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G_Gnome
Trad climber
In the mountains... somewhere...
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Nov 10, 2007 - 02:50pm PT
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John said: "So if anyone is feeling excluded or one-upped by anything said by or about the Stonemasters, I trust you've missed the spirit of the non-movement, which was a community fandango, not a technical exercise carried out by various isolated individuals doing largely specialized activities."
And yet routes were established with big runouts to the first bolt to "keep the riffraff off". Everyone was invited, only those who could man up were allowed to stay. That was one hell of a time to climb!
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hobo_dan
Social climber
Minnesota
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Nov 11, 2007 - 06:45pm PT
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After re-reading my re-write I think it sounds like something from that StoneHenge scene in Spinal Tap where the Little Person is dancing aroound the 10" high model
and this route goes to five "Eleven"
I went canoeing with Steve Araiza and his family this summer- We were remembering and the term we had for the Stonemasters was that they were the "Heavies"
murf
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Jun 20, 2012 - 12:27am PT
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Bump for the process.
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Spider Savage
Mountain climber
The shaggy fringe of Los Angeles
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Jun 20, 2012 - 01:11am PT
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John, your first post is classic 2007 marketing copy. Sounds pretty funny now I bet.
If I may put aside marketing lingo and move more towards philosophy, I'd say the Stonemaster credo might be summed up in these words:
"Why are you doing that?"
This is the question that shatters the current paradigm and moves us to the next level.
As Largo has said in other posts, something to the affect that a Stonemaster could exist at any time when the old ways fall to new ways and a clearer vision of the future emerges.
I hope the Stonemaster "brand" does well and a few of those old guys make some money from it.
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Wayno
Big Wall climber
Seattle, WA
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Jun 20, 2012 - 01:34am PT
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The self is not important but the work is.
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ß Î Ø T Ç H
Boulder climber
bouldering
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Jun 20, 2012 - 01:48am PT
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Thread aside, it amazes me that Rokjox
has been silenced here.
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Patrick Oliver
Boulder climber
Fruita, Colorado
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Jun 20, 2012 - 04:32am PT
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I have no desire to be disrespectful. That's not my intent.
Rather I'm curious and want to understand the timeline,
as I rework my Wizards of Rock. When actually did people start
to use the term "stonemasters?" Of course originally I came up
with Master of Rock, as a title of a book about the best boulderer
anywhere. And Stonemaster a fair bit later seemed to
appear. It seemed to take a kind of switch on master of
rock. There was, of course, a film... called the Stonemasters,
as I recall, though I can't exactly place it time-wise. For me,
that was the first I heard the name stonemaster.
Wasn't the idea of the group who called themselves "stonemasters"
a retrospective idea. I mean, did they actually think that way
at the time these gents were doing their best clmbs? Or was it later
as some began to reflect on these individuals as a kind of group or
clan? And of course there were phenomenal climbers all around the
country at the time, setting standards in their own areas, the best
in many different areas being the best of the best anywhere, and
some of these were friends with many of those later cited as stonemasters.
So is the line a little unclear in some cases, as to whom a
stonemaster is? Mined you, there is nothing at all wrong with
the retrospective idea, that the term stonemasters should later
be applied to a group of friends who might not at the moment of
their brilliance have thought of themselves as part of a group.
I hear people talk about Ginsberg and various things that really
were of a different, earlier time period. I think it's easy to
collect all sorts of valuable feelings and images from various years
and decades later find them grouped into a single little era... Memory
probably does tend to mush a lot of things together that weren't
in fact so closely related. It might be good to help us gain
a better understanding, a tighter sense of those people and
those days.... I climbed a fair bit with lots of those guys,
Accomazzo, Tobin, Bachar, even a little with Warbler, etc.,
but I never at that time generally assigned to them ever
heard the term stonemasters. Could be I lived too far away...
or wasn't especially listening to that particular thing?
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splitter
Trad climber
Hodad, surfing the galactic plane
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Jun 20, 2012 - 06:14am PT
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PO- "Wasn't the idea of the group who called themselves 'stonemasters' a retrospective idea. I mean, did they actually think that way at the time these gents were actually doing their best climbs?"
The winter of '76-'77 is the timeline that I could give you as knowing for certain that they were calling themselves 'Stonemasters' because...I recall being at home in Mammoth one day that winter and one of my roommates walking in and saying "One of the Stonemaster's was soloing ice in(either Lee Vining Canyon or June Lake/don't recall which)and took a long fall and decked." Pretty much his exact words, and I specifically recall him referring to the person as "one of the Stonemasters." And I remember asking him which one and he said he wasn't sure(it was breaking news/travels pretty fast on the eastside)but he believed it was Gib Lewis(which was later confirmed as being true). And I am pretty sure that 'Stonemasters" was a housedhold term by then(climbing household).
Lived and climbed in Idywild '72-'74 and they were of course ubiquitos to that area during that time. And very well could have been referred to as such, but I don't remember. I do recall that by '72-'73, the requirement was already set at leading Valhala in order to gain entrance into their inner circle. i was not worthy(or perhaps to chicken sh#t to man up to their standards. i never tried Valhalla, but did some other .11's at the time!
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Don Paul
Big Wall climber
Colombia, South America
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Jun 20, 2012 - 07:49am PT
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In the end, we are the measure of our desire. How we fill the emptiness, that is our legend. How empty are the legends, that is the wind.
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splitter
Trad climber
Hodad, surfing the galactic plane
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Jun 20, 2012 - 08:05am PT
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DP- "How empty are the legends, that is the wind"
^^^so very true for all of humanity(imo)!
"I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and striving after wind."
edit; 'all is vanity and striving after wind' in modern vernacular = it is all vain/hopeless, like trying to catch/grasp the wind!
@Don Paul, 'The Silver Chalice' = primo read!
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Sierra Ledge Rat
Social climber
Retired in Appalachia
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Jun 20, 2012 - 08:39am PT
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1970s
Camp 4
Are You Experienced playing on a tape cassette player on the picnic table during breakfast.
We called it "pancake music" because we always made pancakes to Jimi.
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Charlie D.
Trad climber
Western Slope, Tahoe Sierra
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Jun 20, 2012 - 09:42am PT
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splitter, interesting for me hearing the phrase "striving after wind" having moved from Oregon to Pacific Beach in 1974 and climbing again back at Tahquitz. Not sure when Striving After Wind was established in PB but I did buy all my passive protection there in '74 and gave up my old rack of pins. I always wondered about the name of that store.
I do believe you're right as to the time frame, it seemed to me that the first I heard the term Stonemaster was at Tahquitz in 75 or 76. I think a lot of people or time blurrs the Stonemaster era with the sixties and early seventies when there was a completely different crowd hanging around the popular crags and in Yosemite some of whom continued on.
There are times when a convergence takes place of events, people, place and culture; a synergy of circumstanace that morphed into something tangible or at least identifiable. I saw the sixties that way and the Stonemaster era as well.
JL, as a suggestion don't date it by quoting time such as "30 years", make it timeless. Possibility and adventure while limited to our demographic is very much present for youth who should make no small plans.
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Charlie D.
Trad climber
Western Slope, Tahoe Sierra
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Jun 20, 2012 - 09:58am PT
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Found a chaulk bag at Suicide in 76 with a yellow lightning bolt on it which cracked me up. The Cal Tech crowd along with the old rock climbing section of the Sierra Club were on their way out and the new generation had arrived.
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splitter
Trad climber
Hodad, surfing the galactic plane
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Jun 20, 2012 - 09:58am PT
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CharlieD, ^^^good stuff(your first post)!
Yes, PB's 'A Striving After Wind' the owner(Tom)use to ride up with us and climb at Tahquitz/Suicide during the years i mentioned. I bought a pair of Black Beauties climbing/edging boots when they were in vogue via the stonemasters! i followed suit and immediately had the soles removed and replaced with the flat, hard PA sole(as per stonemasters for the supreme edging boot for suicide face routes). worked well. i recall getting strung out/run out and off route on many suicide face routes in those things, ie. 'rebolting developement', etc.!...great times!! evidently Tom(can't think of his last name)passed away in the mid/late seventies...he was a good dude, i will always remember the day he took a long fall on one of the weeping wall routes(perhaps revelation)huge blisters on the palms of both hands. he was a hardcore dude(RIP)!
edit: i had a lightening bolt chalk bag in the mid seventies(i was not worthy). a friend made it for me. prollie still have it somewhere! i graduated to a 'kinnaloa' chalk bag in the mid eighties! i was so cool, lol!!
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Don Paul
Big Wall climber
Colombia, South America
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Jun 20, 2012 - 11:07am PT
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Interesting, my idea was from the Tibetan Book of the Dead.
The Yosemite rock climbing culture is a distinct culture as genuine as that of any tribe in the jungle. Captured in the video Ground Up Perspectives, also Fitz Cahall's Dirtbag Diaries is about this, somewhat broader but Yosemite is the paradigm.
As far as I'm concerned, the people camping in camp 4 right now are stonemasters. Or, at least the ones who camp there all summer. Or, if the name stonemaster is taken, should be another name for them, which is just as heroic.
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Todd Eastman
climber
Bellingham, WA
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Jun 20, 2012 - 11:21am PT
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Don't over-hype some very impressive accomplishments from youth...
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Jaybro
Social climber
Wolf City, Wyoming
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Jun 20, 2012 - 12:08pm PT
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As far as the timeline, it looks like Master of Rock didn't come out until '77....
-"Stonemaster" was well in the vernacular several years before that, in California anyway.
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graham
Social climber
Ventura, California
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Jun 20, 2012 - 12:46pm PT
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Not sure it needs to be cleared up... Stonemaster was coined the same week several of us repeated Valhalla in rapid secession. that was the Spring of 72 I believe. the term might have been used quite a bit for a year or so after but was never pushed too much. So that might be behind the ambiguity of when it was first heard. I know in 78 during my trip to Britain it surfaced again in an interview Mountain Magazine made me do making it public for better or worse.
Nothing really retrospective as to the beginnings here. All were out just having fun. A lot of us traveled and in the process freed routes and raised grades. No one could help that the word spread in stories and lore.
I would say though Pat's "Master of Rock" played a part in it's history.
Mike
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k-man
Gym climber
SCruz
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Jun 20, 2012 - 12:57pm PT
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Stonemasters are the shizz....
Link: Knickers!
Trust me on this one.
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