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Chris Jones
Social climber
Glen Ellen, CA
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Mar 25, 2010 - 01:02am PT
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As young and woefully inexperienced climbers in Britain preparing to attempt the Walker Spur of the Grandes Jorasses in 1964, (then quite a big deal), one of our team stumbled across Henry Kendall's AAJ article about the climb and its wonderful topo. As there were no copying machines available to us, we hand-copied the topo and carried it with us up the climb. It was a god-send.
It seems that I was never able to find anything approaching this topo for other climbs in the Alps during that era. If the French had them, as Henry suggests they did, they did not share them over much with us.
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guido
Trad climber
Santa Cruz/New Zealand/South Pacific
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Mar 25, 2010 - 02:15am PT
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Some not so Super Topos from an era when it was mostly oral history, word of mouth, hand me downs and sessions in Camp 4 and the quiet of the Yosemite Lodge. Beg, borrow and probably sometimes steal.
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Clint Cummins
Trad climber
SF Bay area, CA
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Mar 25, 2010 - 03:09am PT
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Cool topos, Joe - thanks for sharing!
Your descent from Middle is down the Spires Gully.
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guido
Trad climber
Santa Cruz/New Zealand/South Pacific
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Mar 25, 2010 - 03:38am PT
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Thanks Clint- topo corrected.
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BooDawg
Social climber
Paradise Island
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Mar 25, 2010 - 06:06am PT
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Just after Don Lauria’s and my 8th ascent of the Nose, I made a detailed topo of the route, having taken notes for it along the way. I made several copies and certainly gave copies to Don, Dennis Hennek and probably Schmitz, Madsen, Bridwell and others. I can’t find a copy among my stuff, at least not yet. Don is probably the best bet for turning up a copy since Dennis shed much of his climbing stuff before moving to Hawaii, but I’ll ask him when we next speak.
I have a couple of samples of hand-drawn topos, both from about ’67.
S. Face of N. Dome
N. Buttress of Middle
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donini
Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
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Mar 25, 2010 - 09:42am PT
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Topos, of one kind or another, have been around since way before the printing press. Believe it or not, the 60's were quite modern, especially where the written word is concerned.
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Eric Beck
Sport climber
Bishop, California
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Mar 25, 2010 - 01:55pm PT
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Joe's pictures remind me that we referred to these as "line drawings". The word "topo" was still in the future.
I had an entire notebook of Yosemite topos, mostly from routes done during 1966. This, I foolishly lent to a person I hardly knew who said he wanted to copy it, and never saw it again. There was some good stuff in it including the North Face of Lower Cathedral Rock, the last ascent.
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Nate D
climber
San Francisco
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Mar 25, 2010 - 04:06pm PT
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Great topos, guido and BooDawg. Possibly of value to Ken and the Yosemite Climbing museum?
chim-
get Adobe photoshop are illustrator. Probably more basic and cheaper software out there though.
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TKingsbury
Trad climber
MT
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digging all the old topos!
here's some scans from a 1935 brochure I picked up awhile back...
y'all have other old topos to add to this thread?
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k-man
Gym climber
SCruz
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Guido! Brilliant!!
No wonder this used to be a multi-day climb:
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TKingsbury
Trad climber
MT
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a not-so-old topo, drawn by the brotherman...
BTW, is there a topo appreciation thread out there?
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Buju
Big Wall climber
the range of light
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These are incredible! Please keep 'em coming!
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klk
Trad climber
cali
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interesting to notice that the 1934 topo looks a bit like the style of the 1910 huntington ravine topo.
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TKingsbury
Trad climber
MT
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klk, is there an image of that topo floating around somewhere on the net?
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klk
Trad climber
cali
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i don't have one. but you can get the book used in paperback, and it's probably one of the best histories of climbing in north america out there.
one you want for the shelf anyway, even if yr keeping the shelf short.
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TKingsbury
Trad climber
MT
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Right on...now I'm confused about what to exactly look for...
Title? link?
Thanks!
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Nate D
climber
San Francisco
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cool drawn topo, TK. Love to see topos with an artful approach.
I don't recall a topo appreciation thread, although there should be one...
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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reproduced in Yankee Rock and Ice by Laura and Guy Waterman
drawn by George Flagg
Found researching climbing in the Mt. Washington area...
"Leafing through the 1910 edition, our eyes were suddenly arrested by the page headed "Huntingon Ravine, Aug. 20, 1910, Party: Geo. Flagg--Mr. Dennis--Mayo Tollman--Paul Bradley."... There followed to our wonder and joy, a series of eight drawings depicting an ascent of Pinnacle--eighteen years before the Underhill-Allis climb."
"In place of the sophisticated British classification of 'Difficult,' 'Severe,' and 'Extreme' or the modern U.S. numerical gradings (5.0 to 5.10 and beyond), the 1910 cartoonist marked crux moves as 'bad'--and one as 'very bad.'..."
"But the revelation was that the route details were explicitly delineated. We quickly realized that here was all the evidence required to trace the 1910 ascent with far better assurance than most purely written accounts of early climbs."
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SuperTopo on the Web
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Let us know!