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Bill
climber
San Francisco
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As soon as I knew what mountains were, I wanted to climb them. I drove my parents crazy begging for trips to the mountains when my dad was a professor at the University of Illinois in Urbana (about as far from rock as it gets). I heard climbers traversed on a rock wall in a stairwell at the student union, so I went there and traversed, but it wasn't on the side of a mountain, so I didn't really see the point.
Then we passed through Yosemite in '77 when I was 15. I scared myself half to death soloing up Lembert Dome, and seriously considered running away and living with the hippy climbers in Camp 4. Unfortunately I moved to Hawaii instead, and spent 15 years as a surf bum.
Then I went to Nepal, and when I saw those mountains, I knew I had to learn whatever it took to go up there. So I took a mountaineering class at AAI in the Cascades, and after the class my instructor suggested I hitchhike up to Squamish and climb there for a while. I did, and it was good: real good. This was what I was supposed to do with my life. As far as I knew Yosemite was the center of the climbing universe, so I moved home to the bay area, posted "looking for a partner" on this newfangled internet thing that had just started up, and the rest, as they say, is history.
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Watusi
Social climber
Newport, OR
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After reading Maurice Herzog's "Annapurna" at the age of nine, I had developed an interest in mountaineering at a very early age...On my daily route home from junior high school, at twelve or so, I would pass daily by a mountaineering equipment store in my home town of Pacific Beach, San Diego...It was called, "A Striving After Wind," and it held, among things, the wildest looking posters of people, hanging it out on aid walls, colourful equipment, and all the trappings of a most fabulous adventure. Being an eager lad, I persisted in belonging my stays in hopes of gaining the favour of one, Roger Wilson, who was working there at the time. Beleaguering him with an incessant query of questions pertaining to this pursuit, I slowly worried him down to the point that he finally conceded. He ultimately allowed me to accompany him, and his compatriots,on an expedition to to Wilds of Joshua Tree... In 1973...I never left...
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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"when my dad was a professor at the University of Illinois in Urbana (about as far from rock as it gets)"
Bummer, a short drive down I-57 to Carbondale would have put you on plenty of rock back then. There was even a small, but fairly active scene at the time. Sounds like you made your way to it eventually regardless.
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TrundleBum
Trad climber
Las Vegas
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Young teens and avoiding authority got me into hiking and backpacking.
Soon I was upping the ante with winter skills.
I am sure the kicker for me was 'The vertical world of Yosemite'.
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d-know
Trad climber
electric lady land
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musta been about 5th grade when
i read this.
convinced my folks to take me to
watch the 1st climbing comp. on
the cliff lodge wall at snowbird.
didn't know sh#t about technical
rock climbing, but i did know
that i had to, just had to do what
they were doing and could and still
am, and will 'till i can't no more!
those little books by royal robbins
were my mentors.
dino
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KuntryKlimber
Mountain climber
Rock Hill, SC
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Kelly Cordes wrote an article in Alpinist 3 called "painted blue".
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doughnutnational
Gym climber
hell
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I was inspired by seeing climber in Yosemite and Pinnacles while on trips with my parents. In high school I actually began climbing with the Zaccor brothers and others while at Woodside High. I saw Augie Kline, Double D, Bill Price and others while climbing at Ratttlesnake Rock and Castle Rock. They were my real inspiration becauuse they were so much better than me (and very cool too!). My sister was going to Ravenswood High and one of the heroesaid "tell your brother if he ever wants to be a real climber he needs to go to school at Ravenswood" I transferred there and improved much thanks to being around many climbers. I remember catching weights thrown from the bleachers with a hip belay and climbing a difficult fist crack above the pole vault pads during pe (the orignal bouldering pad?).
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Double D
climber
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 4, 2008 - 11:58am PT
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RIGHT ON! Very cool stories!
eKat: “that fascinating, fragrant, tinkling, brightly colored, WEIRDASS STUFF.”
Was it combustable??? (-:
Werner: If I haven’t thanked you, Simon, Blinny, Ricky A, Mike G, Ron, Bev J (RIP) and the pilot (Rick The x ‘Nam Vet???) Ranger Tim S.? and all others who helped us young pups off that rock…THANKS!!! Werner, thanks to you I always carried a hammer on walls from that day on, even on clean ascents!
Ihateplastic: The PAIN! Nuff said, you brought back similar memories. I remember spraying Bactine right afterwards...OUCH!
khanom Thailand??? How cool is that?
healyje Hanging from welded rungs in a typhoon? Yikes!
Klimmer Somehow I’ve never seen “Solo”…gotta put that on my bucket list for sure.
Redwreck My all time favorite climbing pictures come from New River Gorge…that place must be incredible as pictures rarely do justice to the stone. Another bucket list item.
Kevin W: You crack me up! Not much changed when you grew up, huh? I’ll bet you’re still talking friends into climbing stuff…only now it’s their wives that are PISSED!
d-know Banner in the Sky…YES!
Todd Gordon Sounds like the ‘ol mans plan kinda backfired?
Kevin L…Big HOWDY to you and your sister Kia!
Keep um coming!
(-:
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salad
climber
San Diego
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My wife got me rolling. She took me on my first backpacking trip in the Desolation Wilderness. I loved it and was planning our next trip, which was to be over Mono Pass into Pioneer Basin out of Rock Creek. My boss was an avid backpacker and recommened that trip.
So I roll into Western Mountaineering in San Ho to get some water bottles or something for the trip and notice a pamphlet for ASI. I picked it up and started thumbing through it. Holy sh*t there were pictures of guys climbing frozen waterfalls! With crazy picks! This I gotta try! So I signed up for an intro course, Shasta via Avi Gulch.
I obviously knew of mountain climbing, but at the time I didnt really new rock climbing existed. ASI suggested some familiarty with ropes and knots, etc, so I sniffed around and found a climbing gym in the area and learned a couple of basics.
We got thwarted on Shasta due to weather, so I went back the next weekend and soloed it.
I then found a guy, Bill Lim, who agreed to take me out on rock and the rest is history, I guess.
Not long after, I got benighted on Bear Creek Spire. Full on noob fiasco. Couldnt find the summit block or the descent so we rapped the Northeast Ridge. I was totally freaked out and vowed if I got down ok that I would propose to my girl somewhere in Little Lakes Valley.
So on New Years Eve she and I ski in and I pop the question on New Years Day ahead of a big ass storm. Just so happens that my daughter was conceived in Rock Creek a few years later, and then two years after that my wife got her first wave of morning sickness in Rock Creek and we found out my son was on the way. Special place that is for me...
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ydpl8s
Trad climber
Denver, Colorado
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I was a skinny kid that didn't do too well at team sports. I had already taken up skiing and found I was pretty good at that (became instructor at 17) and I was looking for another non-team sport. The summer after my senior year in high school (Golden, Co) a friend (Chuck Tolton) took me for my first rock climbs in Eldorado and Boulder Canyon. I got dragged up a slew of 5.5 to 5.7's (Wind Ridge, Calypso, Bastille, The Owl, East Slab, Cozy Hang, Empor) and I was hooked. The next fall I moved to Gunnison to go to Wasted State and met all of the soon to be famous climbers there, (I even met, Jello through Chuck Tolton and actually ended up with the camera that he sold to Chuck: he claims it is the one Jello used to take the pics on the first ascent of the Black Ice Couloir). I was inexorably Hooked!!!
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scuffy b
climber
Stump with a backrest
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Seems like whenever this question comes up, I come up with a
different memory.
I was pretty puny as a kid, but our family was outdoorsy. My dad
had backpacked in his teens (born 1920) and even made packframes
in the 40's.
So, woods, mountains, dirt, camping...
Out of my friends and the bigger kids, I seemed to be pretty
inferior at climbing trees and things. The most popular ways to
climb on top of our school were too hard for me. So I looked
around and found a new line. There was a big screened panel with
parallel boards covering it. I found I could stick my hands into
the gaps. Didn't quite make the leap to handjamming, because I
could get my fingertips behind the boards. Foot jams were
mandatory, though. I didn't have to jam both feet in the same
crack, which was nice.
Then, way off the deck for a 9 or 10 year old squirt, grab the
roof and belly flop. There was a different descent which was not
bad (but impossible to climb).
When I started going out and backpacking on my own I realized I
was doing some unusual stuff just going around looking for fire
wood and shortcuts, going up to some summits for the view.
Then Harding and Caldwell did their big thing on El Cap, and I
saw Ullman's biography of John Harlin. That's the book that had
the biggest impact on me.
Next Summer, 1971, while backpacking in the Trinity Alps, I
realized I was doing the kind of stuff that would get me killed,
so I went out and got lessons and Robbins Boots.
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Rockin' Gal
Trad climber
Boulder
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In the mid-70s, I was staying with a friend in Bezerkley, looking for a job. I survived by giving plasma and getting food stamps. An ad in the Chron advertised “Seasonal Employment,” so I went to the Oakland Unemployment Department for an interview and got hired to work in Yosemite. I hadn’t been there, but it was a national park so I figured it would be OK for the summer.
My last $50 went for a new pair of hiking boots at the Ski Hut. After arriving in the park, I was assigned housing in L Dorm and became a busperson at the Ahwahnee. Sometime that summer I was taken climbing, to the first pitch of Bishop’s Balcony by Randy Lydon and Tom Sweeney, two waiters at the hotel. I remember running in place on the rock and getting a foot off the ground, not surprising for an overweight, out-of-shape, cigarette-smoking girl from Wisconsin.
L Dorm was right across from the climbers’ campground and there were always guys in the dorm bathroom at midnight or 1 am taking showers. As the days grew shorter, the same guys were hitting on the girls in the dorm as they were looking for a warm place to stay for the winter. I really didn't like climbers.
Summer became fall. I stayed on, for years as it turned out. Eventually I went climbing again. The first climb I actually made it up was Cathedral Peak in Tuolumne. That was the starting point. I was (and still am) hooked.
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bonin_in_the_boneyard
Trad climber
Up the 'Creek w/out a Prada
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A bad breakup.
I had been stuck in an engineering school with a 4:1 male:female ratio for 4 years. Moreover, it was in a post-industrial wasteland of a New England town with no culture and no life.
All together around the same time shin splints were ending my running career, I was on the rocks with a loser of a girlfriend, who nonetheless was about the best I could do under the circumstances, the company I worked for was closing, and the economy was crashing (late '01) making engineering jobs very hard to get.
I signed up for a grad program at the school I hated in the city I hated, broke up with my girlfriend, and started putting on weight from not being able to run. I knew I had to introduce something new to my life or I was going to lose my @#$%ing mind.
So I started taking dance lessons at the YWCA and climbing regularly at the YMCA.
Fast-forward 6 years and I'm a three-hour drive from Yosemite and engaged to a competitive dancer. Things are better now.
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SamRoberts
climber
Bay Area
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My parents loved to camp in the eastern Sierra, especially at the upper sites on Big Pine Creek. One time my brother and I went to Glacier Lodge and saw a couple of guys sitting out front. One of them was real old and the other, younger guy introduced him as Norman and said that he had climbed "about every mountain in the Sierra". I sat there with them and listened to story after story until Norman asked Bruce, the younger guy, to take him back home in Big Pine. After hearing those stories, I wanted to experience that so when I got back home I bought a climbers guide to the Sierra. When I started looking through the guide, I realized the old guy was none other than Norman Clyde! That was in 1970 (or maybe '69).
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Beatrix Kiddo
Mountain climber
Denver
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I started climbing because someone told me that skinny people make great climbers. I was skinny. They were wrong. So I decided to shift my focus and do it to meet men. That failed because I started climbing in places where I only saw mountain goats. Oye vey. Now I'm just inspired to climb for reasons that I can't explain. Its just what I do and I LOVE IT.
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Raydog
Trad climber
Boulder Colorado
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there were rocks all over the places we - at 16 - would drive to and hike and smoke bunkweed, to get away from town, parents. we started climbing the rocks because they were there - then we could justify driving there, being there more "going rock climbing" and blowing more weed. just that simple.
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Double D
climber
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 9, 2008 - 04:46pm PT
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RIGHT ON! Those are some rad stories...the stuff is addicting.
SamRoberts Norman Clyde...how cool is that! He's one of my all time heros!
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bringmedeath
climber
la la land
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While it looks like most of you have mentioned other climbers as being your inspiration, mine is far from a climber. In fact maybe as far from it as anyone else I know!
My MOM, she showed me pics of climbing and took me to the gym. She drove me to the cliffs so I could stare at them. My mom has never climbed but probably knows more about wall climbing than some of you on this board. It is with her belief in me that I made itup the things I've done. While I've seen others my age have unsupportive parents mine were nothing but fully supportive.
The first time I went to yosemite my DAD was maybe more excited for me to climb than I was myself. He drove down there with me and stayed till I was halfway up or so. The next year him and my mom drove down to visit me and again got to watch us up on the wall. Once again I think they were more excited for me than I was, even though I had just completed something I'd thought about for several years. My parents time was my time and I thank them for that. I never would have done it without them...
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Moof
Big Wall climber
A cube at my soul sucking job in Oregon
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Two dudes at work who climbed and caved dragged me out to TR a couple times, then dragged me out to tyrolean across the Potomac between VA and MD by headlamp.
One dude from the week before's "practice" session.
Other dude, the night of the whole affair:
Me before owning anything but climbing shoes (if even those by then):
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hobo_dan
Social climber
Minnesota
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I was the smallest guy in my high school class and I wasn't able to get the attention I wanted through the usual sports opportunities.
I had made a wood and canvas kayak for the Minneapolis lakes, and from that I stumbled into whitwater boating. I joined the local club and there I met a family who had immigrated from Austria-they had a beautiful daughter and I was definitely interested in what she had to offer. While visiting, (and striking out) they showed me photos of the Nose. The mom did the first female ascent, she and the dad were guided by Royal Robbins.
So I started climbing with them and they were very safety conscious. I eventually wore out my welcome but the climbing bug stayed in me. I never felt confident enough climbing with the Minnesota folks-so I would wander out to the valley by thumb or freight train and meet people to climb with from California.
The best people i've ever met have been climbers- how is that for a strange reflection?
murf
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