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survival
Big Wall climber
Terrapin Station
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Feb 26, 2015 - 12:08pm PT
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Awesome post Doug!
Obviously a heartfelt gesture, and well worth revisiting!
BTW, great additions Tarbuster!
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26 July
Mountain climber
British Columbia
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Rainy Sunday so good time to catch up with posts.
Tarbuster
Thanks for posting all those photos. I felt like I was in the Palisades again, on a climb or enjoying the view from a summit or overnight camp. I live in a mountainous area, but my view nowadays is from sea level looking up, not out and across the snowfields. Although, on nice days when flying (at around 19,000 feet) home from the Big Smoke to the south, we get fantastic views of the snow fields and peaks.
Reminds me, Doug, of when you and Don and I chartered a plane and flew from northern Vancouver Island to the peaks and ice fields, scouting out climbing possibilities. Your girlfriend at the time had to stay behind because there were only three passenger seats and she wasn't a climber. She was pissed off! Never would have guessed then that I would be living amongst them 45 years later!
I don't remember Don working on any 3-D models when we were living together in LA. Any project of that scope would have taken a big chunk of space out of our small apartment. So I am thinking that he must have done that project the first year he was at USC and I was still in Fresno. But we did have a large montage in our dark hallway of the Sierra pieced together from USGS topo maps. Helped divert our attention from the semi-squalor in the area around us and get us primed for the next foray to the mountains.
Doug
I'd love to hear more about Don's relative and what he said about Don being a family legend. Maybe I could fill him in with some stories of my own.
Larry
I'll try to get someone to take a photo of me in the parka but that may be a while. Then I will have to try to figure how to post it here, or rather, get someone to show me how.
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larryhorton
Trad climber
NM
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Thanks, Joan. I look forward to seeing that jacket photo—and you.
In response to your enjoyment of seeing Jensen Packs in use, this has always been one of my favorites because it so brings back the spirit of those days in the early 70s when I was so thoroughly infatuated with the Cirque of the Towers. These are among the first ten packs made by Rivendell. The one I'm wearing was probably the first I made. We're headed over Jackass Pass to drop into the Cirque. I was doing most everything barefoot in those days.
I'd be hard pressed to accurately give this photo a date, but I'm guessing about 1973.
I understand your confusion, Joan, about getting replies to your post. Other forums typically provide email notifications to an author when a reply is posted. Doesn't seem to be the case here, but it would probably make for more coherent and lively conversations—although they get pretty lively here...
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larryhorton
Trad climber
NM
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Tarbuster, this collection of images of the Palisades is a knockout. The first one is exquisite, and it alone is enough to serve as a wakeup call to this rube that I've missed out on a major chunk of the Sierra.
Thanks so much for collecting and posting these! Maybe I have some unfinished business...
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larryhorton
Trad climber
NM
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scuffy b, you've seen Dan Ake since I have.
Dan worked at the North Face when I was there, and he took this photo at Lonesome Lake when George Sykes was filming a lovely little climbing film. Joe Smoot and I climbed while George filmed with his beloved Beaulieu. Dan was part of the entourage. We spent a couple of months in the Cirque that summer, and I haven't seen Dan since.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Joan,
In your Alpinist piece, The Nature of Memory, you mention living in LA (near USC?) while Don was working on his PhD. (I grew up in the San Gabriel Valley during the 60s and 70s, not far from Caltech). Did you ever do any climbing at any of the local Southern California areas like Joshua Tree or Taquitz Rock? Or were you working hard and saving up your free time exclusively for the Palisades?
A Don Jensen passage from your Alpinist article:
"Due to the big work push this fall [on Don's PhD], we have not been able to escape the traffictional field of LA prior to this, and we needed desperately what we got—to see plumes of snow blow off Temple Crag ..."
 "traffictional field of LA" (!) haha. ... and escaping to the Eastern Sierra ... I'm familiar.
Yes we would love to see your pictures Joan! ANY pictures of you and Don in the wild would be great. The shot of the two of you from your alpinist article is outstanding.
Do you by any chance have any of the original packs which Don made for the two of you? Or any old pictures of them in use?
FYI/Pictures: I use http://photobucket.com/ (free), upload photos from my computer directly to that site and paste the "IMG" link from photobucket directly into my posts here on the forum. It's good to resize pictures so they are not wider than 800 to 900 pixels. Photo bucket has a resizing feature. The caveat with photo bucket is you must never rename your folders (once they are created) and never move pictures from one folder to another.
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larryhorton
Trad climber
NM
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Life has my undivided attention at the moment, Tarbuster. I'll get back to you with some answers in a couple of days.
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Fritz
Trad climber
Choss Creek, ID
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I was looking through some old photos of my 1976 Mt. Deborah trip and found this one that shows the East (Jensen) Ridge of Deborah that Don Jensen & David Roberts spent a lot of time & suffering on, without summiting it. Their experiences are detailed in Robert's Book, "Deborah: A Wilderness Narrative."
They had an absolutely awesome adventure, including walking in & out of Deborah from the south.
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Not to be a nit-picker, Fritz, but how could the E and N ridges be directly opposite each other?
signed,
Yer Friendly Local Geographer
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BLR
Trad climber
Lower Eastside
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I rarely post here, much preferring to drop in and quietly drop out (I believe I’m not alone in that practice). I felt compelled, however, to share several links that those posting on this thread might find interesting. Both are about Don Jensen of course, but perhaps they’re just as much about my new friends, Larry Horton and Joan Jensen.
The first link takes you to a piece that appeared on Alpinist's website a few weeks ago, but the article – a reverie, really - was incomplete; first, it lacked a crucial pictorial element and second, it was bereft of Don Jensen’s writing. I amended both in the revised article.
Quickly, a backstory: David Roberts' Deborah: A Wilderness Narrative is deservedly a gemstone in the mountaineering literary canon -- certainly for its spare beauty, but also for its gauzy psychological intrigue as Roberts essentially bares his inner dialogue and demons to his readers. It was a courageous and brilliant piece of writing, especially considering that Roberts was only 23 when he composed it; he does yeoman’s work in sketching his climbing partner, Don Jensen, and yet Don doesn’t get to speak for himself; it wasn’t Don’s book to write, after all. Perhaps Don would have gotten around to writing his memoirs in later years, but as we know, he died at 30. When I read Deborah, I was keen to hear Don’s take on the narrative, and was sad that I never would.
But then a funny thing happened this summer. I had a good reason to look for him, as I explain in the piece. I found Larry, and with Larry's help, I found Joan, and with Joan's help, I found Don.
Up until now, few if any of Don's thoughts about the 1964 Deborah expedition have been published. It turns out that Don’s thoughts, feelings, and insights about that trip and others have been available to the public for nearly 40 years, patiently waiting in a Laramie cold storage for someone to crack open the four boxes containing them. Maybe others found the papers before I did, but I had a reason to share my findings. Now I'm sharing more. Nothing earth shattering… simply a few words to supplement a story arc that some consider the defining narrative of modern mountaineering literature.
At the end of the piece, you will find a link. The link leads to scanned images from the Jensen Collection at the University of Wyoming. On two of those pages you will find two maps. The keen-eyed reader will recognize the locations of several of Don Jensen’s yet-to-be-found caches. As far as anyone knows, they too are still there, waiting to be rediscovered.
http://sustainableplay.com/searching-for-jensen/
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Fritz
Trad climber
Choss Creek, ID
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Reilly. I didn't name those ridge on Deborah, I just report them as named. It appears Deborah had a prior to my arrival: East Ridge, North Ridge, & a South Ridge. I believe I also identified a Northwest Ridge that merges into the North Ridge a little before the summit.
See my post on the subject on Donini's Images from Unique Perspectives thread for more details. http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.php?topic_id=2588663&tn=0
BLR: I followed your link, which brought me to the very nice slide show, but not much new on Deborah, other than a Don Jensen sketch of the East (Jensen) Ridge. Is something not loading on the site? http://sustainableplay.com/searching-for-jensen/
BLR! The site is very slow to load on my Verizon 4g connection. Today I found Don Jensen's journal entry about a crevasse fall. Gripping!
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larryhorton
Trad climber
NM
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Hey, Brad! I, too, am having difficulty accessing the links you referenced.
Went to http://sustainableplay.com/searching-for-jensen/. The article loads and appears for about a second on my browser before completely disappearing. I first visited via the link in the above post, but also tried accessing the article from within Sustainable Play with the same results. I'm on a Mac with current operating system and current version of Safari, but tried Firefox just in case. No change. Something is amiss on your site, I believe.
You mentioned 'several' links. Are some omitted, or are they in the Sustainable Play article?
Thanks for posting this. I look forward to reading it.
UPDATE:
Brad urged me to try Chrome for his link, and indeed it works, although a little shakily. At least I could read the article on the Chrome browser. Thanks, Brad!
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larryhorton
Trad climber
NM
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From Tarbuster, 2 March 2015:
It looks to me like there are three basic iterations of the Jensen pack.
First version, closely following Don Jensen's original I presume, is shown in your picture just above: the red packs. They look very similar to Fritz's green pack. These have the short half-moon shaped zipper right at the top of the pack. (Visible to someone hiking behind a person wearing the Jensen pack). Maybe in Fritz's version, that's an additional zipper to the one I describe in the second version below, so perhaps his has both?
Second (and current version?) is the version where the main opening is right at the seam where the back panel/shoulder straps panel joins the main body. This is a very long half-moon shaped zipper, (fairly well concealed), going all the way from the top of the pack down to the sleeping bag compartment. To me this is the cleanest design of the three. It also had simpler (proprietary) lash points. Laying the pack down flat on the ground and loading it through that large zipper seems the best access for effective packing. What are your thoughts on the way this one loads with respect to the other versions?
Also a Giant Jensen option to the second version?
Third version is the Robinson/Chouinard Ultima Thule, with a more conventional drawstring and lid closure at the top of the pack. This version incorporated integral side pockets. (I've seen this with either single or double lid strapping).
'Would love to hear some feedback on the development of these various iterations Larry!
Your observations are better than my memory, Tarbuster.
Indeed, it appears that early Rivendell Jensen Packs had the upper zipper across the top end of the 'dorsal' side, so to speak. I don't remember why, but all I can do is accept responsibility for a poor choice. I don't recall when I switched to incorporating the zipper where I believe it belongs—in the seam between the dorsal and ventral pieces of the pack. Clearly, as you can see from the image below, Jensen intended that from the beginning. Or at least his oldest drawing suggests that.
On the other hand, as I was mentioning to Joan some time ago, I recall having a pack that was surely made by Don. I have no idea what became of it, but it was made of materials that reflect what was available in the mid-1960s: very light fabric, maybe ripstop, taupe color; white plastic tooth zippers, I believe. And I recall the placement of the upper zipper as striking me as odd, but I don't remember what that placement was.
Joan, if you stumble across this, maybe you can help us out.
In the end, Tarbuster, I believe a zipper closure is most faithful to the spirit of Jensen's objectives, and that it belongs, cleanly, and functionally in that seam—unlike the first versions I made. Later versions incorporated that concept and advertised its advantages in an early Rivendell catalog.
This version predates the proprietary 'barbell' strap attachments I believe you mentioned.
As if all this has a great deal of meaning...
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Mar 11, 2015 - 10:25am PT
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If it's of interest Larry ... then it has meaning!
Thanks much for the input. The Jensen pack is a beautiful example of functional design and nearly an objet d'art.
None of the other manufacturer's renditions were executed so cleanly and aesthetically as the sleekest Rivendell Jensens.
An example of the smoothest Jensen could/should be on display in the Cooper-Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum in New York City.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooper%E2%80%93Hewitt,_Smithsonian_Design_Museum
The Cooper-Hewitt collections consist of decorative and design objects. The museum's original collection focused on architecture, sculpture, painted architecture, decorative arts, woodwork, metalwork, pottery, costume, musical instruments and furniture. ... The museum has a wide variety of objects in its collection, ranging from matchbooks, to shopping bags, porcelain from the Soviet Union, and the papers of graphic designer Tibor Kalman
Cheers
Roy
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