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east side underground
Trad climber
Hilton crk,ca
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I'm going to hit "the ice" right now!Ice skating that is. Got my puck,stick, pads ready for some pick up hockey, and some smoooth gliding! Gull lake is on.
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Topic Author's Reply - Jan 1, 2009 - 12:06pm PT
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And a jolly hockey puck, ye are, Murry! Watch out for the frosty loin check!?!
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Sweet archival snag Steve!
"A boy and his tools"....
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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DR!
You’re such a jewel here on the forum.
I love these passages:
“That's me and YC on the cover of Mountain. Don't remember ever seeing that issue. I belayed short, after he pestered me with ‘save some for me.’
Still, Don Jensen had one [a terrordactyl] in the Palisades as his only tool, and I've always been amazed at what he did with it. Not water ice -- given the equipage he wisely stayed away from that -- but with nothing more for purchase than that 50 cm shaft plunged in, he down-soloed the FA of the V-Notch in snow conditions. No one for miles around if he got in trouble. It had a hammer face for rock, and he wore it in a holster on his belt.”
Jeepers, that’s pretty slim toolage for such a descent.
And I’m thinking the shaft on those things is more like 40 cm, so he’s going down a 50/60° slope with effectively nothing more than a claw hammer in hand!
Forget about self arrest….
More stories please.
What about Don Jensen?
Enigmatic personage right???
You must have some John Fisher vignettes too….
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Topic Author's Reply - Jan 1, 2009 - 04:11pm PT
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The weapons under discussion from Climbing Ice, 1978.
And a Terrordactyl action shot or two.
The Fox uses Terrordacyls on steep mixed ground on the Buachaille Etive Mor in Glencoe. Typically he is wearing a "flat at" and gaberdine trousers. From Mountains again.
Rob Taylorin the Hemsedal Valley, Norway. Henry Barber photo. From Climbing Ice.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Nice.
As I mumbled upthread, the Terrors were said to be more about hooking Scottish mixed than swinging thick ice.
I mean, very little clearance with that pick/handle configuration.
I'm pretty sure that first shot was cropped & used in a Salewa crampon ad.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Wow,
Same photo shoot slightly different picture:
From Mountain number 53
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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I started out with those crampons.
The front point teeth were angled down but straight,
So it helped to have a little bit different kicking motion than with curved points; sort of a downward kick as opposed to a swing of the lower leg.
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Topic Author's Reply - Jan 1, 2009 - 05:02pm PT
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To stand and rely on.....unlike that left foot!
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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I always wondered about that too.
(I think he is just baring his teeth)
Then the real terror strikes after that left foot gives way and the tool in his right hand comes shearing out...
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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From Mountain number 58
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Who made the first bent-shaft tools?
Lowe???
Never saw these out in the field; one piece stamped? Cut??
Steve you could probably duplicate these for us in a couple hours?
From Mountain number 68 July/August 1979
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Topic Author's Reply - Jan 1, 2009 - 05:59pm PT
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I could use em to install rigid foam too! LOL
The bent shaft thing had to be european with so many tweakers afoot there.
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Doug Robinson
Trad climber
Santa Cruz
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Wow! We've seen so many shots of Yvon at his tin-shed forge that it's nice to get a look at Hamish in his shop. So similar, really, the slightly disheveled, slightly cluttered place where serious metalworking obviously happens.
All these shots show much later and more evolved McInnes tools than the ones I was thinking of from the late 60s. The blades on these look to be about one-third the thickness and of a high alloy. I'd like to swing those tools, and I bet they would work just fine.
The earlier things were indeed just hooking tools. You blasted a hole in ice then hooked it.
The one Hamish has in his hand is the same length as Don Jensen's tool. You're probably right, Tar, 40 cm. In the comparison shot from Climbing Ice I think the Piolet and North Wall Hammer are 50 or 55 cm.
The one I got was in total admiring imitation of Don Jensen. I was a puppy, an apprentice guide. He was not only Chief Guide in the Palisades, and later owner of PSOM, but he was the real deal cutting-edge alpine climber. His West Face of Mt. Huntington from '65 or so was the Alaskan climb of the decade. (Can't recall if the Cassin was done in the Sixties too.) He trained for all his Alaskan climbs in the spring in the Palisades, and down-soloing the V-Notch was just one snapshot out of weeks of soloing around up there, all alone. Not only is that a pretty small shaft to anchor a self-belay kicking steps downward, but in spring conditions I always worry about how bonded the snowpack is, really, to the burnished green ice below.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Is that the same groundbreaking climb that David Roberts participated in and wrote about?
Maybe I'm thinking Mount Deborah.
Here is the current state of my Jensen pack:
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Topic Author's Reply - Jan 1, 2009 - 09:01pm PT
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I think Hamish went to work for the people that produced the Curver and several other not quite designs. Lots of design experimentation going on
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Doug Robinson
Trad climber
Santa Cruz
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Yep, the same climb with Roberts, chronicled in his first book Mountain of my Fear. He went on to write Deborah: A Wilderness Narrative about his expedition there with Don in 1964. His description of first meeting Don is the opening passage of Deborah:
"I first met Don Jensen at the beginning of our sophomore year at Harvard. I had heard of Don -- other members of the club had told me what a strong, enthusiastic climber he was. But it was something of a surprise to meet him. That Friday afternoon, I had lugged my gear over to the entry of Lowell House, where the cars would pick us up. With the other beginners, I stood for a few moments in an awkward silence. Then one of them stepped aggressively toward me, stretching out an eager hand: "Hi! I'm Don Jensen."
"I was surprised because he seemed so boyishly friendly. I had imagined some cool, hard athlete. I could see that Don was powerful... His black hair and solid face were strong and masculine. But his face was also young, and terribly sincere. I was used to the Harvard 'style,' in which one affects a biting wit and a cold heart. ...he was nostalgic for the Sierra Nevada. He told me about a twenty-day trip he had taken alone, following the divide southward. I had never been out for that long, let alone by myself; I suggested that he must have got lonely. On the contrary, he had found the several people he had run into a disappointment. Once he had seen a large group of Sierra Club hikers, and had deliberately skirted them so that he would not have to talk to them."
I'll get to telling my own Jensen stories, but when I found this I had to copy it out. A different take, but so obviously the same guy and the same boyish enthusiasm I loved in him.
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Doug Robinson
Trad climber
Santa Cruz
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Interesting to think of Hamish going on to work at Snowdon Mouldings. And especially interesting to hear about actual experience swinging a Curver.
My Chouinard-trained eye saw the droop as too curved, going beyond mirroring the arc of swinging the tool. So I suspected it wouldn't work and never tried one. On the other hand, even the backwards curve that came out later seemed to stick just fine, and with the same swing. I've never quite understood that.
To further confound things, I was accosted in a pub in Sheffield in the mid-Nineties by the story that the first drooped-pick axes were made by Scots, re-forging their axes heated over a Primus stove.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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DR said:
"To further confound things, I was accosted in a pub in Sheffield in the mid-Nineties by the story that the first drooped-pick axes were made by Scots, re-forging their axes heated over a Primus stove."
Out here in Colorado Bill Roos and Paul Sibley were tinkering with ice axes, maybe as early as late 60s and certainly into the 70s.
Below is a picture of my sewing shop where I created many sewn items including Fish Products portaledges throughout the 90s.
On the wall to the left you can see an old stamp remnant from the Forrest ice ax manufacturing process.
In the enlarged photo below,
On the far left side is a Clog tool, (a short north wall hammer), unaltered.
To the right of that,
Also on the left side of the double doors hang twin custom short 45 cm tools.
These appear to have Simond Chacal blades welded onto some other sort of head and shaft.
To the right are two other similar examples, more toward ax length (particularly the yellow one) along with a 60 cm Chouinard Piolet.
Up in the high right corner is some sort of north wall hammer, with a mid-length wooden tool handle, no ferrule, wrapped in tennis racket grip leather!
These guys were experimenting with radically drooped pics fairly early on: I’m not sure when they started. Paul has mentioned something about doing it in a similar timeframe to that of McInnis. So Doug Robinson, your story about having been accosted by the gearhead Scotsmen: they could apparently get a little of that rivalry from these Colorado boys!
(Maybe best just to drink the scotch, or beer, marvel the tool-relics and wander outside under the sky, breathe some fresh air ... haha!)
Somewhere else in the mix was something more representative of their earlier work, with a simple droop which they augmented from a generic wood shafted short ax. Most of what you see on the wall here is reverse curve modification, so it represents their late 70s noodlings.
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