Daryl Hatten

Moments later the haul bags came plummeting out from under the overhang, tethered to nothing at all

Similar sense of humor by all accounts.

Daryl's memorial was held atop the Chief on a windy, cold September day a few years ago. Daryl died when he fell from a large arbutus tree; he had been offered some cash to rescue a cat. Daryl was 49 when he died.
Daryl's life was hard. Very hard. It was not a life anybody would willingly desire.
He did indeed learn how to climb in jail - at Haney Correctional just east of Vancouver. A "hoods-in-the-woods" type program. Daryl was heroin addicted at age 15. That might have been why he was "snatching purses". But I never heard that story. It was junk that got him landed in jail at such a young age. HE said he hated jail & did not ever want to go back.
He took to climbing like a fish to water and did some very hard walls early on. He, along with three others, did the 2nd ascent of the P.O. Wall. He was "asked to leave America" around 1979 and not return for seven years. He did indeed pass as "Doug Fir" or "Jack Pine" ..the funniest was "Man Zanita"...but , eventually the Yanx caught up with him and he was sent north of 49. It was very very hard on him to be not allowed back to Yosemite.
He did some major hard walls in Squamish. He was also an excellent free climber. Unfortunately his addictions devastated his life & he was largely out of climbing by the mid-80's.
Daryl was THE inspiration for my generation of Squamish climbers. ( we followed Sutton&Burton & Gordie Smaill & crew ). Daryl's sayings : "beer-loads, pipe-loads, any kinda loads at all" among others.....and his memorable trip to Yosemite that ended at Stoney Ck ( 2 km S of where we were all camped ) with gear & campin' equipment scattered across Hwy99 epitomised the wild and hard life that .......none of us wanted to or could have emulated.....but that he really had not much of a choice with.
As we scattered his ashes into the winds that blunt and bitter day, we remembered that most of us had barely expected Daryl to reach 30 nevermind 49. We passed the "talking stick" ( a battered Chouinard hammer that had belonged to Daryl with notches on the shaft for the grade VI's he'd done ) and we told stories to each other ( there were about 35 of us ). Took some pix and wept for the lost life of a gifted athlete who really wasnt given much of a chance to achieve the greatness that , in a different set of life circumstances, would have been his to enjoy.