-tip holds above the thin
crux where other shorter climbers have to do a delicate move.
By the way, I did XM free not too long after that and maybe
forty times again, once with Rick Accomazzo (finishing with Outer
Space), when Rick moved to Boulder. There was nothing on these
climbs beyond our ability either earlier or later, but, as I said,
it had more to do with focus and what we wanted to do.
I think Layton could have free climbed many more routes than he
did, had he made that focus-switch sooner, but now and then he would
apply himself, such as on the West Buttress of the Bastille, or
when he and I did Rogue's Arete on Overhang Rock. Layton was as
good as any of the free climbers coming along but did not have
the gymnastic strength that a few of us started to develop.
In '67 when I brought Dalke to Yosemite simply to free climb, we did
that Slack route, the first 5.11 in the Valley (it was much harder
then than later when a block broke out), and Larry followed that
like floating. It was the only 5.11 I'm aware of that he ever
did. Most of the top Yosemite climbers had tried that little
pitch and not done it yet. Dalke had no experience, though, in cracks
and couldn't follow several I led, such as Ahab and Left Side of
Remnant. He would have learned, of course, with more time in the
Valley, but he followed Layton into the Jehovah Witnesses in 1968,
and they have a doctrine that it's not good to spend too much time
with people not of the faith... a doctrine Layton finally matured
beyond, gratefully.
When I was just a tyro, Larry was a year older and a really much
better climber than I. He would lead certain 5.8s onsight at age
15, in 1960, and that was something back then. He had more natural
talent than I did, although I trained harder and became a gymnast
and so forth, and bouldered with Gill, so I got much stronger
than Larry. He became a bit insecure about this sudden surge
in my ability. Bouldering was not his favorite thing. But one day
in Camp 4 I walked up to the Kor Boulder and climbed it, as did
Royal. Larry was there and didn't do it. Royal and I ambled away
to the next boulder, and Larry came up finally and told us he had
done the Kor problem. We congratulated him. About an hour later,
as I recall, about as long as Larry could live with a lie, he
told me he had not done the problem but felt bad he was not
able. I could care less. He was my best friend. It made me think
he was human, which we all were back then. Then another day,
in hush-puppies (which had amazing friction abilities) he did
some really hard route. He and I mastered every inch of the
sides of Boulder High School, inventing probably the hardest
climbs and traverses in the Boulder area, at least the hardest
boulders. Because they were on a building they were forgotten.
Larry and I have good memories, which I only want to remember,
such as the night he and I were playing in a jazz band at a gig in
Boulder and during the intermission we sped up Flagstaff Mountain
in his sister's car and, in suits, in the dark, free soloed the
150-foot east face of Campbell's Cliff, a nearly vertical wall
that sits in a very exposed way over the front of the mountain
and that overlooks Boulder. It has a lot of loose little holds....
Larry was a real climber, though he sometimes had head issues.
When we did the third ascent of the Diagonal, he got gripped
for some reason and made me do all the leading. Yet I knew,
if something went wrong, and I for some reason got gripped, he
would take over with confidence.... These were perplexing times....
Twice I carried him piggy-back down the talus and down the road in
Eldorado. The first time, he bent over with an appendicitis while
leading the first pitch of C'est La Vie. Then after we did Le Void,
he went to get our back which we had left at the base of Redguard,
and he tripped over a boulder and broke his ankle.
One of my strongest memories is when we climbed the inside east face
of the Amphitheater, a red, slightly overhanging wall, at night,
by only moonlight. We had our little radio with us (we started that
practice, that Layton picked up from us), and Moon River was the big
hit of the day. It played over and over, but Larry led the top
pitch in blackness, up that rotten red wall, reaching, feeling for
holds, directly overhead against the stars, the wind blowing....
Truly, he was a brilliant climber.
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Patrick Oliver
Boulder climber
Fruita, Colorado
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May 27, 2013 - 07:58pm PT
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I typed that last missive too fast, and not feeling well, and
I made a lot of typos, so I went in and fixed some errors and added a
sentence or two.... I loved Larry. I write about him with
a lot of respect but also realistically. The historians who
come along and have no direct experience at all with the history
will make sweeping statements, such as how perfect a given individual
was, and let's face it. Not one of us was/is perfect or was back
when. Both Larry and I had our moments. It is good to remember
the good things but also the dumb things. The critics of course don't
want to remember the great things people do. When I led Super Slab
in 1967 without the slightest wince of a stylistic flaw, no one
paid any attention. There were lots of climbs like that, but
it's easier to think of the wrong note a musician plays, rather
than the moments of beauty. Human nature, I guess.
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