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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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In many ways, it was Tom Frost's trip to Europe a couple years after Royal and Liz visited that made the difference. Tom and Doreen were in England after the Annapurna South Face expedition recovering when Chris Bonnington outfitted them with a rack of the nuts du jour. Tom climbed in his mountain boots, Doreen in EB's and they had a fabulous time climbing the classics. Tom already had his eyes open with respect to clean climbing and when he was able to witness firsthand the relatively pristeen condition of the heavily used crags, the light came on in a big way. He also took stock of the tools available and found them wanting.
He returned to Chouinard equipment with a mission and the Hexentric and Stopper were the first manifestations of his design and engineering excellence. So high are his standards that he still expressed dismay decades later at having selected galvanized wire over stainless for cabling them!
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rgold
Trad climber
Poughkeepsie, NY
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Interestingly enough from a clean climbing perspective, I think that Joe Brown was something of a rebel in his day---for using pitons! What I think was true, however, is that he restricted himself to one piton per pitch maximum.
I might add that the concept of free climbing as practiced today all over the world was an American concept honed at Tahquitz. The Brits and certainly the Europeans generally pulled on any piece that they placed.
Part of the genius of the Chouinard/Frost approach to both nuts and pitons was making a clearly graduated set of standard sizes that everyone could learn and then use reflexively. The British chocks (and much earlier, European pitons) always seemed to be a hodgepodge of idiosyncratic sizes and shapes.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Harding's "siege" of the Nose of El Cap in 1957-58 was probably the most extensive and famous in the US. His siege of the Leaning Tower by fixing ropes and establishing high points in 1961 also ranks up there.
By 1962, continuous alpine style in the Valley was the prefered standard.
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neebee
Social climber
calif/texas
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hey there all, thanks for more sharing on this... i still have some more reading to do... had not got back here yet... but i will...
sure do love supertopo...
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Patrick Oliver
Boulder climber
Fruita, Colorado
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Of course after Royal started the transition
to nuts in 1966 (he and Whillans and I used them
in Eldorado that year, in Septemeber), I started
using nuts more and more. It took a while to learn
to trust them, but they caught on fast. And I will
simply add that it didn't all happen in California.
There were those of us who spent half our lives in
Colorado and as much time as we could in the Valley
and other California climbing areas. Prior to Royal's
big push, several Boulder climbers were already
trying to get us to make the switch, such as Cub
Shaefer, who had climbed in England, if I recall,
but he kept showing me the machine nuts and how they
worked...
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Jaybro
Social climber
wuz real!
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"it didn't all happen in California."
-cut to, Devil's Lake Wisc, late 60's; Jerry and Jay (age somewhere between 11 and 13) are climbing with Jerry's dad, Jerry (we were too young to drive, so he had Corvair™ed us up from Chicago), shouting encouragement.
I'm (Jay) on lead on some desperate 5.6 (remember this Devil's Lake, coulda been a death climb) I fumble with one of the nuts Jerry had got, somewhere, (stoppers were still years away, I think ,especially in the midwest.)
"Don't play with those toys boys, pound in some iron," offerred Jerry senior.
A few years later (still no driver's license) we were climbing the east face of Whitney, without a hammer.
The acceptance of clean climbing came pretty quick, all in all, but there was a bit of punctuated equilibrium...
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mongrel
Trad climber
Truckee, CA
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Interesting and all accurate posts: pitonless climbing came in to being in fits and starts all over the world starting a good 100 yrs ago. (Note on Jaybro's comment about Whitney's E face: wasn't the FA in 1931 accomplished basically 4th class, belaying by sitting on ledges, with no pins? Certainly with only a few at most. I'm sure this is in the original stories of the ascent.)
My recollection in the areas I climbed around 1970 (California and NE) was that the key advance that allowed even ordinary climbers to abandon their hammers was the introduction of the first generation of Chouinard brand (read: Frost?) wired stoppers, providing a superior replacement of blade pitons. Hexentrics made a difference too, but we cammed the crappy parallel sided hexes that preceded them anyway (poorly, admittedly), so it wasn't as much of a quantum leap as the nicely graded series of wired stoppers. For a year or two before those, we carried mixed racks, but once they appeared, hammers were largely gone.
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Todd Eastman
climber
Bellingham, WA
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I would guess that the early British Himalayan exploration and climbing expeditions were organized and conducted under military supervision and/or with military supervision. The siege tactics on the big peaks likely evolved from the logistical demands required by large teams with military-like command structures. Smaller, less well funded expeditions seemed to be less siege oriented even in the early days of Himalayan climbing. The current popularity of alpine style climbing on big peaks is probably the result of quick travel times to and from the objective and better information such as maps and route knowledge.
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Reilly
Mountain climber
Monrovia, CA
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6 slings and a hex, clean enough?
For the record this is Steve Barnett of the
notorious Barnett self-belay system.
proper use of a chock...
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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The difference between competitive and non-competitive climbing as Messner defined it would be closer to the core style argument. Fair means has been the issue as long as tools and tactics have been around.
The Swiss narrowly missed bagging Everest without all the military overtones.
Shipton and Tilman were out on the forefront of Himalayan alpine climbing with minimal logistical support. No surprise that he had a conflict with eventual expedition's approach.
When Robbins wrote Save South Crack he advocated strongly for a seachange in our entire approach to meeting and defining meaningful challenge on the stone. The hammer had a mindset to go along with its use. To allow hammerless climbing to evolve, everybody had to take a small step backwards and learn to use and trust a entirely new and different set of tools.
Barnett edit:From Advanced Rockcraft.
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Jaybro
Social climber
wuz real!
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That was always my favorite illustration in ARC.
Mongrel, that's how I remember it. We were way too timid... though they had done it 4th class thirty/forty some yrs before our ascent it Was, a really big deal for us to tackle a 'big' route like that with out a hammer! I'd like to think we were fractal of the whole, at that time...
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Feb 22, 2017 - 04:04pm PT
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Nice, bump, Mouse. That certainly is the Cadillac of nut tools!
I always hated carrying those things. Like having a dagger on the rack is what I really wanted in my life.
Cool thread. I remember when it first popped up. We got the right answers and that was that. If somebody started a thread like this now it would be thought a troll!
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