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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Jan 17, 2009 - 12:15pm PT
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Thanks!
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Jan 17, 2009 - 12:18pm PT
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hahahaha.
I think those routes (Avant Cave & Chain Gang) were done the next year Russ,
Which is why it (his tirade) sort of threw me for a loop, given that we had done all of this stuff together,
Which were oddly missing from his proof, and which were all ground up anyway, including Avant Cave & Chain Gang.
Like I needed an example...
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deuce4
climber
Hobart, Australia
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Jan 17, 2009 - 03:40pm PT
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HighDesertDJ
Trad climber
Arid-zona
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Jan 17, 2009 - 03:43pm PT
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When I was 20 years old and a fresh face on the SAR site he called my truck "proud."
It made me feel warm and fuzzy.
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Chicken Skinner
Trad climber
Yosemite
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Feb 17, 2009 - 10:30pm PT
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I thought some of you would enjoy seeing this.
He used it on Cerro Torre and Fitzroy during his Patagonia trip in the late '80's and during his forays around the Valley with Fosburg. I miss him and think the Deli has never been the same since.
Ken
P.S. I have quite a bit of his rack and video footage (as far as I know the only) of him climbing on two different routes in the Valley. I have to get it transferred from Hi 8 to DVD.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Feb 18, 2009 - 01:07am PT
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That's too cool Ken!
He also had a fairly short Charlet ice ax.
I wonder if that is in your stash of Walt memorabilia.
Black rubber grip, exposed aluminum shaft up by the head, steeply drooped pick.
One day back there a ways Russ and I were hanging out with Walt at his "coffin" in camp 4 and he pulled it out to tell us stories about climbing in Chamonix.
Something about "wow man I love this tool, used it on all kinds of great climbs in Cham, one in particular, with so and so, terrific weather ... great weather ... T-shirts man ... bright blue sky, epic, big stuff, moving out fast, rock falling all around & my buddy got frostbite ..." and so forth.
Russ looks at him, somewhat incredulous, "T-shirts and frostbite, uh, right. You guys and your alpine dreams....."
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BooYah
Social climber
Ruby Range
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Feb 18, 2009 - 01:19am PT
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We miss you, Walt.
Always.
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Mimi
climber
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Feb 18, 2009 - 01:29am PT
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Thanks for the memories Roy and Russ. I think I met Hy, and Dave Ingersol of course, when they visited Walt in the Valley in the summer and then at the memorial. His buds from Fresno St. They really are super nice guys. Hard to believe it's going on 10 years.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Feb 18, 2009 - 01:46am PT
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I saw Dave Ingersol just about a year ago here in Colorado. New Year's party 2008. Dave is so straight and clean, Walt kind of had a streak of that in him, but we rarely saw it as a stand alone attribute, usually as a heady calculation all mixed up in layers with that wildness; those guys go so far back...
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Norwegian
Trad climber
Placerville, California
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Feb 18, 2009 - 07:15am PT
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at the heights and depths of our domain, a warrior is made from the inside out.
an enchanted warrior hoarding widsoms and genius borne of satisfied wonder.
the warrior's sleep is seasoned with the riches of achievement, and the loving respect of his peers.
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SteveW
Trad climber
The state of confusion
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Feb 18, 2009 - 09:44am PT
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I don't know how I missed this one, but WOW!
In the first pic from Afghanistan, it looks like the
picture of Ahmed Shah Massoud, the mujahideen leader
assasinated by al Qaida right before 9/11.
What a personality Walt must have been. I wish I'd had the
chance to meet him--but the stories. . .
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BASE104
climber
An Oil Field
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Feb 18, 2009 - 09:55am PT
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That hammer is an old Forrest Maulner (sic) hammer. I used one of those for a long time.
Yeah, in Chamonix we had a great time. When it was storming up high, we used to sit on a bench right in the middle of town in front of the post office and pound bottles of cheap wine.
After a while the little old ladies in town got to recognizing us and would just walk by and laugh.
He did some memorable antics in the Bar Nash, but after a while, all of the crazies from every country would sort of gravitate to each other. We had quite the crew.
One night we are sitting in this little doghouse hut below the Midi station. At that time, the real hut had burned to the ground. It was packed elbow to elbow with climbers. Snow on the floor, no door, total hole. It was before the iron curtain had fell and there were a couple of Chechs in there going on about how they loved Reagan, the sanctions, and democracy was coming.
We were boozing the whole time, and had a couple of bottles of the worst wine on earth in us after a while, and Walt said,
"If I don't like them, I cast the DECIDING vote and SHOOT them."
Those guys were shocked speechless, and we crawled through the door out into a wild storm. Someone tried to talk us out of going out, but we just blew them off and had a drunken epic at midnight in a snow and lightning storm. Somehow we navigated perfectly over to the Italian side of Mt. Blanc with a couple of hundred foot visibility. Only occasionally would we crater through a small crevasse up to our waist or so.
Fun times.
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wallrat
Trad climber
San Diego CA
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I knew Walt when I was wintering over in JTree. Over the years he came to be one of the most enigmatic guys I knew; rude, but kindly...out of control, but very disciplined. He had a wit and warmth I miss. One day we put up 'White Rain'(his lead), and 'Perfect Fingers'(mine)on Queen Mountain. On the way down, I squashed this big scorpion, he looked at me like I'd molested a kid, and said; 'you shouldn't have done that, he wasn't hurting anything'. Funny, the things you remember. Walt really was larger than life.
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Largo
Sport climber
Venice, Ca
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Walt made an on-sight, free solo ascent of "Woodrow," 5.10, on the 3,000 foot North Face of Mt. Wilson in the Red Rocks. It's about the craziest/boldest thing I've ever heard of, seeming that the initial pitches follow sketchy loose face climbing with GIANT route finding challenges. Wild!
JL
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zip
Trad climber
pacific beach, ca
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Walt, me, and his sister are coming down off HD, and traversing below the South face.
Walt stops below the wall and looks up.
W: Man, that was a good route.
Me: Looks serious. Who did you climb it with?
W: No one. Soloed it.
Me: Hmmm
W: I had to rap off half way up, cuz i didn't have the right hooks, but then came back and finished the route.
Me: Wouldn't it have been easier to climb it with a partner?
Walt has no response and is still staring at the route.
Me: Uh, Walt...how come you didn't just climb it with a partner?
A long pause and then Walt looks back at me with that Warren Harding intense devil look, and says:
"because partners are just knuckleheads"
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ß Î Ø T Ç H
climber
O a k t o w n
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" Re: Ever Screwed a Chupacabra? (OT) Jan 1, 2009, 06:57pm PT
Author:
Sir loin of leisure...
Trad climber
From: X
that thing ain't nothin klaus...you remember the chicks we used to hang with ?
Re: Ever Screwed a Chupacabra? (OT) Jan 1, 2009, 07:20pm PT
Author:
Sir loin of leisure...
Trad climber
From: X
my favorite though, and possibly one of klaus's cleverest moments,was when I had some el chupa lame assed girl friend,who had an ex named ed...she was cold busted gettin back with ed...so my good buddies klaus and walt,went to the falls area and put up a route right next to isosoles revisited called ' I saw a sleaze revisit ed ' ... those bastards ... "
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S.Leeper
Sport climber
Austin, Texas
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)"I'm guessing that Walt had a bigger heart than he knew how to handle. His level of self destruction seemed, like Yabo, to depend on whether it was broken or not"
You have a way with words Karl.
RIP Walt
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BASE104
climber
An Oil Field
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Walt was a complicated guy. He was very smart, and didn't suffer fools, but he was pretty nice. He wasn't egotistical at all. Not a bone in his body. That I saw, anyway.
He could do the drunken buffoon better than anyone, but quit drinking for quite a while. When Walt had some beer in him, he was like a time bomb. You never knew when you were gonna have to run twenty yards away.
But most of the time, he was thoughtful. He was tortured by a few things, though. I guess that him ditching his engineering job to just climb was the way it had to be. But I heard both sides of that one as well.
He was pretty much hands down one of the funniest guys I ever met, but that doesn't nail him down, either.
He just lived life with the fun meter turned up to 11 or something.
I have some wild letters that I have saved. Treasures. And not for public consumption..
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Scott Cole
Trad climber
Jackson, WY^
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Walt was one sick puppy. I have never know anyone as intense as Walt. I remember Thanksgiving 1987 in Patagonia. Walt, Paul Gagner, and I had just climbed the Compressor Rt on Cerro Torre. Walt wandered off early Thanksgiving morning. When he didn't come back until late that night Paul and I were wondering where to look for the body.
Walth finally wandered into camp late that night after free soloing a new route on Cerro Solo in tennies. While crossing the river, he had lost his footing and was carried far downstream before he finally made the crossing,he then soloed a new route, had an epic on the descent,then was forced to go miles around to get back to the Torre Glaicer.
Listening to Walt tell the story of his chemicaly assisted adventure was terrifying, as he relived every schetchy move of the river crossing, climb, and descent.
Nobody I have ever know lived every moment as intensly as Walt.
Scole
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Scotty_bulldog
climber
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Feb 10, 2011 - 03:13am PT
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I lived in the same Fresno State University dormitory floor that Walt lived in during the Fall 1976 semester. A Larger-Than-Life guy that left a lasting impression with me that I can still recall 35 years later.
Now, I found another forum years ago where I posted my comments, but I could not find it for re-posting here, so here I go to write it up again. And I hope my memory is not faulty.
Walt was a very intense guy during his college days. He usually wore extremely baggy dungaree pants with loads of pockets in them. He was always interested with walls he could climb. He showed off one time how he could scale up the hallway walls in the dorm, by spread-eagle himself, reaching both sides of the hallway walls, and inched his way up.
He also scaled the outside walls of the Graves Hall dormitory we lived in, too.
His dorm room was very unique. In his room he lined the walls/ceiling with framing lumber (with a center-post beam in the middle of the room), where he could suspend himself from a ceiling beam and use a sleeping bag harness to hang from in the middle of the room. He used it the same way that other students back then would use "bean-bag" seating to relax in.
The lumber framing was also used as places where he could hang his rock-climbing gear from, and if I am not mistaken, also had a "bunk-bed" in place so that a third person could sleep in the room with not sleeping on the floor.
Many weekend nights he and a select group of friends would use a "Bong" for smoking some weed in his dorm room. Although I never partook with smoking weed, I remember back then there was some discussion with using hot water versus cold water with a Bong. The hot water gave off steam, and the high humidity was suppose to give a smoother smoke. Others thought that cold water was better because it cooled the smoke. When Walt was tanking up his bong in the hallway (chilled) water-fountain one time, I joked with Walt about better to use hot water. He was adamant that cold water was better to cool the smoke in the Bong.
Walt's roommate at that time was an easygoing Asian-American guy by the name of Gene. Gene went along with Walt's craziness, especially so with getting loaded or stoned. But, Gene at other times was fearful of Walt's intensive nature and his temper, too.
There was a time one afternoon when Walt was returning to his room (and according to a friend of mine that witnessed it), Walt was in a state of "intense anger", ranting with how pissed-off he was because he f**ked up a test and got a "B" grade (later on Gene told me what happened when Walt went into his room). Gene said that he heard Walt coming down the hallway, ranting how he "f. .ked-up" a test. Gene was in his own bed and was fearful of Walt's temper at that time, so Gene drew the blankets over him to hide. After Walt entered in the room, he grabbed a climbing hammer, whacked it around the room a bit, then tossed it onto Gene's bed. Gene let out a yell for being on the receiving end of that hammer hit. Fortunately, Gene was not injured from the incident.
Another time Walt wanted to boil some water in his room, so he used his mountaineering stove in his room, but he tipped-over the stove and it ended up burning his fingers as well as the room's carpet, too. Several of Walt's fingers were wrapped in bandages from the burns.
But, that did not stop him from doing some rock climbing in less than two weeks later, even with his fingers still bandaged. (chuckle). I recall the Resident Advisor for the dorm floor commenting that Walt was crazy to do that, with the danger of getting his fingers infected from doing that.
As intense as Walt could get, he was also amazingly calm at other times. He was playing a frisbee version of "dodge-ball" one night in the dorm's hallway with Walt being the target. Two guys at both ends of the darkened hallway were tossing a frisbee back and forth, with Walt in the middle of the hallway dodging the frisbee. A flashing strobe light was used to create a visual distortion, and Walt was loving how he could dodge the frisbee time and time again. The frisbee hit the door to my dorm room many times, which I did not mind since I was in the hallway to watch the game. But my roommate, Gary, was trying to get to sleep at that time, and the noise of the firsbee hitting the door, repeatedly, angered Gary to the point that he went out into the hallway and confronted Walt in a very hostile manner. I was expecting them to exchange fist-blows, but I was very surprised that Walt was very calm about the whole thing . . . he really kept his cool . . . and ended up taking the frisbee tag to another place.
Many years later I was watching the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather, when a filmed report about Afghanistan was being shown, with the Afghan rebels battling the Soviet forces, and Rather credited the newsreel footage to freelancer "Walt Shipley". I was stunned to hear that, asking myself: "Could it be!?" And came to the conclusion that it was the same guy I was with at Fresno State. He was a crazy and adventurous enough of a guy to tackle that.
Considering that I was never a part of Walt's social circle during that 16 week semester at Fresno State . . . that I was just casually acquainted with the guy, he left such a lasting impression with me that I can still vividly recall, in detail, about some of the things he did nearly 35 years ago! Definitely a larger-than-life character.
Although I am not a rock-climber [but have enjoyed the outdoors with backpacking one time to the top of Mt. Whitney many years ago], thank you for allowing a non-rock-climber this space to share with the rest of you some anecdotes about a unique character as he was, away from the rock-face.
Scott
Fresno State '76
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