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WBraun
climber
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Thanks for the update Tim.
I'm doing good.
I work on fleet vehicles here .....
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Bushman
Social climber
Elk Grove, CA
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 6, 2014 - 10:43am PT
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Studly,
Tell Jim Opdyke I said hi and hope he's doing well.
Thanks.
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limpingcrab
Trad climber
the middle of CA
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I used to curse Tobin because when I was learning to climb on the central coast I accidentally ended up on one of his routes and scared the poop out of myself!
I read about him after that and came to greatly admire who he was. Climbing lost someone special for sure.
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hashbro
Trad climber
Mental Physics........
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anyone who has ever clipped the anchors on the Edge (at Taquitz) understands a little bit about Tobin......
thanks for the post Dibbs
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Brock Wagstaff
Trad climber
Larkspur
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Met Tobin in Chamonix in the summer of 1977. Lots of good American climbers there then including Rick A, Muggs, Steve Shea, Dick Jackson, and Dave Roberts, to name a few. Lots of climbing and lots of down time playing chess in the Bar Nat. One of the shops sold a massive ice cream sculpture called "The Tunnel". It was meant to feed 4 - 5 people but on a whim we offered to pay for it if anyone could eat the whole thing. Tobin took the bet and polished it off easily in one sitting. Rumor had it that he was smuggling bibles into Bulgaria, but who knows. He was a special person and an amazing climber!
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Rick A
climber
Boulder, Colorado
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Tim,
Greatly enjoyed your poem since it expressed well some of my same thoughts about Tobin. I quite often wonder what he would be like now, but no doubt the grin and his appetite for life (and ice cream) would not have changed. I am sure he would have a family and would be a doting father and even grandfather by now.
Great to see you here on ST and hope you can tell some of your own climbing stories. You were an accomplished climber in your own right, back in those days.
Rick
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Charlie D.
Trad climber
Western Slope, Tahoe Sierra
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Thanks for the post Tim, great poem and great quote (they call it a creative memory):
I'll have to be careful here,
my memory's not half as good as my imagination. I am so very sorry you lost your brother, our community still weeps. Best to you and your family.
Charlie D.
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Avery
climber
NZ
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In August 1979, Tobin Sorenson teamed up with English rock climber John Allen for a winter ascent of the Shelia Face of Mt Cook (NZ's highest peak)
What follows is John Allen's account of the climb.
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Todd Eastman
climber
Bellingham, WA
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I was fortunate to meet Tobin late in the summer of 1977 in Chamonix. I had done some fine routes with my friend Jack Hunt and as Jack planned on heading off to explore Europe I was at loose ends about what the next adventure might be. Jack and I had met Tobin and discussed the stuff we had been doing while he calmly described the massive walls he had been climbing.
Tobin and I decided to do a climb that had been suggested to me by Rob Taylor and to Tobin by Chouinard. It was on the Col du Requin and was an unclimbed ice route. We took the train to the Monteveres (sp?) station and scrambled up to the hut. Being late-September the hut was empty and dark with the shutters latched for the winter. We talked and talked over food and discussed things great and small with climbing not being discussed as everything else was so much more interesting.
We got up the next morning tromped up this route, had a great time, and the only issue came up on the descent with a nasty jammed rope on the rappels off the backside. As we yanked, tugged, and otherwise stretched the rope, it became evident that other means would need to be considered. Tobin without a moments hesitation, jugged up the rope that was fixed to, well, whatever it was caught in. There was a certain acceptance of some form of possible outcome that Tobin was clearly more comfortable with than I was. I had never seen such faith(?) played out in the mountains. We finished the descent and returned to the hut.
Before descending to the train, Tobin suggested a brief "service" in the darkened hut. This seemed an entirely fitting way to rejoice in our adventure, the settings, and life itself; even to me, an agnostic. To me it was similar to the kinship shared around a campfire at Seneca or over a pizza at Chez Joey's in New Paltz after a successful day of climbing. We shared the joy of a shared adventure in slightly different ways.
Tobin's faith was the most powerful of any I had seen to that point or ever since. What it displayed was a deep personal confidence with no need to project that belief at me. That left a huge impression on me that lasts to this day; the power of things not spoken.
We descended to the train or hiked down... I can't remember, but upon getting back to town, Tobin began figuring out his plans for going up on the Harlin Route on the Eiger with Alex. I was was really happy for their effort and success when I heard later.
I learned of Tobin's accident at the Boulder Mountaineer while on a road trip in the fall of 1980, it hurt. I had hardly spent any time with Tobin, but his perspective of balancing climbing with other elements of interest still seem valid, and perhaps more so as I get older.
Best to Tobin's clan and extended clan!
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
mammoth lakes ca
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Todd E...You're a climber too , eh ?
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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It's natural that we would think of Tobin almost purely in terms of his climbing accomplishments, but there were somewhere between 100 and 250 people at his standing room only funeral and maybe a dozen or so climbers standing in the back.
He had a powerful influence that went far beyond this crowd.
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dee ee
Mountain climber
citizen of planet Earth
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Oct 11, 2014 - 08:57am PT
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Tim, your poem is great!
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Avery
climber
NZ
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Oct 11, 2014 - 10:21pm PT
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Tobin Sorenson on the Eiger Direct, October, 1977.
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