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guido
Trad climber
Santa Cruz/New Zealand/South Pacific
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 23, 2013 - 02:01pm PT
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Bump and if anyone can decipher how to post the music let me know as it tis no longer avaiable on you tube?
Duke Duke Duke, Duke of Earl.............................
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guido
Trad climber
Santa Cruz/New Zealand/South Pacific
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 23, 2013 - 03:08pm PT
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Awesome! the Duke is back.
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steveA
Trad climber
bedford,massachusetts
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Feb 23, 2013 - 05:07pm PT
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Definitely, one of the best threads ever on ST!
I saw Claude a few years ago, and he looked like he had hardly aged, since the last time I had seen him, 40 years earlier.
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Mar 16, 2013 - 02:36pm PT
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Earl Bump...
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steveA
Trad climber
Wolfeboro, NH
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Jul 26, 2013 - 02:26pm PT
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Bump for a ST Classic!
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rgold
Trad climber
Poughkeepsie, NY
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Jul 26, 2013 - 04:21pm PT
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I've been out climbing with Claude a few times this summer. The heat and humidity gave us an excuse for pushing our already lax standards for how much climbing actually constitutes a climbing day, but suffice it to say that some pitches were climbed by team geezer before nap time.
On a related note, that fact that this is post number 69 in the thread does fit well with Vulgarian tradition.
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donini
Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
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Jul 26, 2013 - 05:40pm PT
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Post number 70 from a freshly minted septuagenarian. I remember Claude from the late 60's in the Tetons when the Vulgarians reigned supreme.
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RyanD
climber
Squamish
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Jul 26, 2013 - 08:37pm PT
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Haha such a killer thread. The visual of the whole scene is hilarious!
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Kligfield
Mountain climber
Boulder, CO
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Jul 26, 2013 - 11:27pm PT
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Here's another Claude Suhl story. I must have been 1968 or 1969. Or perhaps even 1970. Claude allowed me to cajole him to actually leave Camp 4 and attempt a climb together. This would be the South Face of Washington Column (Kor route). I was adamant that we climb it in a day but Claude insisted that we do it in Vulgarian style. What this meant I was to learn about later. Anyway, I'm leading the first pitch and put Claude on belay and he says "wait a minute I need you to haul this pack up first." So up comes a huge haul back that is, presumably filled with water bottles. I tell Claude we don't need all this water for the S. Face climb but he insists. So 4 pitches later, on Dinner Ledge I finally haul the pig up and look inside. Not a water bottle to be seen. Instead were 6 bags filled with grapefruit, fresh from the local market. Nothing else--no sleeping bags, no water, no flashlight, only grapefruit. Well later on dinner ledge comes the reason--apparently grapefruit and a particular form of magic mushrooms have an interesting effect when ingested together (I didn't know this--even being a creature of the 60s). So later that night and all night long I was treated to the combination of grapefruit, mushrooms and Claude singing "Duke Duke Duke Duke of Earl..." The story of how we didn't finish the climb is yet another saga that will never make it into the Yosemite memo book. Just another climbing story of the great Claude Suhl.
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Camster (Rhymes with Hamster)
Social climber
CO
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Jul 27, 2013 - 12:24am PT
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Joe, will talk to you offline anyway. Flipping jealous of the sailing adventures. Cam
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rgold
Trad climber
Poughkeepsie, NY
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Jul 27, 2013 - 12:33am PT
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Roy's grapefruit story reminds me that the Vulgarians taught me an enduring lesson that shaped much of my enjoyment of mountain and crag adventures: The Art of the Fiasco. It was from them that I learned that success, conventionally defined---and climbers for all their counter-culture posturing, are by and large very conventional---was not the only cause for celebration.
It may be that the Vulgarians most revolutionary gesture was not the celebrated confrontations with established authorities, whether it be the Appies in the Gunks or the rangers in Yosemite. Rather, it was the elevation of failure to a stature equal to, although of course different from, success. This was, and is, a far deeper and more radical rejection of mainstream cultural norms than the their embrace, just a few years before the entire youth culture joined in, of sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll.
Failure, rich, exotic, exuberant failure, wrong turns, misjudgements, bad planning, faulty equipment, failures of will, failures of technique, failures of strength, failures of courage, failures of intelligence, accidental failures, predictable failures, even occasionally meticulously planned failures, all carried out with the best intentions and the worst results, these were celebrated with the same gusto and good will the rest of the world reserved for notable accomplishments.
This was a radically democratic outlook in an essentially elitist world, and I am speaking now of the climbing world, not the world at large. It made the adventure, the journey, the primary focus and the outcome the icing on the cake.
I might add, and I think the observation only superficially paradoxical, that the Vulgarians went on to be really quite successful in conventional terms, perhaps because our lives are, at least for most of us, filled as much with failure as success, and learning to appreciate that totality of experience may well have enhanced, rather than obstructed, the Vulgarian ability to succeed in the conventional world that lay beyond the mountains and crags of their youth.
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justthemaid
climber
Jim Henson's Basement
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Jul 27, 2013 - 09:44am PT
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Great stories. Missed this the first time around. Thanks for the bump
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Kligfield
Mountain climber
Boulder, CO
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John Hudson first clued me in on the line, "there is no success like failure, and failure is no success at all" but this may have been from a Bob Dylan song?
But I second what RG asserts about failures. Throughout my climbing career, I always learned much more from failures, and these failures led to later successes. After all, isn't that what red-pointing and similar sport climbing tactics are really all about?
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Mar 23, 2014 - 04:48pm PT
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Bump for a Good Vulgarian Belly Laugh!
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jstan
climber
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Mar 23, 2014 - 10:03pm PT
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Oh my g d. We had such great music then.
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Happiegrrrl2
Trad climber
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Jun 11, 2018 - 10:10am PT
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Claude got bit by a baby Copperhead last week. He is still having some tingling in his hand, but back at it with the trail crew. The same day another guy got bit by one at the Gunks, but that guy had to get flown to the Bronx(or Westchester...forget) to the hospital that has antivenom. Claude didn't go the antivenom route, but did overnight in Kingston hospital for observation. Said his hand swelled up something huge!
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