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Double D
climber
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Feb 13, 2016 - 09:41am PT
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Yes oldtimer it is. The yelp he let out and the look in his eyes defied sanity but then again...
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Feb 13, 2016 - 11:10am PT
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I only met him once, but tortured souls are drawn to climbing. I think often of Walt, who I knew well. He would go off and solo routes right at his limit, especially when some girl had broken his heart.
Shine on you crazy diamonds....
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Feb 13, 2016 - 04:49pm PT
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Damn, you really do have it in you to tell a good story, Werner. I forget that sometimes.
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zBrown
Ice climber
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Feb 13, 2016 - 06:53pm PT
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One summer he did the LSD free soloing trip every other night or so for a month or so.
Kinda makes me wonder, why he stopped, if he did.
Anybody ever ask him?
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Jaybro
Social climber
Wolf City, Wyoming
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Feb 14, 2016 - 06:45am PT
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It went out of fashion for a while
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jeff constine
Trad climber
Ao Namao
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Feb 14, 2016 - 08:06am PT
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Yabo Father Figure.
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Dave King
Trad climber
CO
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Hi all,
I was googling and stumbled on this site and wanted to add my two cents.
John was a best friend in high school, like 1971-4. We'd hitchhike or find any way to get to Castle Rock and spent wonderful rainy days studying all possible moves in the rock's cave. We eventually conquered a short 5.9 (I think) a short ways from the front of CR.
Does anyone know who Betty Jo Yablonski is? I saw this name online. I think (long time ago?) John had a younger sister, maybe that's her or maybe it is just a route name. I'd ride my bike from Cupertino to Los Gatos and John and I would play soccer, not the real game, just controlling the ball and keeping it away from the other. Enormous fun.
John and I spent the summer of '73 in Yosemite Camp 4. We smoked pipe tobacco and pot and bouldered and climbed. There was a pull-up bar near our camp, Jim Bridwell sometimes walked by and did pull-ups and we'd count and he'd do like 36 and we'd agree he was the rock god.
The highlight of that summer (for my ego at least) was a climb John and myself and an older better climber (Ron Thompson?) did on a pitch under Half Dome (The Prude?) that started with a narrow crack and finished with a wider gap, the hard kind that is too wide for a fist, too narrow for a forearm. Ron started the route, fell off, asked me to try leading. In retrospect, I think he was a good teacher. So I made it up this beast, very slowly, then John followed, then Ron just screamed up the pitch saying casually that "fast climbing" was a helpful skill...
The dumbest thing we did that summer was a climb up a class V (?) pitch near the beautiful Yosemite falls. I think I was into the third pitch and wondering why we weren't seeing the top yet and it was getting dark and I said, "John, it's getting dark," and we decided to go down and I have this memory of both of us hanging from a single piton, one- or two-hundred feet up, in the dark. The immortals? ;)
The next climb I remember with John and a sweet fellow named Craig was at Pinnacles, I think it was a 5.9 called Fly-By (?) and I led it and wasted energy learning that the problem was a chimney with your butt in space rather than a face and I fell, maybe my first big fall, and almost passed out.
I don't know if that is why I stopped climbing, I was being pulled in different directions, John had stayed in Yosemite in '73 and was up there again in '74, he loved climbing. I drove up to visit him in '74, I remember talking about how we were going different ways, he was kinda stoic saying "Yes, that's how it goes." We did one more climb together, he led a route up Glacier Point. He had continued climbing while I drifted and he looked really good then, a spider.
Bless you, John, you were a great friend. Here are some photos for readers.
Regards,
Dave King.
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steve s
Trad climber
eldo
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Thanks for that Dave. Yabo was a good friend and one of a kind. Bless his soul. Peace .
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survival
Big Wall climber
Terrapin Station
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So many interesting times with John. He didn't always seem so incredible much of the time back then. He was just one of us, just another inmate at the asylum.
My parents were proud to buy him breakfast when we got off Tribal Rite, even though he was just tagging along.
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