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Jeremy Handren
climber
NV
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Dec 31, 2007 - 05:42pm PT
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You're wasting your time Bob, these guys are as myopic as it gets....see if you can find an old copy of the original "The Monty Python Paperbock", its got a great spoof of the very thing that you are dealing with here.
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TwistedCrank
climber
Ideeho
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Dec 31, 2007 - 05:49pm PT
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Anyone ever hear of Albert Ellingwood???
Wasn't he named after an arete in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains?
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Toker Villain
Big Wall climber
Toquerville, Utah
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Dec 31, 2007 - 05:53pm PT
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Well I'd like to see the Monty Python, but must admit to being put off by Handren's condescension.
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bob d'antonio
Trad climber
Taos, NM
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Dec 31, 2007 - 06:11pm PT
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Jeremey...it's kinda like politics...the truth doesn't matter.
This thread should be called 'name 100 people..." and even then we would fall short.
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Jaybro
Social climber
The West
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Dec 31, 2007 - 07:32pm PT
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"The guy that drilled the bolt on Ship Rock"
DB?
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Mungeclimber
Trad climber
sorry, just posting out loud.
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 31, 2007 - 07:39pm PT
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Bob D'Antonio, come on man, throw up some links to your references or post some thoughts. We know we aren't going to get it perfect, but if we don't hear the stories, the references will be lost altogether.
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rgold
Trad climber
Poughkeepsie, NY
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Bob, its not so much that the truth doesn't matter as that we don't have a common understanding of what it means to influence American climbing. I think it fair to say that a number of the climbers mentioned were and are outstanding climbers but, for various reasons, have had little or no influence on the sport, and I think further that, perhaps, some people are confounding the notions of admirable and influential.
Gill is an extreme example, in my opinion. I wonder whether anyone in the history of climbing has been so far ahead of his or her contemporaries. But I think Gill had almost no effect on American climbing. His contemporaries had no idea what he was up to and considered him, if they knew about him at all, as a talented but marginal figure, engaged in a niche activity of little relevance. Gill's stature has only been understood and recognized in retrospect, when the rest of the world, primarily of its own accord, started retracing his footsteps. And so, amazing as he is, I don't think he could be viewed as particularly influential.
Much as we celebrate the latest accomplishments in difficulty and/or boldness, the fact of the matter is that these developments are intrinsic to the sport, they are part of its flow, and might be viewed as inevitable evolutionary advances. We don't know who will make the next leap of into a new world of possibility, but we know that a leap will happen. This is not meant to detract from those who actually rise above the standards of the day and show that more is possible, but I don't think they can be viewed as influential in the same way as the far smaller number of climbers who have, as I suggested earlier, given rise to a genuine paradigm shift, something completely different from a predictable evolutionary event, that has pointed the entire activity in a different direction.
I do understand, being rather long in the tooth, that many (but certainly not all) of the posters have entered the stream at a point beyond it's radical rerouting, and so speak from a perspective that does not include a sense of the enormous power needed to redirect the flow. Not many climbers would set off today on---let's say---an obviously difficult first ascent, with a rack consisting only of nuts, even though today's climbers know full well how effective nuts can be. So try to imagine how much more radical it would be to give up the only way you know to achieve any adequate protection, using instead some new method that no one understands particularly well and which may not work in critical situations.
The legacy of Robbins, Chouinard, and Stannard is somehow moving the country, indeed the world, (British use of nuts never influenced anyone else to try them) in a completely different direction, one that was neither evolutionary nor predictable, one that, even in retrospect, seems unlikely to ever achieve the near universal support these pioneers somehow managed to engineer.
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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As someone who has climbed since the 1960's, I cannot decide on just ten people. A "generation" of climbers seldom lasts more than a few years, so later climbers don't know who influenced the previous generations. Mark Powell, for example, started at least two trends that greatly influenced Yosemite (I won't purport to speak for non-California American climbing)-- he became a full-time climber, sacrificing the traditional American post-War measures of success, and he chopped the non-Salathe bolts on the Lost Arrow. He, perhaps more than anyone else, established the ethic of minimizing bolt usage, and demonstrated that the most difficult free and aid techniques could -- and should -- be used on the biggest Yosemite routes.
Similarly, the boldness of his leads shocked previous generations. His climb of Bridalveil East caused David Brower to comment on the apparent lack of safety of then-current Yosemite climbing. Pratt and Sacherer certainly pushed the level of boldness -- few today realize how terrified we were of Sacherer's leads, where he seemed to ignore the concept of protection, and Pratt's leads of Crack of Doom and Twilight Zone seemed off the boldness chart. Indeed, when I started climbing in 1967, Pratt and Sacherer were the climbers I tried to emulate, unaware how Powell and Robbins had influenced Valley free climbing standards before them.
All of that being said, to me Robbins stands apart from any other Yosemite climber. His free ascents of Open Book at Tahquitz and the East Chimney of Rixon's Pinnacle set standards from which all other trad climbing evolved. Admittedly, Salathe really set the standard for big wall aid climbing, but Robbins' boldness on routes like Arches Direct, the Direct Northwest Face of Half Dome (not to mention the Undercling Pitch and the Narrows, both of which he led more than 50 years ago), the Chimney of Horrors on Higher Spire, and innumerable other climbs, set him apart as the leader of not just a few years, but of two decades.
Bridwell, of course, directly influenced my generation and was our clear leader, but looking back, nothing we did seems revolutionary when compared to what was done before us. Similarly, John Stannard was, to me, a great prophet of clean climbing and one to which we provincials paid great heed, but the ethical concept seemed less a revolution than a logical extension of Powell's actions on the Lost Arrow.
Sorry for the length of this rant, but the more I think about it, either there were very few truly revolutionary climbers, or the number of significantly influential climbers greatly exceeds ten. In any case, I wish I could thank them all for making our sport one I still enjoy after all this time.
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hobo_dan
Social climber
Minnesota
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Hmmmmmmmmmmmm.........
Eric Beck --for the quote........."there lies a leisure class at both ends of the social spectrum"
Todd Skinner for his 'come one come all' attitude that changed the sport away from the elitist attitude
John Bachar for making the sport way dangerous and elitist and giving it total mystique
David Roberts for climbing Huntington
Jim Bridwell for living, breathing total coolness
Greg Child because he almost climbed the shining wall on Gash 4
Tony Yaniro for doing Grand Illusion
Fritz Weissner--Devils Tower, Waddington K2
The Lowe/Kennedy/Donnini teams that did all that rad sh#t in the seventies
Fred Beckey
Chouinard
Robbins
and all the rest of you dumb bastards that I ever tied in with or tied one on with. Thanks for the best times I ever had
murf
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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I'm suprised these two haven't been mentioned.
If it weren't for their development of a certain Southern California crag these guys may have never formed the next wave.
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Mungeclimber
Trad climber
sorry, just posting out loud.
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Topic Author's Reply - Jan 1, 2008 - 11:56pm PT
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kewl pics TGT.
Chuck Wilts?
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Gary
climber
Desolation Basin, Calif.
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Number one has to be Robert Underhill.
John Mendenhall belongs on that list as well.
And don't forget the godfather: Bolton Brown.
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atchafalaya
climber
Babylon
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Another vote for Robert Underhill
John Muir
Fritz Weissner
Fred Beckey
Royal Robbins
Yvon C.
Jim Bridwell
Alan Watts
Lynn Hill
Chris Sharma
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burp
Trad climber
Salt Lake City
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I'll post my list:
Salathe
Harding
Robbins
Gill
Bridwell
Barber
Bachar
Watts
Hill
Sharma
Honorable mention:
Chouinard/Frost (equipment)
Kor (famous in these here desert parts)
Beckey (a climber list along with a FA list would be incomplete without Beckey)
Lowes (collective impact -- equipment innovation, alpinism, etc)
Long (folklore, bada$$)
Kauk (right place, right time, right friends -- Midnight Lightning)
Yaniro (Grand Illusion)
Croft (no explanation needed)
Skinner (was great at self-promotion)
Vermin (a whole rating system named after him!)
Caldwell (doing some cool things right now!)
etc....
Enjoy!
burp
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Off White
climber
Tenino, WA
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Great rosters, can't much argue with any of 'em, but I have one to add:
Greg Epperson
He did a lot to redefine the whole realm of climbing photography and had a huge influence on how many people saw the game, and he certainly affected most folks working in that field today. Oh, he's no slouch as a climber either, but I think the work he put into getting the angles and shots he did was truly visionary and inspiring.
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nutjob
Trad climber
San Jose, CA
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Al Gore has to be in there somewhere, since he invented the Internet and made this free exchange of information and community consensus-building possible :)
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rgold
Trad climber
Poughkeepsie, NY
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"OK, now that we have a list of names going, write a one to two sentence summary of each person's accomplishments and add it to the Wikipedia "List of Climbers" page."
And if the non-climbing "archivists" in charge of this silliness can't verify those accomplishments with a Google search, chances are they'll delete 'em as fast as you add 'em.
Is there some reason, beyond the fact that an "archivist" once read a mountaineering book, why the world needs a list of climbers?
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rockermike
Mountain climber
Berkeley
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"Is there some reason, beyond the fact that an "archivist" once read a mountaineering book, why the world needs a list of climbers?"
Because its raining.
As to Gore and the internet, get the story straight and don't believe a word that comes from W and his minions.
http://www.perkel.com/politics/gore/internet.htm
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Risk
Mountain climber
Minkler, CA
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Honorable mention, at a bare minimum, is owed to the fine authors of the guidebooks that have helped lead us to the summits and up the routes. For Yosemite and the Sierra, names that come to mind include:
Walter A. Starr Jr.
Hervey Voge
Andy Smatko
Steve Roper
George Meyers
Chris McNamara
Don Reid
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