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Don Lauria
Trad climber
Bishop, CA
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May 19, 2009 - 11:41am PT
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By the way, Dick Dorworth wrote a lengthy article on Pratt: Glimpses of Pratt - A Remembrance. We published it at the same time as Amy's photo.
It's long, but maybe I'll dig it out and post it here.
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Don Lauria
Trad climber
Bishop, CA
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May 19, 2009 - 12:28pm PT
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GLIMPSES OF PRATT: a remembrance
by Dick Dorworth.
THAILAND 2000
Chuck Pratt laid down and went to sleep and never woke up. It is impossible for any of us to know what it is to die until we do, and none of us will ever experience another man’s death, but from this side of things Pratt’s doesn’t sound so bad. He made even that final, most difficult move of life with great personal satisfaction and what seemed an effortless grace and a quiet mystery that touched everyone who knew him. Three days before he died he wrote
these words to a friend: "I haven’t felt this happy since I got out of the army 40 years ago…..Did you know a man can die of pleasure overload?" As I wrote via e mail to one of Chuck’s friends a couple of days after he died: The thing we need to ponder is this: What was Chuck dreaming when he checked out?
YOSEMITE 1968-1974
By the time I arrived in Yosemite in 1968 as a novice climber, Chuck was an established master of big wall and hard technical rock climbing, regarded by cognoscenti with a respect verging on reverence. I watched him climb but did not know enough to realize what I was seeing. He free climbed like a magician, a man born to vertical stone, comfortable where others struggled. There was another reason Chuck’s pains were so difficult to perceive, a reason many in the climbing world completely overlooked when thinking about, relating to and (alas) judging Chuck Pratt. It was most aptly summed up by Joe McKeown who observed after Chuck’s death that he was "Certainly the most humble and creative of the old gang." He was also deeply intelligent, wildly talented and inherently shy.
It was Pratt who first strung a rope between trees in Camp 4 and walked it to practice balance. And Pratt rode a unicycle and juggled to hone coordination and concentration, balance and gracefulness. He made a discipline and game of finesse as John Bachar and other later Yosemite climbers would do with power and endurance. And he was one of the few climbers, then or now, with the patience and concentration to detail to climb 5.2 with the same craft and precise attention with which he climbed 5.10 or 5.11. Such care and respect, verging on reverence, for what he was doing, set Chuck apart from his contemporaries in more ways than in the complex convergence of qualities, skills
and deeds that constitute a climbing reputation.
And he wasn’t fooled for a second by those old charlatans, fortune, fame, worldly ambition or tempted by the psychic violence that is the path of upwardly mobile social respectability. Above all, Chuck Pratt was his own man. He is quoted as having said in 1965: " I feel that my enemy is anyone who would, given the power to do so, restrict individual liberty, and this includes all officials, law officers, army sergeants, communists, Catholics and the house of
Un-American Activities Committee. Of course, I am prejudiced, but I cannot imagine a sport other than climbing which
offers such a complete and fulfilling expression of individuality. And I will not give it up nor even slow down, not for
man, nor woman, nor wife, nor God." As mentioned, Chuck was his own man.
YOSEMITE AT NIGHT
In general, it is fair to say that the Yosemite/Berkeley climbing scene of the 1960s and ‘70s explored and indulged in
mind/mood/emotion altering chemicals with at least as much fervor as it explored and expanded the climbing possibilities of the fine rock walls of the valley. Climbers’ parties in Yosemite were as wild and frenzied and fun (i.e. interesting) as any I’ve ever known, and I knew a lot of them. To see climbing legends on their knees in the dirt of Camp 4 howling at the moon or at the park rangers sent over to quiet things down usually elicited one of two
responses among the uninitiated: change camps or do a little howling yourself. With the same quiet intensity he brought to rock climbing, Pratt immersed himself into whatever party was at hand. In the way such things tend to evolve for some people, in later years Chuck was at times a one man party all his own. His demons were always there, kept in marginal control most of the time with skepticism merging into cynicism, a careful thoroughness to order and restraint in those matters (like climbing and the precise disposition of each stick of firewood outside his cabin on Guides Hill) that he could control, and, of course, keeping busy with chores and work, projects, and the maintenance of tools. Drugs were a necessary release, but they also released the demons. Alcohol in the form of beer was his drug of choice to the end.
LOVERS LEAP 1970
Except for guiding together in the Tetons, I climbed only once with Chuck. He showed up at Lovers Leap after driving across the desert from somewhere….the southwest or the Tetons most likely. He had rolled a car along the way but survived with only a sprained or dislocated left thumb which hung uselessly and could not close with the first finger. Still, he wanted to climb so we did The Line, a classic three pitch route neither of us had done before. He led the first and hardest pitch with a hand and a half, and whether his impairment hindered or pained him could not be discerned, and he did not dwell on the pain or inconvenience or whatever adaptations he needed to make. The Line was a hard
route of that time, and it was the first time I was able to see the creativity McKeown later noted. Because of his injury I
expected him to struggle. When he did not, I was made aware of Pratt’s amazing power of focus by which he guided his life and which allowed him to tap deeper and climb higher than others. Climbing The Line with Pratt was, for me, an education in climbing as something beyond and quite different from brutal struggle, though, when necessary, Pratt struggled with the best. I remember that route as a turning point in my own climbing, and from that day on I knew Chuck to be graceful and gracious, funny and serious, and a man who both knew what he was doing and what he was about.
Pratt was the most creative and humble of his peers. About the time we climbed The Line he also came up with a typically wry definition of the greatest climber in the world as "Someone who solos a difficult new route from the bottom of the Grand Canyon to the rim at night, and never tells anyone about it." Only now that Pratt is gone does it occur to me that he may have done just that on one of his many trips to the Southwest. It is exactly the way in which Pratt would have obliquely referred to his own talent and to having done something that no one else would or could
do. More, it amuses me to think that he might have done it as much as it pleases me to contemplate his personal
satisfaction and pleasure in guarding such a secret treasure. It would be very much like him to measure up to his own
definition of the greatest climber in the world, and never tell anyone about it.
WOMEN
Well, yes, of course. Always. Pratt loved (he also lusted after) women in general and a special few in particular. Pratt was humble and shy, but he was a hedonist with a heart at heart and women loved him for it. He was also interesting as hell and interested as well.
THE TETONS 1993-2000
As an Exum guide fortunate enough to spend summers living on Guides Hill at Lupine Meadow beneath the east face of Teewinot, I was Pratt’s neighbor for part of each year. From that time I offer a few word portraits of Pratt, perhaps something in prose like the hundreds of photographs he took in the last years of every and any woman willing to pose for his camera, his eye, his imagination and fantasies.
…Guiding a group of adolescents up Cube Point early in the season we had to cross a section of snow. I fixed a rope and we got our charges across the snow with no incidents. Pratt, dressed in his trademark balaclava, hated snow, cold, ice and winter with a neurotic fury that was amusing to others but which was painfully serious to him. He came across last with characteristic precision and a scowl on his face. I grinned at him, and he knew why. "I can’t believe we’re bringing these poor, innocent children here and actually teaching them to walk on this……stuff", he said, indicating the steps cut in the snow. "I always avoid it and consider stepping in it the same way I would consider stepping in radioactive dog sh#t. We’ve sunk so low in life that we’re making our living teaching innocent children to walk upon radioactive
dog sh#t."
…The Pratt cabin at Lupine Meadow was a marvel of order in the small community of Exum guides whose places of residence, for the most part, appear more disorderly than Chuck’s, though in general they are not. His firewood, stacked around the cabin with the precision of considered thought to each piece, looked more the work of a master stone mason than a readily available source of fuel. The wooden clothes pins on his clothes line were impregnated with linseed oil and looked like small pieces of fine woodwork made by a patient craftsman. It always seemed to me that, for Pratt, every stick of wood in its exact place, every clothes pin made to last, every move made precisely right, helped keep the demons at bay. When he couldn’t hold them off, he all too often closed the door to his cabin behind him and drank in privacy, just alcohol and Chuck and their private demons.
…I sometimes talked with Chuck about the things of our lives….Yosemite days and people, writing (Chuck’s few efforts as a writer are among the best climbing literature I know. He once explained why there isn’t more: "Writing about climbing is boring. I would rather go climbing."), women (of course), guiding (we seldom spoke of climbing), the humor (because laughter is preferable to tears) to be found in the cornucopia of man’s follies, the weather (on cold mornings the balaclava clad Pratt loved to point out that global warming had to be a myth, a conspiracy by
environmentalists and other wackos, among whom he included me), and Thailand (his favorite topic). The Exum
community and Guides Hill was his home and his extendedfamily, but his heart was in Thailand.
…Chuck behind the wheel of his vintage and unmistakable white/gray and then green Volkswagen squareback on the road between Dornans and Lupine Meadow. He was a study in concentration on the return drive from Dornans, as safe and thoughtful and attentive as any man has ever been in the long, sad, unsafe history of drinking and driving. He was certainly less a threat to himself and his fellow man than half the tourists driving that stretch of road looking
for elk and antelope and the occasional moose. I would not hesitate to take my chances on the road with Pratt in the bag any day rather than with the average tourist on the loose and intoxicated by his one week a year of vacation, demented by a momentary view of the unrestricted glimpse of a world not delineated by officials, officers, ideologies, priests and politicians and the economic interests they serve.
…In 1998, for various and sound reasons, Chuck made the decision not to drink at all during the guiding season from June to September. This was a sudden, not a long thought out decision. It was a cold turkey that, in Chuck’s case, made a solo climb up a new route out of the Grand Canyon at night seem, in comparison, as easy as driving to Dornans. Everybody on Guides Hill watched Chuck to see whether his resolve would crack, but those of us who had been intimate with obstinate chemical excess and dependency and with the equally difficult, uncompromising, coldhearted cold turkey watched with the particular interest of the experienced. He never flinched. With the same unqualified intensity he brought to his climbing, Chuck looked the cold turkey in the eye and he did not blink. For the last three years of his guiding life he did not drink during the season, though the rest of the year was another story. But our hearts dropped the first time he came back to his cabin from Dornans with a brown paper bag under his arm that looked the size and shape to hold two six packs. Sometime later he came out of his cabin holding a bottle of nonalcoholic beer. I think he did it to relish the effect as much as to enjoy the taste of bogus beer. The recently retired serious drinker suddenly finds an abundance of time and energy in his life that he has forgotten existed. One of the things Chuck did with that time and energy the first summer was to split wood each evening. Cords of rounds became
stacks of the most meticulously split and arranged firewood in the history of Guides Hill. I found myself some evenings just watching Pratt split firewood because it was beautiful to see. He split wood with an ax on a tree round chopping block. He swung his ax with grace and a respect for minimalist efficiency that I saw as a reverence for finesse. It was masterful work and I will never forget the sight of Chuck Pratt splitting wood with complete focus and all his being. Several of us on Guides Hill are students of Zen Buddhism, and watching Chuck in the evenings always brought to mind the Zen maxim "Chop wood, carry water," pointing the Zen practitioner toward each moment and task with completefocus.
Pratt could have been a fine writer, but it bored him. He would have made a great student of Zen, but he didn’t need it. As it was, Chuck Pratt just might have been the greatest climber in the world by his own definition, and he was definitely one of them by anyone’s definition. I’m glad he was here. I’m sorry he is gone. ... I wonder what he was dreaming when he checked out.
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Don Lauria
Trad climber
Bishop, CA
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May 19, 2009 - 12:30pm PT
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Just remembered that Millis aka Dennis Miller wrote a short anecdote for the Bardini newsletter: Pratt - A Day in the Life.
I'll dig it out.
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Roger Breedlove
climber
Cleveland Heights, Ohio
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May 19, 2009 - 12:41pm PT
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Trying to place Chuck as a friend and an icon is difficult. We all have different approaches shaped both by our memories and what, I suppose, are our sense of what was left undone. Some of us tilt towards the hero end of the scale and want to leave out the unheroic bits of Chuck's life and personality; others of us want to remember Chuck unheroically and struggle with how to convey that sense of a fine friend.
Doug’s piece has a nice nuanced weave with the bits that stick in our minds—a preference for Mahler or a knack for pithy, humorous aphorisms, a private life, a calm, smooth climbing style. Jan’s piece adds the dissonance of Chuck’s private demons, perhaps alcohol or drug induced, but, more truthfully, the demons were only released by alcohol or drugs.
TM tried to explain how Chuck climbed to me once in the Meadows where we both guided. He was making a serious attempt, miming mantles and sideways pushes, stepping under his cupped hand, twisting and contorting as only TM could. It was hilarious to watch; all the more so given that TM was serious. It also captured it pretty well. As does Doug’s descriptions.
I only knew Chuck after his best climbing days were behind him, in the early 70s. For a time he lived in Roper’s house in Berkeley, working as an editor on Ascent, and tried to find a life after climbing. This is the peroid, away from climbing, when we became friends. (We did sort of get to climb together as guides at Royal's RockCraft.) It was a heady time for the Berkeley based 60s climbers. Roper’s new guide and Ascent magazine were successful and conferred a status beyond climbing on Steve and Allen Steck, and Chuck. Allen, I think, had just left The Ski Hut and was working full tilt on Mountain Travel (he bought a new convertible.) Galen finally decided to sell his auto repair business and try his luck as a photographer, for 'at least' one year, uncertain of his prospects.
Steve’s house was a wonderful place to hang out. Lots of climbers would come by, Chuck lived in the little bedroom porch, and I really enjoyed learning the art of writing (when I asked, Steve graciously allowed me to write a couple of book reviews for Ascent) and learned to edit in someone else's voice. Telling, funny story: Steve had purchased 250, maybe it was 1000, bottles of wine with his own label, “The Incubus Hills,” ever true to his humor and sex crazed sub-plots. When he traveled to Europe (spawning the story of climbing in East Germany in Ascent), he left Mort Hempel as the house sitter. Mort and Steve’s friends drake something like 50, maybe it was 250, bottles of Steve’s wine in his absence.
Steve had a Cessna 210 which was a 6 seat, high-performance, retractable-gear single-engine general aviation plane. Steve would organize flying trips ranging from practicing hair raising cross-wind landings on farmer’s strips in the Central Valley on really windy days; to flights over the Sierra, down 395 and back across the southern Sierra to the Bay Area, also hair raising; and longer trips, such as to South America, landing on beaches and camping. Steve was a very serious pilot and it was fun to go flying with him. Chuck was on a lot of those flights with Steve.
Although I wasn't there, when Steve was learning to fly, he landed on a farmland airport in the Central Valley. Steve remembers it as a pretty smooth landing, and was surprised when he opened the door and the plane was too close to the ground. He had forgotten to put down the landing gear. An airport employee who watched confirmed that it was a pretty smooth landing although he was pretty nervous since he could see the land gear was up. Steve's propeller was bent all to hell and the bottom of the plane had to be fixed up.
To give a flavor of flying with Steve, once, when I was recovering from a bone biopsy on my hand—-a bone in my hand just decided to grow to three times its normal size, interfering with my hand jamming and, of concern to my doctors, possibly interfering with my life expectancy. I had little use of my hand as it healed, but gladly took the co-pilots seat for a look-see of jets taking off and landing at a military base near Sacramento as well as some practice landing on farmer's strips in strong cross winds. (Talk about terrifying: landing side ways to touch down on one wheel then whipping the plane around straight on the second wheel; taxi to the end, turn around, take off and find another strip.)
Above the airbase, Steve assured me that as long as we didn’t fly right over the base we would not be shot down. I was curious about the operation of the plane and Steve took me through the first lessons: flying complete circles with decreasing radii while maintaining altitude. This requires looking at the instruments to maintain pitch and altitude while operating the controls. With the first few wide circles I was fine, essentially flying with my one good hand.
Then Steve ordered me to increase the pitch and the plane started to dive.
As we were barreling for a certain death of either hitting the ground or being shot from the sky for attacking the air base, Steve started yelling at the tops of his lungs: “Pull up Breedlove. You’re going to f*#king kill us. Pull up, for Christ’s sake.”
He was slapping his thighs and yelling at the top of his lungs and laughing manically.
I was drilling us down.
Finally I croaked, “I cannot pull up. My hand won’t work!”
Steve calmly said, “Let go.” I did and the plane righted itself instantly.
During this time Chuck was working to reinvent himself. He didn’t have the interest, for reasons that I do not fully understand, to pursue writing, except he was hell bent on moving away from any hero status. Unfortunately from the perspective of making a living, his other interests were mostly cultural--music and literature--and a pursuit of wine, women and Mahler, so to speak. Raffi would always offer him labor work if it was available, but Chuck was not interested in that. He was in his mid-30s and adrift. The stories about him becoming an auto mechanic were borne of this period. He had purchased my VW station wagon, for reasons that I have forgotten. I had rebuilt the engine in that car at least once, and Chuck, after he had taught himself mechanics, rebuilt it again. After he had it apart, he was very disdainful of the quality of my previous handiwork. I don’t think Chuck had any intention of working as a mechanic, but I suppose if Galen still owned an auto shop, he could have worked for Galen.
Here is a note that Chuck sent me just before Christmas in 1974. For folks not familiar with late 20th century communication, a note was written and mailed to the recipient using a service the US government provided. They actually delivered the physical letter to a street address or a post office box. It was also written on a mechanical contraception called a typewriter. If you made a mistake you had to use whiteout from a little bottle. Strange isn’t it?
Remembering Chuck presents a quandary. You can see it in Don’s telling about the memorial: The women brought to tears remembering Chuck represents the idealized Chuck that some folks have created, including some of his friends from the 60s and 70s. Herb’s comment represents the Chuck that comes closer to the real person, the one that folks who knew Chuck remember, not as a hero but a complete, if somewhat hidden person. This is not to say that Chuck didn’t love the women who was missing him and (for sure he would not have wanted her to hear Herb's comment even if he agreed), he just would not have liked the drama and what it signified, at any level. Thanks Don. Great story.
By the way, Steve, the picture that you posted of Chuck and Sheridan also includes me in the background, on the right.
In re-reading this I realize that I can bring a little of Chuck to life. In the second paragraph, I say, "...a knack for pithy, humorous aphorisms." If Chuck had seen that, he would have winced. And then pointed out that all aphorism are pithy.
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Don Lauria
Trad climber
Bishop, CA
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May 19, 2009 - 12:53pm PT
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PRATT - A Day In The Life
By Dennis Miller
In May of 1974, after three previous failed attempts, I finally climbed the Salathe Wall Route on Yosemite Valley's granite monolith, El Capitan. My partner and I scaled the route in four marvelous days, in grand style, and somehow managed to make every ledge for our nightly bivouacs.
On the second day, we noticed a climbing team ascending the Shield Route just to the right of us. It was Chuck Pratt and Steve Sutton. They were about six hundred feet below us and climbing quite fast. By the time they actually got up the shield itself, we could only see them part of the time, but we could hear them calling back and forth to each other during their climb. We were the only climbing teams on El Capitan during those warm days of May.
The day my partner and I got down, we drove to the base of El Cap to see where we had been and to watch Pratt and Sutton finish their climb. I had a brand new spotting scope, and it was pretty cool to see where we had climbed and to watch Pratt and Sutton finish what I believe was the second ascent of the Shield.
Two days later, I was offered a full time job as a fire fighter in the Park Service's Helitack Division of the Forestry Department. All I had to do was cut my hair, purchase a uniform, and clean up my act. The Park Service actually gave me five days to sow the rest of my summer oats and report to the firehouse for my job instructions.
The next day, Chuck Pratt, Steve Sutton, Hugh Burton, and I bought two cases of quart bottles of Coors beer, and headed out of the Park to the Merced River just west of the small town of El Portal, just outside the Park's west entrance. We had sixteen quarts of beer between us, and we planned on drinking every last drop by nightfall.
By mid day we were pretty well toasted and decided to head back to the Valley and see what was kicking at Camp Four. We piled into my blue and white 1969 Volkswagen Van, named Herb Blueness, and started the slow motion journey back to the Valley and awaiting friends. We were fearless, drunken heroes returning to the scene of our gallant exploits - warriors, explorers, scoundrels, misfits, beer connoiseurs. We were on a mission!
We made it all the way to the Tuolumne Meadows turnoff before we needed to make a pit stop and opted to pull of at the small conversion dam turnout. After raising the level of the Merced River by at least seven inches, we piled back into Herb Blueness and continued our journey up the canyon toward Yosemite Valley.
I started hearing some sort of clanking noise coming from the rear of the bus, and looking in the rearview mirror, I saw Chuck perched on the rear bumper, his belt in hand, whacking the top of the van like a mule skinner would crack his whip over the backs of his mules. It was a hilarious sight!
Suddenly, Steve screamed out, "Pratt's down, eh!" Sure enough, there lay Charles Marshall Pratt in the middle of the road his gut full of beer and a smile from one side of his face to the other. Traffic began to pile up behind us.
Steve and Hugh were instantly out of the van standing over the fallen hero. I pulled over, yanked the parking brake, and joined them. Pratt seemed to be talking in tongues, some sort of language none of us understood, but we understood him well enough to know he was okay.
A man came running up from one of the stopped vehicles behind us, "I'm a doctor. You shouldn't move the victim!" We laughed at the absurdity of his comment, and the three of us picked Chuck up, somehow managed to get the rear door of the van open, and tossed our damaged goods in like a sack of Idaho potatoes. Pratt continued to speak in tongues as we drove off - our destination now Lewis Memorial Hospital - leaving a stunned and confused young doctor standing in the road scratching his head and mumbling something about the Hippocratic oath.
On the one way portion of the road, I drove the entire way to the hospital in the wrong direction without hitting another vehicle or being pulled over by a Park ranger. Truly, the four of us were invincible that day. Well, except for Pratt!
The following day, with a metallic drumming in my head and a stomach full of barking Chihuahuas, I went to see Chuck at the hospital to assess the damage he suffered in his fall. When I entered his room, Chuck was propped up in bed, looking like the Bruised Buddha in his pearly white gown, drinking something through a straw. His injuries amounted to scrapes, bruises, and a broken collarbone. It could have been far worse.
I said I was sorry for what had happened, and he raised his hand and shook his head, Chuck's way of saying it was okay. I said I was sorry again, and he just smiled. I came to try to make him feel better, but instead, he was trying to make me feel better. Chuck, with a frown and in a raspy but very firm voice, said, "You guys finished the beer didn't you?" I said we had and he, with obvious relief, smiled and added, "That's good news, you should never waste good beer!"
Editor's Note
Some readers may find this story just slightly distasteful in that it relates illegal activities and some obviously poor choices in civic conduct. Without condoning their behavior, one must remember the context. These guys were young and were all big wall climbers - they had just been thousands of feet above Yosemite Valley, matching their skill as climbers against the ever present dangers of scaling one of the most imposing granite monoliths in the world. Mistakes in the vertical world can be fatal. They hadn't made any – they "were invincible". Living for days on a Yosemite wall is not a picnic. It has been described as "... entail[ing] awkward climbing, difficult piton placement, hanging belays, heavy hauling, hammock bivouacs, scraped knuckles, numb feet, coughing, cramping, torturous sun, threatening clouds, never enough water, rurps, and skyhooks - all the ingredients of a great Yosemite adventure." These guys were happy to be alive.
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Don Lauria
Trad climber
Bishop, CA
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May 19, 2009 - 01:02pm PT
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Breedlove ... Breedlove ... where have I heard that name before?
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Roger Breedlove
climber
Cleveland Heights, Ohio
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May 19, 2009 - 01:35pm PT
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Funny picture, Don. I don't remember it.
This, folks, demonstrates the original meaning of "spray," when applied to climbers. We still had to work out the kinks.
So, Don are you commenting on my posting--trying for a effervescent ‘pop’ and getting soaked instead?
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Mighty Hiker
Social climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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May 19, 2009 - 04:18pm PT
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An amazing thread!
Dennis Miller's article notes Pratt and Sutton as doing the second (third?) ascent of the Shield, in May 1974. Yvon Chouinard and Bruce Carson did the Nose hammerless in 1973 (?). Were those the last ascents of El Cap by the leading climbers of the mid 1950s to late 1960s 'golden age'?
Of course, Tom Frost returned in the last decade or so, and climbed the Salathe and North American Wall (and more?) with his son.
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Doug Robinson
Trad climber
Santa Cruz
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Topic Author's Reply - May 19, 2009 - 04:20pm PT
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OK, this is cool. We're starting to get a better view refracted from all our directions. Thanks, compadres.
Peter, good catch posting up the shot at Chuck's chopping block. It was taken by Jim Herrington, who is amassing portraits of the Golden Agers. He's good. jimherrington.com
Notice his clothesline in the background? Someone at the memorial mentioned that Chuck would oil his clothespins. Perfectly in line with his (pithy?) aphorism "Take good care of your equipment and it will take good care of you." It also echoes something Chouinard said that afternoon, about how lightly Chuck lived on the earth -- "a hell of a lot lighter than I do."
With full respect for your CP pin Todd (bet it fell right out in your hands...), I wish I had one of those clothespins to remember him as I hang out my fleece.
Don, thanks for posting up the Millis piece. I was starting to fret about where I could find it. Classic! And absolutely essential.
Carry on, we're getting somewhere here.
Edit: Hey, could one of our digital archivists (Clint? Dr. Ed?) sort out a list of Chuck's FAs?
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philo
Trad climber
boulder, co.
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May 19, 2009 - 06:32pm PT
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What a remarkable thread, a touching memorial tribute and wonderful writing all together. Thank you very much!
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MaxJ
Trad climber
Davis, CA
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May 19, 2009 - 08:22pm PT
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Here is an incomplete list of some of Pratt's FA's in the Valley. I put this together for myself, but as there seems to be a demand for something like this, I'll post. I'm sure someone else can put together a better list that includes more obscure routes, and his aid routes.
1958 The Cleft 5.9 R, Chuck Pratt & Wally Reed
1958 The Cookie 5.8, Chuck Pratt & Dick Sykes
1958 Lower Cathedral Spire Northeast Chimney 5.8, Chuck Pratt & Steve Roper (No topos)
1958 Split Pinnacle, East Arete 5.10c, Chuck Pratt & Krehe Ritter
1959 Astroman (to be) 5.11c, Chuck Pratt, Glen Denny, Warren Harding
1959 The Crack of Dawn 5.9, Chuck Pratt, Royal Robbins, Tom Frost
1959 The Ski Jump III 5.7, Chuck Pratt, Bob Kamps
1960 The Rostrum, West Base Route 5.10c Chuck Pratt,John Fiske
1960 Chounaird-Pratt 5.11 Middle Cathedral: dirty, no topo, not done anymore?
1961 Crack of Doom 5.10a CP, Mort Hempel
1961 Salathe Wall, CP, RR, TF
1964 Lost Arrow Chimney V 10a, Chuck Pratt & Frank Sacherer
1964 Crack of Despair, CP, FS, Tom Gerughty
1964 Midterm 5.10b, Chuck Pratt & Tom Frost
1964 South Face Mt. Watkins, WH, YC, CP
1964 North America Wall, YC, RR, TF, CP
1965 Chingando 5.10a, CP
1965 Crack of Redemption 5.9, CP, Chris Fredericks
1965 Cross-Country Crack 5.9, CP, Tim Kimbrough
1965 Entrance Exam 5.9, CP, Chris Fredericks, Larry Marshall, Jim Bridwell
1965 Higher Cathedral Spire, Southeast Side, East Corner 5.10a, CP, Tom Gerughty
1965 Juliette's Flake, Left Side 5.8, CP and Jim Bridwell
1965 Kindergarten Crack 5.8, CP & John Evans
1965 Lower Cathedral Spire - Pratt-Faint variation 5.9
1965 The Slack, Left Side 5.10b, CP & RR
1965 Twilight Zone 5.10d, CP & Chris Fredericks
1966 The Sequel 5.8, CP & Joe Faint
1967 CS Concerto 5.8 CP, YC, Mort Hempel
1967 The Mummy's Revenge 5.9, CP & Tom Kimbrough
1968 Flatus 5.9, CP & Tom Bauman
1968 SW Face North Dome 5.9 CP & Bev Clark (No topo, arrow for route start)
1970 Galloping Consumption 5.11a, CP & SR
1972 Capital Consumption 5.8, Chuck Pratt, Bruce Price, Jerry Anderson
1973 Deception Gully 5.9, CP, Tim Auger, Jerry Anderson
1973 Inner Reaches 5.7 CP, Tim Auger, Jerry Anderson
1973 Knob Hill Rapist 5.8 R/X ditto
I dream of one day completing all of these climbs, but the prospect of doing so frightens me deeply. Thanks everyone for the stories and shared memories.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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May 19, 2009 - 09:13pm PT
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1964, South Face of Mount Watkins
It was not Tom Frost, rather it was Harding, Pratt, and Yvon
Chouinard
edit, no disrespect intended, great list, just to set the record straight!
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johntp
Trad climber
socal
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May 19, 2009 - 10:39pm PT
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DR, you have a wealth of tales to tell. Keep them coming. This is some sweet history. Thanks.
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dee ee
Mountain climber
citizen of planet Earth
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May 20, 2009 - 01:19am PT
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What a remarkable man and great thread.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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May 20, 2009 - 04:40am PT
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Does anyone know what Chuck did during his winters in Thailand (other than the obvious R & R for which the country is famous)? Did friends from the U.S. meet him there, did he hang out with tourist types, non female locals? I was curious about the statement earlier on that he talked with friends about cremation and scattering his ashes in the Mekong a couple of times in the days leading up to his death. Does anyone know with whom?
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dogtown
climber
Cheyenne,Wyoming
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May 20, 2009 - 05:28am PT
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Oliver Wrote; But I might add that you too are one of the finest people any of us has met.
I second that statement! And a true Alpinest if there ever was one.
All the best Doug!
Bruce
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Roger Breedlove
climber
Cleveland Heights, Ohio
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May 20, 2009 - 11:41am PT
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Notes on the letter Chuck sent to me.
"Barney Bruin," et al, is the bear that trashed Chuck’s car.
Here is a picture of my car after a similar attack.
”Elizabeth” was the Valley’s reining beauty who worked for the Curry Co and had a large apartment behind the Post Office. Chuck met her once and could barely contain himself—like a gaga teenager. He when on and on later about what beautiful lips she had--embarrassing. Elizabeth was very charming and he, as I had been, was dumbstruck that such a poised, beautiful, and clearly above-our-station woman would take an interest in climbers. I have no idea who he discussed my relationship with, up it does point up the coursing surges we all had in relationships with beautiful women.
Chuck didn’t think much of my apparent plans to climb the Zodiac in winter: it was cold, forcryingoutloud, and, apparently, he wasn't sure I knew what I was doing. This letter is the only evidence that I was contemplating climbing the Zodiac. Maybe it was related to breaking up with Elizabeth. As has been noted from the beginning of time, the ability to forget is key to human progress, at least until you can recall low moments as if they belonged to someone else and post about them on ST.
"Pacific Stereo" was one of the early discounted electronic stores. Chuck had a huge record collection and getting better gear was always necessary. Nowadays, with computer designed speaker and low cost electronics, stereo equipment is mostly all good quality and very inexpensive. As far as I know, stereo equipment magazines are no longer published—folks are even happy with the very low quality sound production of iPods.
Anyone know what Chuck did for music in the Tetons?
I don’t think that Chuck and I would have had hot toddies for Christmas. We both liked red wine. And he like sake and I liked scotch.
"Williams/Bream" refers to John Williams and Julian Bream, both British classic guitar performers who collaborated. Chuck is correct: they did make two recordings. After I returned to college, I received my degree in music and played classic guitar. Then I got a real job. And a suit. And. And. And.
"Jani" is Jani Roper. She and Steve had recently divorced. Anyone know where Jani is these days?
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scuffy b
climber
Bad Brothers' Bait and Switch Shop
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May 20, 2009 - 12:28pm PT
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Roger,
I haven't heard anything of Jani Niece (Roper) but thinking of
a great photo of hers.
Somebody leading the 2nd pitch of Reed's Direct, black/white,
typical angle, from the parking area, I guess.
Not much of a white strip of rock next to the crack.
It was used on a catalogue from DMC as I recall. I'm not sure if
it was published in a magazine or book.
DMC (Donner Mountain Corp.) was one of the Ski Hut offshoots.
Ski Hut=retail, Trailwise=manufacturing, DMC=importing/wholesale
distributing.
George Rudolph held onto DMC when he sold Ski Hut and Trailwise.
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Roger Breedlove
climber
Cleveland Heights, Ohio
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May 20, 2009 - 12:41pm PT
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I too have a very nice B&W photo by Jani hanging in my sunroom. I have had it since the mid-70s. Maybe we should post both of them on another thread and try to draw Jani out.
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scuffy b
climber
Bad Brothers' Bait and Switch Shop
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May 20, 2009 - 12:59pm PT
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That sounds great except for the fact that I don't have one
to post.
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