Shawangunks - Cornerstone of Eastern Traditional Climbing

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Geno

Trad climber
Reston, VA
Nov 5, 2008 - 05:08am PT

Al,

Thanks much for the eloquent summary of Jim McCarthy's climbing career. He was and is a leader in every way. As you said, besides his accomplishments in climbing, he also had a very successful professional life as a trial lawyer in New York. He was a great example to all of us of how to balance a career with climbing. Jim was a significant mentor to several generations of Gunks climbers. And Jim is a giver. He is always willing to help a friend (or a friend of a friend). He is still very active in the American Alpine Club giving his time. He has committed his life to climbing.

I wish I had a few pictures of Jim McCarthy from the 1950s and 60s. Here is one I like from the late 1970s showing a very fit McCarthy in the Sawtooths. From left to right:
John Ross, Unkown, Laura McCarthy and Jim McCarthy:

Geno

Trad climber
Reston, VA
Nov 5, 2008 - 05:22am PT
Art Gran authored a Climbing Guide in 1964. It was the first guide book for the Shawangunks. Imagine climbing in the 1950s and early 1960s at this rather large climbing area and the names and descriptions of climbs were passed around mostly through word of mouth. There were likely some notebooks that were passed back and forth among Appalacian Mountain Club and college mountaineering club members. But in those early days, being able to find your way around and to lead climb in the Gunks must have been a big deal indeed.

Art Gran was the first mentor to the CCOC climbers (Claude Suhl, Roman Sadowy, Pete Geiser, and Al DeMaria). He had an important influence on the group and early on Art helped them buck prevailing AMC certification requirements. Before I continue with Claude's manuscript, I thought I'd insert a couple more paragraphs from Art Gran's, A Climber's Guide to the Shawangunks, Published by the American Alpine Club, 1964, pp 18.

"When I started climbing in the Shawangunks, the AMC had reached the high point of its training program by the introduction of qualified seconds training. At this time, the AMC would have sixty people registered on a weekend, the colleges would have about eight and there would be three independents. These figures soon rose to 100 AMC, fifteen college and four independents. Although I had experience, I started from the bottom working my way up the scale with the Club. However, the Club did not have enough leaders who were willing to participate in its elaborate training program, the whole thing was starting to bog down, and my progress was so slow that I decided to come up in the late winter on my own. I first came with Lester Germer and later with my new friend, Howard Friedman. Although I continued on the Club's program and eventually became an unlimited leader (which meant I could pass other people as leaders for the Club).

In 1957 I started bringing up a number of beginners from the City College Outdoor Club. When we climbed together, we did not do so as part of the AMC trip; this more or less started the growth of the independent movement, and it soon mushroomed to gigantic proportions. The original group, known as “The Vulgarians,” did not discourage outsiders from participating, but welcomed anyone who could take it. Thus, the independent climbers eventually became the largest single group in the area, which very much changed the entire atmosphere.”

Here is a picture of Art Gran from Shawangunk Rock Climbing, Richard Dumais, Chockstone Press, Denver, CO, 1985, page 54



The Gran guide published in 1964:

Geno

Trad climber
Reston, VA
Nov 5, 2008 - 06:00am PT
The Vulgarians are legendary for more than just their climbing prowess. They were committed to having fun at night. From the accounts shared with us by the members of the Vulgarian Panel at Rock and Snow last month, most evenings at the 'Wickie Wackie' Campsite ended in the wee morning hours. The Vulgarians also had a fascination with cars and driving them fast. Here is another account from Claude Suhl's material:

"The Vulgarian Chronicles jugernaught [continued]

[Summer 1959]

Another element that got introduced here was night time "tower climbing". The most exciting tower climbing was at Minnewaska as this would involve running the gate (which was generally unmanned at night) with a car containing the climbing party. The party would be dropped off in the general vicinity of Minnewaska water tower and then the driver would speed back down the mountain before the guards could get themselves organized. Meanwhile the climbing party, often with a sixpack or two as supplies, would whisk themselves up the metal ladder of the tower.

Typically this could all be done with little fear of detection as Minnewaska and Mohonk had fallen on hard times and there were very few guests, particularly at Minnewaska. The first couple of times this was done, simply getting up and out undetected was satisfying enough. However after a while it began to seem that being completely undetected was taking much of the sport out the venture. Consequently after everyone was on the catwalk at the top of the tower it would become irresistible not to make some sort of noise that would bring out the gendarmes. This produced even better entertainment as from the ground it was quite difficult to tell where these strange seemingly inhuman sounds were coming from. The result was that the watchers on the tower got to see the confused wandering lights of the guards futilely looking for someone or something on the ground. It seemed to beggar the imagination that these night noises might be coming from the top of the tower, but they were.

Tower climbing was becoming a regular source of nightime fun until one fine night one of guards did figure out from whence the noise came and lo and behold found a bunch of strange people hanging out on the top of the water tower. This might have had something to do with the presence of Gary Hemming among the tower party. Hemming liked to keep his life as exciting as possible and as I recall was in particularly fine fettle that night. When the tower climbers heard that the state police had been called, it was decided that now was a good time to be leaving. Despite the kind invitation extended by the Minnewaska guards to hang with them until the police arrived, the climbing party of some 7 or 8 semi-drunken individuals figured that the cops weren't going to see all the humor in the situation that they did and so they bid a fond adieu to the tower guardians. Actually it wasn't too fond as the carbinieri made some minor physical attempts to detain the miscreants.

A rapid descent of the mountain now seemed to be in order. There was also the matter of the pickup car as no one wanted to walk the 4 or 5 miles back to Wickie-Wackie. The pick-up car would be cruising around looking for us within the next 20 to 30 minutes. To further add to the fun, the tower guardians had gotten into their guard-mobile and taken off after the tower climbing party. This seemed to make the hotel access road a poor descent choice. So it was into the woods for some night time bush wacking. Eventually the party reached the highway, now all that they had to do was somehow remain undetected by their pursuers, who by this time included the state police, and hail the pick-up car whose driver of course had no knowledge of how entertaining the evening had become.

As walking along the highway was no longer an option due to the presence of both the Statz Polizei and the Minnewaska gendarmes, it was decided to take to the woods. This seemed to be working out alright as the ascent party managed to elude the searchers initial passes along the road. Then salvation suddenly appeared imminent with the arrival of the pick up vehicle. There was a quick dash from the bush to the road to hail the car and then a quick dash back into the woods when the law suddenly appeared, still cruising to locate the miscreants. The stopped pick up car was a dead giveaway of course. And while the ascent party had made it back to the woody shelter, they hadn't made it very far back. So that when the searchers started sweeping the woods with search lights, the jig was up despite some attempts by one or two of party members to try and convince the investigators that we were just fagged out party goers resting innocently in the woods on the way home. The affair actually ended fairly amicably, the driver of the get away car who was of course unlicensed, got a ticket and everyone else got some sort of warning. Then on the other hand what was a State Cop going to do with eight or nine guys that he found in the woods at one o-clock in the morning? Tower? What tower?"
Steve Grossman

Trad climber
Seattle, WA
Topic Author's Reply - Nov 5, 2008 - 11:16am PT
This is THE STUFF!!!!! Thanks for posting it, Geno. I was going to post the material from Chris Jones Climbing in North America on the Vulgarians but I have been buried lately. This is the history that makes the ST a magical place and Duke Geno has the wizard's touch! Awesome work everyone! I can't wait to soak it all in!
jstan

climber
Nov 5, 2008 - 11:34am PT
The climbing environment in an area can be created or changed in an instant. One
moment that helped form my perception of the Gunks was a comment by a climbing
lawyer, whom I will not name, just after winning a tort case.

He said, "Once more, justice has been defeated."
Alan Rubin

climber
Amherst,MA.
Nov 5, 2008 - 01:02pm PT
I feel like I'm doing a history tag-team with Geno and Rich G., but it is worth supplementing the info Geno posted on Art Gran. Gran was another very significant Gunks character during the 50s and 60s, but always seemed to be something of an "also-ran" to more famous contemporaries. He was very much a stereotypical New Yorker--complete with heavy accent and a pushy perhaps somewhat abrasive personality. He established numerous new routes in the Gunks, many of them of considerable difficulty and quality but not quite at the same level as those being established by McCarthy and, later, Williams.Like most climbers of that era Gran still viewed the Gunks as training for the "real mountains", and focused considerable energy into establishing new routes in mountain environments. He was the driving force in the first ascent of the VMC Direct on Cannon Mountain in New Hampshire (the first "big-wall" route in the east), and also made significant climbs in the west and in Canada. Routes such as the North Face of Monolith in the Wind Rivers, the East Face of Bugaboo Spire, and the West Face of Mt. Brussels and his route (Mt. Geike?)in the Ramparts, both in the Canadian Rockies, were early examples of difficult technical climbs in alpine environments, but as in the Gunks, these routes were unfortunately overshadowed by those established during the same time period by contemporaries such as Becky and Chouinard.What is particularly interesting about Gran's mountain routes is that he established most of them with various Vulgarian partners (particularly the youthful John Hudson, sadly lost much too young in the Andes), basically weekend climbers from New York climbing during vacations from work and school, in contrast to his 'rivals" who were then virtually full-time climbers living within easy reach of the mountains. Gran had an interesting relationship with the Vulgarians, as he was to some extent one of their early mentors but was also often the butt of their jokes(find,if you can, some of Joe Kelsey's classic satires--accident reports, Gunks guide, Vulgarian Digest--for examples of this). Perhaps Gran's most significant accomplishment, as Geno stated, was the first published guidebook to the Gunks. This slim red book is now a collector's item, full of idiosyncratic writing, poor puns, transparently disguised Vulgarian route names (the book was published by the American Alpine Club, so proper decorum had to be observed), as well as essential information for the onslaught of new climbers who arrived at the cliffs in the mid-60s. Gran abruptly dropped out of the climbing scene in the late 60s or early 70s, rumor had it that he became the guru of a hippy commune someplace in the Catskills. Someone I spoke to at the Reunion, I think it was Barb Devine, reported running into Gran in a supermarket a number of years ago, and that he reported that he was doing carpentry at that time. I'd love to hear if anyone has more up-to-date information. He surely deserves more recognition by the climbing-community at large than he has received to date.
Don Lauria

Trad climber
Bishop, CA
Nov 5, 2008 - 05:48pm PT
Yes, Art Gran took his share of kidding about his famous descriptions of “hard” moves on his latest climbs. Always with animation – and total re-enactment , sans rock.

I first met Art at Stoney Point in Southern California - a bright Sunday afternoon with a large Sierra Club contingent in attendance. I was there with Jack Hansen (the “original Vulgarian”) and Yvon Chouinard.

We were bouldering at Boulder #2 and Gran and I had just climbed a steep route on the west side. We dropped the rope to Yvon and he tied in. For whatever reason (it was a very nice day), Yvon was wearing a full length heavy wool overcoat – a thrift store bargain. It was buttoned closed from bottom to top. When he signaled that he was ready to climb, Gran whispered to me, “Grab the rope. Let’s pull him up.” So, the second Yvon yelled, “Climbing”, the two of us hauled. In a matter of seconds Chouinard was on top gasping for breath and laughing nervously. He literally had not used any of his extremities in the ascent. His overcoat had spared his body from abrasion, but in the dynamic contact with the sandstone the coat had lost all of its buttons.

Gran was in stitches. Yvon had stopped his nervous chuckling. He was untying and seriously inspecting his damaged coat. I quickly explained that it was all Gran’s idea – sorry about the buttons, Yvon. Chouinard was no longer amused, but Art, still laughing uncontrollably, had dropped to his knees and began rolling around the top of the boulder. Yvon and I left Art with his rope and downclimbed to the road.

As we trudged toward our next objective, Chouinard was mumbling and staring down at the front of his coat, feeling the texture of the abraded material. Glancing back at Boulder #2 - Art was still on top coiling the rope and still laughing. Chouinard looked back and mumbled something about hyenas and burros – or was it jackasses?
jstan

climber
Nov 5, 2008 - 07:23pm PT
Probably a prank that, in the long term, had unintended consequences.
TradIsGood

Chalkless climber
the Gunks end of the country
Nov 5, 2008 - 07:29pm PT
Don, that is too funny!
Alan Rubin

climber
Amherst,MA.
Nov 6, 2008 - 09:21am PT
I'd described Gran's personality as "somewhat abrasive", Don's story shows that it was literally so!!!!!
Geno

Trad climber
Reston, VA
Nov 9, 2008 - 06:46am PT
Here is a contribution from Claude Suhl on Art Gran:


"As Al DeMaria stated @ R&S [Rock and Snow Panel Discussion on 17 Oct 08], Art was instrumental and our fearless leader and mentor- not only because he had a car but because he really relished and honored that role.
In fact he used to call us his "boys" - like as if he was Jesse James and we were his "boys" - his gang. He liked being referred to as "dad" - in what was then a prevalent kind of Jazz hip formalism.
There existed in those times a bunch from Pittsburgh - the Pittsburgh climbers aka "Gebhardt and his boys". One of them was a girl (actually a woman who was an MD - I think - Kay was her name) who was quite possibly the most adept climber of them. The "boys" from Pittsburgh, an explosive and competent bunch, whom we frequently met at Seneca Rocks were a unique and rowdy clan who favored using dynamite in their 4th of July celebrations! Now that was a real treat - dear to my heart - but that is another story for some other time.

I still, to this day , when faced with some fearful consternation in the midst of a climb will find some of his [Gran’s] sound byte admonitions running through my mind - such as "always have at least 3 points of support" or "the leader never falls " or others that are more appropriate and effective, and not passe - even to this day and that are not easily verbalized but are more of an attitude that is always valid.
My first western trip and also that of Roman, and Pete Geiser was in Art's light-green and white Rocket 88 Oldsmobile with western veterans Art and Dave Craft.
No Interstates yet - we switched off driving - gear filled part of the back seat and all of the trunk - three sat abreast up front -one of the two in the back had to sit on the floor part of the time. As we Rocketed down two lane empty highways towards the setting sun at 85 mph we could actually observe the gas gauge needle dropping!
7 miles to the gallon. The tank was big AND the car felt like a tank - but high speed. As each 'newbie' took the wheel a tirade of harassment, directions to follow and 'advice' was leveled by those still able to stay awake. After a brief stop to repair some minor thing in a sleepy South Dakota town , where we waited and rested in the parking lot of a garage until it opened at 8AM - we headed out to the prairie. We were very tired all so decided to pull off the road and catch an hour or two of sleep. As we spilled out of the car and tossed our sleeping bags on the edge of an infinite grassland some local cops pulled up in their black and white. They rolled down the window and slowly, in the manner of the west, prepared to elicit some signals from us that might aid their comprehension-or perhaps to inquire were we OK.
Art quickly moved into his position as diplomat, negotiator and maker of all things well:
he walked over to the cop car and earnestly petitioned in his Brooklyn accent "hey, is it alright if we sleep on YOUR LAWN ?".

He had a need to inflate or promote himself when in the presence of others whom I guess he felt the need to impress such that he was a setup fall guy for all kinds of mockery BUT whenever anyone actually climbed with him, particularly if it became serious , Art was just the greatest - he was right there - proving himself in a low key manner with his actions and being self effacingly exuberant when things went well - and always super supportive of anyone having difficulty keeping up with him.
Art and I once tackled the North Ridge of the Grand Teton { I now refer to this route as the North Ridge of THE GRAN } We got caught in a freezing sleeze storm that coated the rock with a thin layer of frozen snow and ice - right at the crux-which is just a few hundred feet from the top. He lead up comfortably and competently - I managed to follow over a bulging chockstone in a big chimney by hanging on some old pins - the pins had sharp burrs from many eons of ball peen hammering (Art was a tool and die maker machinist mechanical engineer ). The burrs cut my hands and blood was freezing to the rocks. Frozen hands stop bleeding real quickly and we groveled on happily to the summit and down.
Later when we exhorted to climbing ranger Pete Sinclair he said "you had a REAL alpine adventure, eh?". Yeah, we were proud.

Eventually , I think, Art felt ostracized and drifted away from climbing concurrently with those feelings. He started an ultimately very successful high end contracting company.
He lives and has lived for many years on Ashokan Road in the town of Olive Bridge or Marbletown, within 10 miles of the Gunks. I frequently ride my bike past his house. I last saw him and spoke to him perhaps 15 years ago. If he re-emerged now, I am sure he would find himself very comfortable with all of his old acquaintances but then again- I don't know."

Claude Suhl with Art Gran in the Bugaboos, 1959. [Suhl collection]

Photo as the boys approached the Tetons in 1960.

Geno

Trad climber
Reston, VA
Nov 9, 2008 - 07:54am PT
Here is another email from Claude that adds some color to the City College Outing Club (proto Vulgarians) first forays to West Virginia in 1958:

"last night Pete Geiser called , we are going over to one of his famous dinners at his New Paltz house tonight- he is here from Boulder.
I told him about those West Va pictures that look like a movie from the '30s.
Turns out Pete recalls that we were with that car in a WVa junkyard because:
as we started our trip in NYC and began to drive to various neighborhoods and accumulate our personnel, at one stop we all jumped out the door to greet the latest person being picked up. Unfortunately, Horst, the driver and car owner , did not realize the doors were open. (In those days cars did not have those dashboard lights indicating such things) He commenced to backup AND
he tore one of the doors OFF !!!!!!
So we drove to WesT VA , I guess with the door tied on with clothes line or something.
After Pete reminded me of this factor , I began to reformulate an image of us driving around WVa with a dark dusty blue car with one prominent light TAN door."

CCOC members (Suhl, Horst, Sadowy, DeMaria) looking for a new door in WV in 1958 [Suhl Collection].

Making a deal with the Man at the Junkyard [Suhl collection].
neebee

Social climber
calif/texas
Nov 9, 2008 - 08:18am PT
hey there geno... say, i thought this was a post with lots of pics, which it may well be--and that being wonderful, in itself... but


i started at the back this time, and found these great shares you just did... (the article on art, first off, and the rest)...

i really appreciate hearing stuff on climbers of the past, as they are such inspirations and mentors, the likes of which we will not see again---being that climbing was not as common then, or perhaps accepted? and yet, they pressed onward, going by their heart, and fed many, in the process... as with any great mentor, they did HAVE to... it was just part of their passion, and who they were...
Geno

Trad climber
Reston, VA
Nov 9, 2008 - 08:21am PT
Claude Suhl pens his take on The Vulgarians:


"The Vulgarians, even prior to naming ourselves in New York street gang fashion [ name supplied by Jack Hansen - now deceased who brought Dick Williams up to the Gunks first in 1957 and drove a Triumph and moved to California in the late 60's]

the vulgarians were ULTRA-ALL-INCLUSIVE !!! our stated and enacted mission was to provide a safe haven for all and any Fraternity(or Sorority) rejects in particular-
although one could also be welcome if one had such affiliations [for example succesful lawyer McCarthy of Princeton - but McCarthy publically rejected membership in a Princeton eating club because a good friend of his who was Jewish was denied membership. Apparently at Princeton these "eating clubs" - I believe that is what they were called - were much more important than frats at other schools because if you didn't belong you had to cook your own food on a candle lantern in your dorm I guess] so we had nerdiest geeks like Bill Goldner from RPI and Yonkers, charismatic local natural baseball athlete descended from the former producer of the Hudson Valley's best apples - Dave Craft, local Gardiner lady Lynn Tosti , many visitors from Britain-Mike and Judy Yeats, Nick Pott,....- we had grade school dropouts - a person who earned his PhD in math from MIT before he was 21 [Jim Geiser]- future multi-millionaires and guy who skied with Jean-Claude Killy and sold a bikini to Joan Baez' sister from his North Face store in north Beach, CA- Doug Tompkins,
too many eternal dirt bags to count - many veterans of scarfing food from the Yosemite Lodge cafeteria as a way of life and sustenance- Army veterans like Ralph Worsfold- West Point grad Army drop-outs like Garry Garret- communist sympathizers, civil rights activists, anti-Vietnam war protesters who after burning all their draft cards tried to lead a brigade to burn down a draft board, an arch traditional conservative who was an MIT Civil Engineer then Lawyer-Bill Ryan( although he originally was a very curious anti-Vulgarian - we co-opted him eventually I think he would confess) ...................................

to earn membership one merely had to be able to survive in the environment - if you kept coming back, why you were still there-thus you were one of us

the Vulgarians were and still are Egalitarians [i hope] - egalitarians with dirt bag roots [or dirt bag wannabe rub off patina] and a grubby grumpy edge
who had a lot of fun and have made a commitment to keep it up, eh? [perhaps some having had occasional lapses into seriosity and conformity]

why , Vulgarians pioneered stone UN-washed jeans
with holes in the ass and knees
way before Ralph Lauren was born
Vulgarians prowled the lower east side streets in big puffy orange down jackets beneath the towering walls of the steaming, huffing and puffing ConEdison powerplant on east 14th street
before Vulgarian protoge Doug Tompkins pioneered the North Face and now wealthy ghetto chic -lettes board the subways in their prominently North Face labelled down accoutrements.

some - like Bill Goldner and much later Don Whillans - tried to extend the Ultra-All -Inclusive aspect to cadging FREE drinks. At the recent dinner at the Mountain Brauhaus, Joe Kelsey at our table was having a little problem with the check, because of some mix up about that Mark Robinson had payed for him but from another table - joe earnestly stated that "hey, I'll just pay for it again - I don't want to be a Bill Goldner" - it all worked out fine BUT note the Goldner reference - Goldner's fame survives - he has a bill paying avoidance mechanism named after him with people still using this appellation to describe such behavior to this day.
Now Whillans is a whole other order of magnitude - he liked to be a bar fighter- he would face people down and gruffly insist they buy him beers - BUT Dave Craft - master of corrective coercion- stood Whillans down - [so did Gerd Thuestad, while naked, about some wool socks - but you will have to ask Burt about that story]-
anyway Whillans had to buy his share of beer - at least when craft was around.

Quite frequently besides night gatherings there were collective engagements at the base of climbs - lots of harrassment was manifested at times - whereby as someone was leading - particularly if they were starting to have trouble - those on the ground might start chanting and beating their piton hammers on the rocks in unison - it was frequently not a very quiet time. But there was also often a rope of two or three going off to just do a climb but , as you mentioned recently, there was always a huge gathering at the Uberfall to come back to.

..... what does it all mean?
I dunno - but it sure was fun"

VMC Gathering in the 1960s [Suhl Collection]

VMC at Pocomoonshine. Left to Right: Claude Suhl, John Weichsel, Dick Williams, Al DeMaria, Brian Carey, and Roman Sadowy. [Suhl Collection]
neebee

Social climber
calif/texas
Nov 9, 2008 - 08:21am PT
hey there geno.. say, as to one of your share bits here:
"Art Gran authored a Climbing Guide in 1964. It was the first guide book for the Shawangunks. Imagine climbing in the 1950s and early 1960s at this rather large climbing area and the names and descriptions of climbs were passed around mostly through word of mouth. There were likely some notebooks that were passed back and forth among Appalacian Mountain Club and college mountaineering club members. But in those early days, being able to find your way around and to lead climb in the Gunks must have been a big deal indeed."

i just learned some more... will come back and do far more reading, when i can...

god bless to all, thanks for all the neat shares...
Geno

Trad climber
Reston, VA
Nov 9, 2008 - 08:38am PT
Neebee,

As always, you appreciate the guiding spirit and wisdom of those who came first. These mentors like Kraus, Gran, and McCarthy led the way. There's a lot of stories that must be shared around the camp fire while they still can be. Someone may make sense out of it all someday, but for now they should be told.

I love what you write on ST. God bless you too Neebee.

Geno
MH2

climber
Nov 9, 2008 - 01:27pm PT


hossjulia

Trad climber
Eastside
Nov 9, 2008 - 01:48pm PT
I scanned through this and saw no mention of Dick Shockley (sr.)
can anyone tell us of his role in the Gunks scene, if at all.
I worked for Paul Ramer for a bit in the 90's. He came from the east and did some climbing there. Unless my memory is way off, he indicated he was part of the Vulgarians, probably in the mid to late 60's. By the time I knew him, he had quit climbing, focusing on his ski gear and family.
Anyway, does anyone have any good stories about Shockley's Lunge?

If I missed it in this thread, I'll look harder, thanks.
jstan

climber
Nov 9, 2008 - 04:59pm PT
My apologies: HJ's question about Bill Shockley somehow got transposed to a question about Lester Germer in my mind. That shows how huge an effect Lester had on us. Since my post is out of context I deleted it. But yes, I had been climbing with Goldstone that morning and he was there on the ground also.

I think our loss has helped us to value the life we have even more.

Each day is a gift.
MH2

climber
Nov 9, 2008 - 09:39pm PT
"MH2, Nice old photo of climber on CCK. There is no caption of who it is? If the climber is MH2 I will take a wild guess at Matt Hale? If Matt took the photo my second guess is Dave Roberts."

The climb is Moonlight. The year is 1969. The photographer is Mike Warburton.

The climber was once mistaken for John Dill at an AAC affair in Manhattan, a talk by Doug Scott and Ken Wilson.

The climber also once house-sat for a Vassar Brothers Hosp ob-gyn whose wife remembered climbing with Roman Sadowy and he, the climber, drove a gravel road one day and the next morning entered the MD's garage to a smell of gasoline and discovered that the gas tank of his car had acquired a small hole. Rather than make McCarthy's blow-up look minor, the climber carefully hoisted the garage door and rolled his car out on to the driveway to await the dissipation of the spill.

I wonder why I never got an answer to those letters addressed to: Rich Perch, tent?

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