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Lynne Leichtfuss
Sport climber
Will know soon
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Super Great News Jan,
Yes, Ken is the man that makes it happen and gets it done. Note: Facelifts and the even more incredible "Granite Frontiers". Once again, if you need something let me know. I am a pretty good chauffer if you still need one. Peace and Happy New Year, Lynne
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Brokedownclimber
Trad climber
Douglas, WY
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Feb 19, 2010 - 12:30pm PT
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I am now planning to be at the Memorial. Hope to see many old friends there. Mostly "Old" by now....
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Boulder Creek CA
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I did dozens of climbs with Frank Sacherer in the early 60s. So I suppose I should chime in with some of the stories. After reading through this thread I realize he shared thoughts with me that he usually kept hidden.
I had done a number of classic climbs in the Teton’s with Royal Robbins. Then Margaret Young, a physicist from MIT, took me out for my first climb in Yosemite. She took me to the base of Rixon’s East Chimney, and told me it was 5.9. She didn’t tell me it was the hardest pitch in the valley at the time. We roped up, and I led the climb free. She followed with the help of a lot of tension on the rope. We were just there for the day and then we went back to Palo Alto. However Margaret started telling everyone that I had led the second free ascent of Rixon’s East Chimney. On top of this Royal had apparently been telling people about this wild kid from Idaho who was better than the Camp 4 crowd. Oblivious to the stir being created, it was the end of the summer, and I went to register at Occidental College as a junior studying concert violin; and spending my weekends at Tahquitz.
As soon as the school holidays came around in December I was on the bus to Yosemite. Royal was not around and I didn’t know anyone else. But I had my climbing gear and a bag of books and was used to doing most of my climbing alone in Idaho and Wyoming. I was having a good time scrambling around exploring. When evening came I was sitting by the fire in Yosemite Lodge wearing my Kronhofer Klettershuen and reading a book. There were several other climbers there, but I was shy and didn’t know anyone and kept to myself. A tall wiry guy scooted up next to me and asked if I was a climber; it was Frank Sacherer. He asked my name and whether I had done any Yosemite climbs. I told him I’d only done one little climb on the East Chimney of Rixon’s plus scrambling around on the boulders. Immediately there was a small crowd standing around listening as Frank grilled me about climbing with Royal in the Tetons, and my free solo ascent of the Grand Teton North Face.
Anyway Frank suggested we go climbing the next day and asked if I would be willing to lead the East Chimney again. I said sure, but I’d really like to do some other climbs, since that was the only one I had done. Frank said he really wanted to do the East Chimney, and then we could go do some other stuff. Lacking other options and not knowing any of them, I agreed.
The next morning we walked over there from Camp 4. I tied in with Frank and led the pitch without too much difficulty. It starts out with a 5.9 jam crack that bends over and becomes an undercling and then opens into a vertical squeeze chimney. The tricky part is transitioning out of the undercling and getting into the slippery bombay squeeze chimney. The chimney is strenuous and made the more difficult because you get burned out getting there. Part way up the squeeze chimney I heard voices chattering and stuck my head out to glance around and was shocked to see a crowd of climbers gathered all around the base of the climb watching. Losing concentration, I squirted out of the chimney and landed on the rope close to the ground, the same way Royal had. That chimney is really slippery and there is no protection above the fixed pin at the end of the undercling. Anyway Frank had watched closely how I did the tricky move into the chimney, and he was able to repeat it. Chuck Pratt and several others were watching and we spent the afternoon with everyone trying it, but none of the rest of them could make the move; although Frank and I both repeated it. Later it became known as the first 5.10 in the Valley.
So now I had a climbing partner. Frank and I climbed every day for the month of our school vacation and spent our evenings reading and planning climbs in the Yosemite Lodge Lounge. We did a lot of routes along the base of El Cap, The Slack, all the routes on Little John, La Cosita, and Moby Dick as well as Coonyard Pinnacle, and Bishop’s Terrace. So I got a grand tour of Yosemite test pieces by the leading contender. Note that we used a lot of aid on routes that later went free, but Frank and I were both of a mind to push the free climbing as far as we could. We also climbed together the following summers, working to eliminate aid on longer climbs and working hard learning to climb jam cracks with a group of us over by the Iota and Reed’s Pinnacle; until it got too hot and I hitched a ride to the Tetons.
Frank was certainly a spectacular rock climber and we had a lot of fun. However our climbing philosophies were very different. We both are very analytical. However for me it’s more about having fun and enjoying a spiritual connection moving with the rock. I am very comfortable up there and not especially competitive about it, other than just from the joy in pushing the limits of our abilities. We had a lot of long discussions about it, and he had a very difficult time understanding my feelings. To me it comes naturally. Frank was very intelligent and analytical; but he was actually always terrified of climbing and forced himself to do it. I am very analytical and controlled about my feelings, and he trusted telling me things he kept hidden from everyone else. Being up in the air on hard rock was already so frightening to him, that adding or taking away difficulty or danger or protection was secondary in his mind. So his sense of judgment relative to safety was completely clouded. It was all about proving he wasn’t a coward, which is partly why he was so severe in his sense of free climbing purity. Using an anchor was an admission of cowardice. That’s also why he would just go crazy when he found himself stopped by a difficulty. He kept telling me that as soon as he had adequately proven himself, he would quit climbing and never look back. He knew very well that he would otherwise get himself killed. He basically wanted to live, but not as a coward; and so he was willing to take insane risks to prove his courage. So that’s exactly what he did; he proved himself to the climbing world and then walked away from it.
I very much enjoyed climbing with Frank, but I eventually split up our partnership one day on Fairview Dome Inverted Staircase, simply because I am unwilling to run that level of risk. My sincere hope is that when Frank returned to climbing in Europe it was with the different attitude of enjoying his wonderful skills in the mountains; rather than dramatizing an insane struggle to prove himself. I like to think that happened, and it sounds like the alpine weather got him rather than anything else. And that’s a risk we all take in the mountains.
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Clint Cummins
Trad climber
SF Bay area, CA
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Wow - thanks for sharing your stories and thoughts.
There can definitely be different reasons to climb!
Over the years, I've felt one of the reasons I climb is to prove that I can do physical tasks/sports.
I was tiny/skinny in school and couldn't do much with the regular sports, so maybe I've been making up for that since then.
I never felt I had a lack of courage, though.
I did press my climbing until I got injured in a big fall; now I try to be more realistic about risks.
I see you did the FA of The Mouth with Bob Kamps in 1964.
I did that route last May with Robert Summers - we enjoyed it a lot!
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 6, 2010 - 02:39am PT
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Great contribution Tom!
just when I think nothing more could be learned someone shows up with an amazing story...
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Boulder Creek CA
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Yes, I did that climb on the Apron with Bob Kamps, and he offered me the honor of naming the route. I didn't name it The Mouth. I named it The Smile. I always had a rather tenuous relationship with Pratt, and I think he thought my choice of a name required a minor edit!
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Zander
Trad climber
Berkeley
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Thanks for posting Tom,
And thanks for the beta on East Chimney. Ed, we need to do that.
Zander
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Roger Breedlove
climber
Cleveland Heights, Ohio
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Hi Tom,
Welcome to SuperTopo. Great contribution.
Best regards, Roger
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Boulder Creek CA
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Zander, I’d love to go up there again to the East Chimney with you. I went up and showed it to my overly ambitious red-head girl friend last summer. But doubt that I could still climb it and didn’t want to try leading it. Rixon’s used to be my favorite playground in the Valley, close to Camp 4 and readily lending itself to roped solo. I’ve done all the routes at least once, and some of them several times, with and without a partner. As a piece of history from the 60s, it was our favorite practice ground for the bigger walls. I was laughing with Royal a few days ago about how we climbed the South Face route together in a roaring thunderstorm with a waterfall pouring down on us across the rock. Our shoes against the rock looked like little speed boats. Tom Frost was down in the parking lot in his car yelling up to let us know just how crazy he thought we were. Now Rixon’s seems to have become one of the best kept secrets of the 60s, probably because of Sacherer’s lack of interest in it. Now you can’t even get into the parking lot and there’s no pull-over. So it’s easy to drive right by this great climbing area next door to Camp 4 and never even see it, even if you are looking for it. I asked around some of the Camp 4 regulars and was told, “Oh, there’s way to much rock fall there. It’s too dangerous!” Duh! Doesn’t anyone go to the mountains?? So I admit that Jim Mays was riding his bicycle along there one day and suddenly a bunch of boulders the size of cars and buses started rolling down all around him. He just kept riding his bicycle and swerving to dodge the rocks! It took the Park Service a while to clear the road. Something like that happened to me on Dolt Tower, however the only time I saw rock fall on Rixon's was the day that Kim Schmitz and I climbed the Direct South Face and then got our rope stuck on the last rappel. It was stuck on the big flake that everyone had been using for descent. So Kim and I really put our backs into it and pulled off that big rock. “Oops, we’d better not tell anybody that we took away their rappel anchor! “ Anyway, after Sacherer and I did our first climb together on the East Chimney, he never wanted to go over there, because he couldn’t see how any of the other routes could be made to go without aid. I’ve been very curious as to whether that is still true. Frank was very excited the day he told me how he realized that pushing 5.10 and 5.11 would open up so many of the classic routes to a free ascent. He told me, “You just have to be careful to pick the routes that only have a few pieces of aid and then work out a way around them.” Frank and I had come close to freeing a lot of them together before the summer of 1964 when he made his big push to free blitz so many of FFAs while I was in the mountains with Royal. When Royal and Liz and I returned we ran around doing second free ascents. Since I was 6-8 years younger than all the famous dudes, it seemed like I gravitated into being a master of second ascents.
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Mike Bolte
Trad climber
Planet Earth
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Thanks very much for sharing this history Tom! It is absolutely amazing what shows up here.
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Boulder Creek CA
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My climbing partnership with Sacherer was somewhat tempered by my interest in big walls and speed aiding. I kept trying to get Frank to do El Cap with me, as we made such a fast team together. However he always seemed to have something else in mind. Pratt heard me making an eloquent pitch to Frank one day and pulled me aside. He said, “Stop embarrassing Frank. He can’t handle a bivouac. He turns into a pumpkin at midnight and can’t climb worth a darn the next day! That's why he's so obsessed with climbing the Grade V routes so fast!” I don't know that Frank ever climbed El Cap. But his accomplishment in freeing Stove Leg cracks was obviously leading up to NIAD. I should probably be embarrassed that when I went back and led the Nose in 1985, I aided the Stove Legs with cams. I don't recall having Frank target me with his yelling; but that would have been the occasion, had he been there. Btw I still have some of the original steel bongs that Tom Frost made for climbing the Stove Legs on the 2nd ascent of El Cap. I bought the set from Frost and used them for years. Then he came to me one day and asked to buy back one of each size so that he could use them as patterns for the aluminum versions to be sold by Chouinard. They are truly works of art, and Long's bongs were never so aesthetic.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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I have been thinking about Tom Cochrane’s comments for a couple of days now along with some new information I have received in emails from various people who knew Frank in Europe.
At one level I am inclined to say that we should not take dramatic statements from Frank at face value. Even though he once told Dick Erb that he hated physics that obviously wasn’t true. Likewise I am skeptical of him being scared to death of climbing.
On the other hand, all the concern about courage which Tom describes, would fit with Frank’s classical education and his selection of Achilles as his role model, along with the ideal that it was better to go out in a blaze of glory than live a long life of no particular achievement. I simply don’t know because Frank never talked about his climbing career in terms of accomplishment. Occasionally he would relate an entertaining story about someone or something that happened on a particular climb, but I never once heard him speak about why he climbed or his climbing record.
Whatever Frank did, it was with great intensity, including not climbing. When he quit he never looked back and hated my attempts to have enjoyable afternoons together on the rock. Maybe he did feel that if it wasn’t challenging enough to be scary, it wasn’t worth doing? I always assumed that people climbed because they enjoyed it and can see in retrospect that not understanding each others motives for climbing could have been a large part of our personal dissonance on the rock. I also feel quite sure in retrospect, that finding Jim Baldwin after his fatal fall affected Frank deeply, and probably played a large role in his decision to stop climbing. All those predictions that he would not live to be 30, no doubt became more real to him when someone he knew died.
During our time together in Europe, Frank did achieve what Tom wished for him – the enjoyment of his skills in the mountains with no drama or struggle. I feel certain that he never mentioned his American climbing career to his European friends, because he didn’t want to be the object of any expectations. Evidently this continued for a few years but changed somehow, with the arrival in CERN of American ice climbers John Randle and Joe Weis. John has told me that Frank was out of shape and depressed about the bourgeois life when he arrived in Geneva, so the desire for good friends from his own culture was part of it, but boredom and lack of challenge also. Once climbing in a new medium, overcoming fear might well have been part of the attraction.
Frank loathed the cold and suffered greatly from it because he was so thin. The very physical quality that helped him succeed in the Valley crack systems meant that unless constantly moving about, he would sink to the bottom of every body of water we swam in, and he always become chilled before I did. A man more unsuited to overnight alpine bivouacs could not be found. However, he might have decided with perfect Jesuit logic that it was time to endure some suffering for a change, as he had become too soft. He did subscribe to their idea that pleasure and pain in life should even out, that the goal was to be neutral. Once set on the ice climbing path, it seems possible that he waged a new battle - over both discomfort and fear.
I have recently learned that after John Randle declined to climb the Shroud thinking it too late in the season, Frank told his office mate at CERN that he didn’t want to go either, that he also had a bad feeling about it, but didn’t want to let Joe Weis down. For Joe it was supposed to be his final severe climb as he knew already that his wife was two months’ pregnant. He had promised her that after this one final extreme climb he would only do safe, moderate routes because of the baby. Klara herself had a dream the night before they left, that Joe would be killed and begged him not to go. Their departure was delayed on the approach day because of her many attempts to dissuade them. Still, they went. Joe had checked the weather and it was supposed to hold.
I look at the photos of the final hours of the climb posted by John, especially the one of Frank in the morning after the snow shelf bivouac, and he looks to me to already be in trouble, in a kind of hypothermic and perhaps hypoglycemic haze. I have also learned that when they were found, Frank was wearing both his and Joe’s parka. Pratt’s comments to Cochrane, “He can’t handle a bivouac…….and can’t climb worth a darn the next day”, come back to haunt. Frank’s preference for minimalism in food and clothing also gives pause for thought.
We can only stand in awe of a climbing partner like Joe who would give up his own parka in the middle of a snow storm to help his friend, and from this we can also surmise that the situation was already quite desperate. I feel that Frank’s cold intolerance was probably the reason they decided to try to descend quickly via the Hirondelles route rather than go to the top in the midst of snow and lightning and then down the longer Italian descent.
It seems likely that neither was thinking very clearly as all of their safety gear was in Frank’s pack, including their prussic slings. In the interests of speed they had brought along only one pair. They were off route and according to the Chamonix rescue service, already on their way to a fatal rappel off the north face when Frank fell. Perhaps he passed out first or lightning was a factor. In either case, they died tied together, Frank instantly while wearing two parkas, and Joe in only a thin windbreaker, unable to go up or down, stuck on an icy rope with only one ice axe and no prussics.
Meanwhile, Frank’s motives for being up on a route unsuited to his preferences and physiology remain obscure. Was it self discipline, the desire to overcome an old fear, or friendship and obligation? We will never know. It’s possible that his second career of extreme climbing had entirely different motivations than his first. He was a complicated man and even to those close to him, remains a mystery.
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Brokedownclimber
Trad climber
Douglas, WY
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Jan-
It must have caused you a lot of anguish to write this about Frank, and reliving the past with old demons is not an easy thing to do.
To others, perhaps we shouldn't "go where we have gone" in this thread, out of respect for Jan!
Rodger
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Boulder Creek CA
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I was climbing regularly with Frank Sacherer after our success on the East Chimney of Rixon's Pinnacle. We did many climbs along the base of El Capitan. Meanwhile Royal Robbins and Glen Denny did a route to the El Cap tree claimed to be one of the hardest ever, for both free and aid climbing. In the early spring Frank Sacherer showed up and wanted to do the El Cap Tree Direct route with me. He wanted me to lead the difficult two-pitch overhanging aid section and then let him lead the challenging jam crack pitches above. I think the guidebook has the order of ascents incorrect; as Denny and Robbins did the first ascent; and Frank and I did the second. I was just talking with Royal about it a few days ago, and he doesn’t remember. Anyway Frank and I were eager to repeat this challenging route. I led the first overhanging aid pitch. Frank didn’t want to come up and hang around on the two bolt sling belay at the top of the first pitch, so we tied two ropes together so he could stay on the ground while I led the second difficult aid pitch; a long RURP series up to a bolt ladder followed by more RURPs. While I was high up on the sequence of RURPs, there was one that was particularly challenging. After a lot of fussing I finally got it to stick and moved up. I was pleased that it was holding and opened my mouth in a big grin. Just then the parachute cord slung through the RURP broke. The carabiner flipped out and broke off my front tooth. I went flying, zippering some of the RURPs. Frank neatly brought my fall to a halt, with me swinging in mid-air. I was in a lot of pain and asked him to lower me all the way to the ground. We left our ropes hanging there and he drove me to the Yosemite hospital; where they gave me a tin cap for my tooth. That ugly cap became a feature of my face for some number of years until I could afford a dentist to put on a proper permanent cap.
That evening in Camp 4 Frank was pretty upset. We had a small fortune in pitons stuck into that pitch, ending in a shaky RURP ladder; and no obvious way to retrieve everything. I said, no problem, let’s finish the climb. I’ll just climb up the rope with my Jumars and continue the lead. At that point Frank reconfirmed his opinion that I was basically crazy. No one in Camp 4 was impressed with my new Jumars.
The previous summer Chris Fredericks and I had hung a rope off the first pitch of El Cap East Buttress and practiced climbing it using various prusik techniques, trying to improve our times. I also was playing around with various pieces of caming yacht hardware, trying to find something that would work better than prusiks. During the winter I was reading the Sporthaus Shuster catalog and saw this Jumar device advertised for glacier crevasse rescue. I filled out an order form and mailed it to Germany. A few weeks later the little package arrived at my parents’ home in Boise Idaho, and I began playing around with these Jumars on the local climbing rocks. They came pre-rigged with hemp rope slings that seemed to work very well. The following spring I was back in the valley, and showed these Jumars to Frank, Royal, Pratt, and a few other people, but nobody was impressed with the idea of carrying another clunky piece of gear that wasn’t intuitively safe and wasn’t designed for rock climbing. It was considered to be just another item added to the long list of Cochrane’s wild ideas.
However the next morning at the base of El Cap, I whipped out my new Jumars with a certain amount of fanfare and proceeded to zip up the rope, the first time anyone in Yosemite had seen this done. We actually had a small crowd gathered for the show. I think perhaps Jeff Foote, Chuck Pratt, Layton Kor, Chris Fredericks, and Gary Colliver may have all been there.
So it seems that a quarter inch hemp rope sling that might be adequate for crevasse rescue is inappropriate for big wall rock climbing. Surprise, high off the ground I watched in horror as the hemp slings securing me to the Jumars unraveled and broke, one at a time; leaving me hanging by my hands from the two Jumar handles with nothing for my feet. This was not my proudest moment in Yosemite! Frank saw what was happening and saved my life by yelling up, “You have aid slings hanging from the back of your swami belt!” So with a bit of hasty re-rigging I was soon back in business on the RURP that held the fall. Somehow this event did nothing to convince the Yosemite climbing community of the advantage to using Jumars. After that no one wanted anything to do with Jumars; except me, who was the only one using them anyway. It wasn’t until later when I climbed fixed ropes up the West Face of Sentinel that Kor got interested and started borrowing them.
So I replaced a couple of jerked RURPs and returned to the top RURP that was still in place. I had prepared a bit of parachute cord for the embedded RURP. The next move was the aid crux and the final piece before a bolt ladder. There was a tiny sloping ledge with a couple of little quartz crystals imbedded in it. On the first ascent Royal had gently tapped a RURP down behind the crystals and placed a loop of parachute cord around the whole arrangement. Then he stood high up in his slings to place the first of several ¼# Rawl Drive bolts.
However as soon as I touched the crystals it was obvious that there was no longer any structural integrity. Now what? I’m hanging at the top of a tenuous RURP ladder two pitches up and hadn’t brought a bolt kit. There was no crack at all for placing a RURP. So I fussed around for a long time pretending there might be a solution. The hammer I was using had been given to me by Jim Baldwin after he dropped mine on the Glacier Point Apron. So this hammer was a battered carpenter’s hammer with one claw broken off. The hammer face was mostly worn off during the ascent of the Dihedral Wall. I realized that the claw of this hammer was about right to hook onto the tiny ledge behind the hole left by the broken crystals. So I attached a prusik loop to the hammer for my aid slings and moved up on it to clip the first bolt. Beyond the top of the bolt ladder and some more RURPs, there was a maximum extension reach to the left to grab the end of a ledge; followed by hand traversing until the ledge became wide enough to walk across to the base of the overhanging off-width crack. I certainly was not tempted to lead it.
Frank came up to me. He looked at the huge overhanging flake and was not pleased, as the crack was too large for any bongs that we had. At a stance ten feet up I pointed out how vulnerable his position was and speculated about what a good belay was worth at the lodge restaurant. He completely failed to see my humor and lost it, one of the few occasions when he screamed at me. Ok, so I admit it was a clumsy comment, but now he was in the proper emotional context for a Sacherer demonstration of best effort. He stormed up the very impressive overhanging crack. I followed (much cozier with a top rope). We repeated one of our favorite discussions. He felt it was unfair for me to layback difficult jam cracks. We were supposed to be pushing the development of jam crack climbing so we could free the big walls. I felt lay backing jam cracks to be entirely legitimate and usually faster.
We descended and rigged the famous 145’ overhanging rappel with our two 150’ Goldline ropes.
I posted this before I saw the several posts above and went back to add this note. I don't want anything in my stories to convey disrespect for Frank. I have been lucky enough to know a number of truly amazing individuals and Frank is certainly one such. I always held him in the highest regard. I have only just scratched the surface of some of the amazing circumstances we shared together on Yosemite climbs. I am absolutely amazed that we survived a whole series of events. But having survived, there is not a moment of regret or wishing that it had been different. I also had some major near misses with Jim Baldwin that I would just as soon have avoided completely. I told Jim that I would not climb with him anymore, just a few days before he fell. I know Jim's death deeply affected Frank, although we didn't talk about it much after his first description of the incident to me. I do not think it is necessary to run high risk to have wonderful experiences in the mountains. But sometimes it just turns out that way; and we have to accept the risk and be all the more grateful when we survive. I do share the deep wish that Frank could be participating in our discussions. I imagine hearing his voice saying some of the things he would say.
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Clint Cummins
Trad climber
SF Bay area, CA
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Great story, Tom - thanks for sharing.
Parachute cord on a RURP - that's real A4. We take strong small slings and cables for granted these days....
Nice work, showing the way with Jumars.
Good thing Frank was there to provide reslinging advice at that critical time, yikes!
Good partners can make a huge difference when it counts.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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Tom -
Thanks for another interesting post! I am happy to read anything that you write from those days. You really have a way of bringing the past to life. Frank was an absolute believer in brutal honesty so there is nothing said on this thread that he would object to and much, including some of the unflattering material, that would give him a hearty laugh. He would definitely be in favor of everyone telling their own truths without self censorship.
Likewise, no one should worry about offending or overwhelming me, although I do appreciate the protective concern from my friends on ST. Klara Weis and I have exchanged over 150 emails regarding the accident and the exhumation. There is nothing that we haven't discussed already. Women in general deal with emotions by talking about them and my profession involves slowly peeling away the differing narratives of many people and analyzing them for both common themes and causality.
In regard to the fatal accident, there were many causes but the common theme was friendship. Frank went on a climb he had misgivings about to please Joe, and Joe made heroic efforts to help Frank. That's why they were buried in a common grave in Chamonix and something that others besides Klara and myself should know.
Tom's stories it seems to me, are also about climbing and friendship from long ago.
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Dick Erb
climber
June Lake, CA
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Thanks everyone. This thread is like no other on the Super Topo, as Frank was like no other.
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survival
Big Wall climber
A Token of My Extreme
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This already incredible and historic thread just keeps getting better and better.
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BooDawg
Social climber
Paradise Island
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I defintiely agree with Dick Erb, Survival, and Cragman above. So thanks to all of you who have posted on this thread.
I never climbed with Frank but I certainly admired his climbs and watched him from the ground as he began a few of his FAs. If I were to put labels on how I perceived his personality, they would include “intensity and aloofness.”
One of the reasons that Hennek, McLean and I got into climbing is that we were shy around girls, had a pervasive fear of rejection. Asking someone that one has never climbed with before to do a climb, to me, was similar to asking someone out on a date.
So in the fall of 1965, after completing the FA of Lucifer’s Ledge, I asked Frank to accompany me on the FA of the climb to the Oasis. He didn’t think about it long and said that he wasn’t interested but didn’t explain his reasons. I didn’t take it personally. That understanding, that rejection was not about me, was one of the key Life Lessons I learned as a result of climbing which allowed me to gain more confidence in all social situations.
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