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Avery
climber
NZ
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Feb 15, 2015 - 11:16pm PT
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Tobin Sorenson on "Ex Cathedra"(24), Castle Rock, Christchurch, NZ (1979)
Special thanks to Bushman
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Avery
climber
NZ
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Feb 16, 2015 - 12:34am PT
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Will an Aussie hero emerge and identify the rock Sorenson's climbing?
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Avery
climber
NZ
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Feb 16, 2015 - 02:07am PT
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Thanks a lot, NA_Kidlot,
That link could prove very useful.
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Avery
climber
NZ
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Feb 16, 2015 - 01:47pm PT
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Tobin Sorenson, Australia, 1979.
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crunch
Social climber
CO
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Feb 16, 2015 - 02:48pm PT
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A "must read" for anyone who knew Tobin or interested in who he was: Rick Accomazzo's article on Tobin's crazy season in the Alps in the current (49) Alpinist.
Great article with some excellent (frightening!) photos, a lot of history, and incisive analysis, both of the man and of the era.
Tobin actually comes off sounding a bit like Layton Kor, That same drive to go upward, the uncanny strength and skill just when things are most dire (was this an intuitive ability to assess what's coming up or maybe sheer luck?), the same big grin and politeness.
Great stuff!
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Avery
climber
NZ
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Feb 17, 2015 - 04:53am PT
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Tobin Sorenson, Australia, 1979.
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Avery
climber
NZ
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Feb 18, 2015 - 01:51pm PT
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Tobin Sorenson, Australia, 1979.
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Avery
climber
NZ
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Feb 22, 2015 - 07:04pm PT
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Special Thanks to Ed Hartouni
Australia (1979) Tobin Sorenson and John Allen
Mt Arapiles
The remarkable development of Australia's hardest area continues without respite. Again Kim Carrigan has been the dominant activist. He put up Australia's first two grade 27s when he freed the old aid problems Yesterday and Denim (pitch one) in quick succession. Both are sustained and extremely overhanging crack problems. Yesterday has not been repeated in its free state but visiting American climber Tobin Sorenson repeated Denim after a number of attempts and said it was 'hard' (American 5 .12). (He said that some, only, of Australia's 26s equal American 5.12 and all 27s would be 5.12 in the U.S.A.)
Carrigan freed the four-meter ceiling on Tiger Wall, Fox on a Hot Thin Roof, after five days and graded it 28. This grade did not last long, however, as Sorenson repeated it with relative ease and regarded it 27. John Allen (UK) led the third free ascent. A feature of the first free ascent of this climb was the pre-placing of some protection from aid.
Another of Carrigan's big efforts was his new climb on Bluff Major, Anxiety Neurosis (26) which basically follows an uncompleted bolt and rurp route. The first pitch is an extremely overhung traverse leading to a fearsome, undercut arete (26). It succumbed only after a number of days and many falls. The second pitch, up a blank arete, is little easier and also put Carrigan and his partner, Warwick Baird, to considerable trouble. Sorenson led the second ascent and Allen led the third ascent (first pitch only).
On Declaration Crag, Carrigan and Tony Dignam put up the face problem Look Sharp (23) with some pre-placed protection. Carrigan's first free ascent of Orestes (pitch one) (24) in The Atridae surprised most climbers because of the line's apparent looseness. However the line is one of the best at Arapiles and has already had a couple of repeats. This route received some attention from abseil prior to the first free ascent. In the same vicinity Kevin Lindorff and Dignam worked on the face left of Reunion to produce the rather bold Lois Lane (23) on which Peter Lindorff and Matt Dunstan followed. Dignam and Geoff Little did a similar route left of Frenzy - Iron Void (24). Below this, on the D Minor Pinnacle, Carrigan and Chris Peisker worked on the old aid problem The Philosopher (25) until it became a very thin free route. Lindorff and Geoff Little put up a minor new route, Fail Safe (25).
On the left side of Central Gully, Carrigan, Rod Young and John Smoothy climbed Cruel Canine (23) on the unpromising face right of Puppy Love.
The other side of Central Gully yielded a number of hard routes to Carrigan. Two of the best are Devoid (23), done with Tony Marion, and Vacancy (23), with Smoothy, on the wall right of Mari. Both were wire brushed prior to the ascent and require many small wires for protection.
Also in this general area Carrigan put up the 'nasty' Tres Hard (25) and an extremely overhanging crack problem. Dyslexia (25), with Peisker. Further right the same team found No Standing (24) on the steep face left of Stillborn and Carrigan led the brilliant face climb Morfyne (24) on which he was seconded bY Glenn Tempest, Louise Shepherd, Eddie Ozols and, rumour has it, Uncle Tom Cobbley!
On the Pharos there were two outstanding efforts: Kevin Lindorff led the very bold and sparsely protected Delirium Tremors (24) up the imposing southern face of the pinnacle, the first to get up this section of the wall, and Carrigan and Lindorff did the first free ascent of the dramatically exposed roof of Aftermath (25).
In the Pharos Gully there were more hard new climbs of mixed quality including Pattern Juggler (23) by Rod Young and K. Oaten, Snow Blind (23) by Coral Bowman and Peisker and Haphazard (23) by Carrigan, Dignam and Smoothy.
On Kitten Wall there were some major efforts. Carrigan finally freed Cat Cracker (26) after innumerable plummets from the hard boulder-problem crux and, with Mark Moorhead, put up the steep face climb Indoctrination (24) on which'Friends' are essential for some protection.
However the plum was undoubtedly Sorenson and Allen's beautiful and spectacular new route up the wall (23) and over the fifteen foot ceiling (25) right of Stranger's Eliminate. Tjuringa Wall, as they called it, was done in the best style and is one of the finest new routes at Mt. Arapiles in recent times.
In the Northern Group, Carrigan climbed a seam over the bulge right of Kachoong to give In Phase (24). Again 'Friends' were considered indispensible for protection. Sorenson's unroped on-sight solo of the ceiling route Kachoong Left Hand (22) really slackened local jaws. Another first was his similar solo of Christian Crack (2O). Finally, Allen and Sorenson, this time with the rope on, climbed a new ceiling which certain pundits considered unlikely' - Fiddler on the Roof (25).
Sorenson and Allen's most notable repeats not referred to above were the fourth and fifth ascents of the very strenuous testpiece Procol Harum (26) and the third and fourth ascents of Peisker's uncompleted (one pitch, only, so far) new route No Exit (26) in Central Gully.
The Grampians
Whilst Mt. Arapiles has had it all in quantity and difficulty, some of the best new routes have been done in the Grampians. The hardest is Life (24) on the face left of Decree Nisi at Black Ian's Rocks by Carrigan and Neil Parker (NZ). A bolt runner was placed by abseil. Also in the north, at Mt. Difficult, Rick White and Chris Baxter did Coup de Grace (21) one of the most overhanging crack climbs in the State, and an outstanding line. On Sundial Peak, Kevin Lindorff and Peter Jacobs climbed the 'elegant' Lion-Hearted (2O) 15ft right of Caucus Race.
In the South Jim Nelson and Dick Curtis climbed a prominent line on The Cheesecake at Mt. Abrupt - Shadow Road (2O). A point of aid used by the leader was eliminated by the second. Mick Law, Baxter and Mike Stone did the first climb on Ferret Hill - Tipsy (22), a beautiful corner and roof climb of two pitches. Nearby on The Promontory, another new outcrop, Hugh Foxcroft, Ed Neve and Nick Reeves did a sustained line which they called Restless (2O). Just to the north, on Mt. Fox, Baxter, Stone and Dave Gairns climbed the outstanding and unlikely wall between Foxfire and Leaner to give Twentieth Century Fox (2O) after first placing protection bolts.
Mt. Buffalo
Kevin Lindorff and Joe Friend reduced the aid on the She/Ozymandias Integral (22,M1) to one pendulum. This is one of the most spectacular routes on the north wall of the gorge. To the left of this Lindorff and Tempest did a remarkable almost free ascent of Lord of the Flies (23,M1) with only two aid points, to get off the ground, and four long pitches of 20 or harder.
Rest of Victoria
At Wilson's Promontory Tempest freed Cachalot (22), with Andrew Martin.
South Australia
Kim Carrigan recently visited Moonarie in the Flinders Ranges and, predictably, that area's number of hard routes underwent a quantum increase. One of the best was his first free ascent, with Louise Shepherd, of Robbing Hood (24) in the Great Wall area.
Other aid eliminations by Carrigan included Trojan (24), an overhanging crack and the removal of the single aid point from Medici (22). On the latter climb, a problem that has defeated a number of strong attempts, he was seconded by Shepherd and Tony Dignam. He put up one new climb, Self Destruct (24), which is said to involve a 3Oft ceiling, and did a new variant on Birdbrain (23). Dignam seconded the latter. Earlier, John Smart did the State's first grade 24 when he freed Grand Larceny on the same cliff; a proud roof 3OOft above the ground.
Elsewhere in South Australia Eddie Ozols put up Rubber Ducky (21) (for all you CB radio fans out there) on the sea cliff at Victor Harbour.
Oueensland
The chalk dust has fina!!y settled . after Tobin Sorenson's (U.S.A.) and John Allen's (U.K.) momentous visit. They raised grades in that State a couple of notches to bring them up to southern levels. Significantly Carrigan has already repeated all their hardest leads, confirming their difficulty with a dramatic series of plummets.
Allen and Sorenson's hardest route was Catcher in the Rye (27) on Frog Buttress which may be the most technical climbing in Australia but which required 'English tactics' to arrange the protection on both ascents to date. Sorenson took the lead from Allen to free a pair of aided climbs Barbwire Canoe (26) and Green Plastic Comb (26). These ascents have really impressed the locals. The former has scarcely no climbing below grade 22 in its 140ft. The latter is very strenuous and is protected by tiny wires. Sorenson took a series of dramatic, wire-snapping falls on both these demanding leads.
Elsewhere on Frog Buttress they put up The Guns of Navarone (24), a sought-after line right of Odin which incorporates one of this area's few ceilings. Tantrum (25) was an aid elimination with a boulder-problem start by the same pair whereas their Crack in the Pavement (23) was a new route.
Some Australians have also contributed to this cliff. Before he went to the U.S.A. Chris Peisker freed Worrying Heights (24), a sustained corner. Carrigan, seconded by Kevin Lindorff, got the only currently feasible aid elimination left by Sorenson and Allen (who had not had time to attempt it) - Voices in the Sky (26), and found a new climb Go- Between (23), seconded by 'barefoot boy' Fred From, which is something of a fiercely protected lead. Finally, a Oueenslander got in on the act when Robert Staszewski hit form and freed the strenuous finger crack of Carrion Comfort (25), which he wants to rename Forever Young, and found Delilah (23).
On Mt. Maroon, Sorenson and Allen freed the notorious Nympho Roof (24) which is a dangerously unprotected face leading to a hard undercling traverse. On a granite outcrop at Mt. Greville they did a rather obscure ceiling problem (24) which they doubt will be refound!
Correspondents: Baxter, Friend.
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Bushman
Social climber
Elk Grove, California
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As most of you know, Tobin Sorenson perished while attempting the first solo ascent of the North Face of Mount Alberta on this day October 5th, 1980, thirty five years ago today. I still think about him at some point during most days and every Sorenson family get together is both a memorial to and a celebration of his life, as it is with many of his climbing family here.
To say he packed a lifetime's worth of climbing into only ten years cannot even convey an iota of who the man was or what he did. His legacy lives on through all us who loved him, knew him, or ever took interest in his accomplishments. Thank you to all who have helped to keep his memory alive.
-Tim Sorenson
Still thinking about you, bro!
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Gnome Ofthe Diabase
climber
Out Of Bed
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from page one, . . .:
Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
Oct 5, 2011 - 09:39pm PT
THE GREEN ARCH
We came from nowhere towns like Upland, Cucamonga, Ontario, and Montclair. None of us had done anything more distinguished than chase down a fly ball or spend a couple of nights in juvenile hall, but we saw rock climbing as a means to change all that forever.
Lonely Challenge, The White Spider, Straight Up - we'd read them all, could recite entire passages by heart. It is impossible to imagine a group more fired up by the romance and glory of the climbing game than our little band, later known informally as "The Stonemasters." There was just one minor problem: There were no genuine mountains in Southern California. But there were plenty of rocks. Good ones, too.
Every Saturday morning during the spring of 1972, about a dozen of us would jump into a medley of the finest junkers $200 could buy and blast for the little alpine hamlet of ldyllwild, home of Tahquitz Rock. The last twenty-six miles to ldyllwild is a twisting road, steep and perilous in spots. More than one exhausted Volkswagen bus or wheezing old Rambler got pushed a little too hard, blew up, and was abandoned, the plates stripped off and the driver, laden with rope and pack, thumbing on toward Mecca. We had to get to a certain greasy spoon by eight o'clock, when our little group would meet, discuss an itinerary, wolf down some food, and storm off to the crags.
The air was charged because we were on a roll, our faith and gusto growing with each new climb we bagged. The talk within the climbing community was that we were crazy, or liars, or both; and this sat well with us. We were loudmouthed eighteen-year-old punks, and proud of it.
Tahquitz was one of America's hot climbing spots, with a pageant of pivotal ascents reaching back to when technical climbing first came to the States. America's first 5.8 (The Mechanic's Route, 1938) and 5.9 (The Open Book, 1950) routes were bagged at Tahquitz, as was the notion and the deed of the "first free ascent," a route first done with aid but later climbed without it (The Piton Pooper, 5.7, circa 1946). John Mendenhall, Chuck Wilts, Mark Powell, Royal Robbins, Tom Frost, T.M. Herbert, Yvon Chouinard, Bob Kamps, Tom Higgins, and many others had all learned the ropes there.
The Stonemasters arrived on the scene just as the previous generation of local hard cores were being overtaken by house payments and squealing brats. They hated every one of us. We were all young, vain, and flat broke, and cared nothing for their endorsement.
We'd grappled up many of their tougher climbs not with grace, but with gumption and fire, and the limelight was panning our way. The old guard was baffled that we of so little talent and experience should get so far. When it became common knowledge that we were taking a bead on the hallowed Valhalla (one of the first 5.11 routes in America) - often tried, but as yet unrepeated - they showed their teeth.
If we so much as dreamed of climbing Valhalla, we'd have to wake up and apologize. The gauntlet was thus thrown down: if they wouldn't hand over the standard, we'd rip it from their hands. When, after another month, we all had climbed Valhalla, some of us several times, the old boys were stunned and saw themselves elbowed out of the opera house by kids who could merely scream. And none could scream louder than Tobin Sorenson, the most conspicuous madman ever to lace up Varappes.
Climbing had never seen the likes of Tobin, and probably never will again. He had the body of a welterweight, a lick of sandy brown hair and the faraway gaze of the born maniac. Yet he lived with all the precocity and innocence of a child. He would never cuss or show the slightest hostility, and around girls he was so shy he'd flush and stammer. But out on the sharp end of the rope he was a consummate fiend.
Over the previous summer he'd logged an unprecedented string of gigantic falls that should have ended his career, and his life, ten times over. Yet he shook each fall off and clawed straight back onto the route for another go, and usually got it. He became a world-class climber very quickly because anyone that well formed and savagely motivated gains the top in no time - if he doesn't kill himself first. And yet when we started bagging new climbs and first free ascents, Tobin continued to
defy the gods with his electrifying whippers. The exploits of his short life deserve a book. Two books.
One Saturday morning, five or six of us hunkered down in the little restaurant in Idyllwild. Tahquitz was our oyster. We'd pried it open with a piton and for months had gorged at will; but the fare was running thin. Since we had ticked off one after another of the remaining new routes, our options had dwindled to only the most grim or preposterous.
During the previous week, Ricky Accomazzo had scoped out the Green Arch, an elegant arc on Tahquitz's southern shoulder. When Ricky mentioned he thought there was an outside chance that this pearl of an aid climb might go free, Tobin looked like the Hound of the Baskervilles had just heard the word "bone," and we had to lash him to the booth so we could finish our oatmeal.
Since the Green Arch was Ricky's idea, he got the first go at it. Tobin balked, so we tied him off to a stunted pine and Ricky started up. After fifty feet of dicey wall climbing, he gained the arch, which soared above for another eighty feet before curving right and disappearing in a field of big knobs and pockets. If we could only get to those knobs, the remaining 300 feet would go easily and the Green Arch would fall.
But the lower comer and the arch above looked bleak. The crack in the back of the arch was too thin to accept even fingertips, and both sides of the comer were blank and marble-smooth. But by pasting half his rump on one side of the puny comer, and splaying his feet out on the opposite side, Ricky stuck to the rock - barely - both his arse and his boots steadily oozing off the steep, greasy wall. It was exhausting duty just staying put, and moving up was accomplished in a grueling, precarious sequence of quarter-inch moves. Amazingly, Ricky jackknifed about halfway up the arch before his calves pumped out. He lowered off a bunk piton and I took a shot.
After an hour of the hardest climbing I'd ever done, I reached a rest hold just below the point where the arch swept out right and melted into that field of knobs. Twenty feet to pay dirt. But those twenty feet didn't look promising. There were some sucker knobs just above the arch, but those ran out after about twenty-five feet and would leave a climber in the bleakest no man's land, with nowhere to go, no chance to climb back right onto the route, no chance to get any protection, and no chance to retreat. We'd have to stick to the arch.
Finally, I underclung about ten feet out the arch, whacked in a suspect knife-blade piton, clipped the rope in-and fell off. I lowered to the ground, slumped back, and didn't rise for ten minutes. I had weeping strawberries on both ass cheeks and my ankles were rubbery and tweaked from splaying them out on the far wall.
Tobin, unchained from the pine, tied into the lead rope and stormed up the comer like a man fleeing Satan on foot. He battled up to the rest hold, drew a few quick breaths, underclung out to that creaky, buckled, driven-straight-up-into-an-expanding-flake knife-blade, and immediately cranked himself over the arch and started heaving up the line of sucker knobs.
"No!" I screamed up. "Those knobs don't go anywhere!"
But it was too late.
Understand that Tobin was a born-again Christian, that he'd smuggled Bibles into Bulgaria risking twenty-five years on a Balkan rock pile, that he'd studied God at a fundamentalist university and none of this altered the indisputable fact that he was perfectly mad.
Out on the sharp end he not only ignored all consequences, but actually loathed them, doing all kinds of crazy, incomprehensible things to mock the fear and peril. (The following year, out at Joshua Tree, Tobin followed a difficult, overhanging crack with a rope noosed around his neck.)
Most horrifying was his disastrous capacity to simply charge at a climb pell-mell. On straightforward routes, no one was better. But when patience and cunning were required, no one was worse. Climbing, as it were, with blinders on, Tobin would sometimes claw his way into the most grievous jams. When he'd dead-end, with nowhere to go and looking at a Homeric peeler, the full impact of his folly would hit him like a wrecking ball. He would panic, wail, weep openly, and do the most ludicrous things. And sure enough, about twenty-five feet above the arch those sucker knobs ran out, and Tobin had nowhere to go.
To appreciate Tobin's quandary, understand that he was twenty five feet above the last piton, which meant he was looking at a fifty-foot fall, since a leader falls twice as far as he is above the last piece of protection. The belayer (the man tending the other end of the rope) cannot take in rope during a fall because it happens too fast. He can only secure the rope - lock it off. But the gravest news was that I knew the piton I'd bashed under the roof would not hold a fifty-foot whipper.
On really gigantic falls, the top piece often rips out, but the fall is broken sufficiently for a lower nut or piton to stop you. In Tobin's case, the next lower piece was some dozen feet below the top one, at the rest hold; so in fact, Tobin was looking at close to an eighty-footer - maybe
more, with rope stretch.
As Tobin wobbled far overhead, who should lumber up to our little group but his very father, a minister, a quiet, retiring, imperturbable gentleman who hacked and huffed from his long march up to the cliffside. After hearing so much about climbing from Tobin, he'd finally come to see his son in action. He couldn't have shown up at a worse time. It was like a page from a B-movie script: us cringing and digging in, waiting for the bomb to drop; the good pastor, wheezing through his moustaches, sweat soaked and confused, squinting up at the fruit of his loins; and Tobin, knees knocking like castanets, sobbing pitifully and looking to plunge off at any second.
There is always something you can do, even in the grimmest situation, if only you keep your nerve. But Tobin was gone, totally gone, so mastered by terror that he seemed willing to die to be rid of it. He glanced down. His face was a study. Suddenly he screamed,"Watch
me! I'm gonna jump."
We didn't immediately understand what he meant.
"Jump off?" Richard wanted to know.
"Yes!" Tobin wailed.
"NO!" we all screamed in unison.
"You can do it, son!" the pastor put in.
Pop was just trying to put a good face on it, God bless him, but his was the worst possible advice because there was no way Tobin could do it. Or anybody could do it. There were no holds. But inspired by his father's urging, Tobin reached out for those knobs so far to his right,
now lunging, now hopelessly pawing the air.
And then he was off. The top piton shot out and Tobin shot off into the grandest fall I've ever seen a climber take and walk away from - a spectacular, tumbling whistler. His arms flailed like a rag doll's and his scream could have frozen brandy. Luckily, the lower piton held and he finally jolted onto the rope, hanging upside down and moaning softly. We slowly lowered him off and he lay motionless on the ground and nobody moved or spoke or even breathed. You could have heard a pine needle hit the deck. Tobin was peppered with abrasions and had a lump the size of a pot roast over one eye. He lay dead still for a moment longer, then wobbled to his feet and shuddered like an old cur crawling from a creek.
"I'll get it next time," he grumbled.
"There ain't gonna be no next time," said Richard.
"Give the boy a chance," the pastor threw in, thumping Tobin on the back.
When a father can watch his son pitch eighty feet down a vertical cliff, and straightaway argue that we were shortchanging the boy by not letting him climb back up and have a second chance at an even longer whistler, we knew the man was cut from the same crazy cloth as his son, and that there was no reasoning with him. But the fall had taken the air out of the whole venture, and we were through for the day. The "next time" came four years later. In one of the greatest leads of that era, Ricky flashed the entire Green Arch on his first try. Tobin
and I followed.
Tobin would go on to solo the north face of the Matterhorn, the Walker Spur, and the Shroud on the Grandes Jorasses (all in jeans), would make the first alpine ascent of the Harlin Direct on the Eiger, the first ascent of the Super Couloir on the Dru, would repeat the hardest free climbs and big walls in Yosemite, and would sink his teeth into the Himalaya. He was almost certainly the world's greatest all around climber during the late 1970s. But nothing really changed: He always climbed as if time were too short for him, pumping all the disquietude, anxiety, and nervous waste of a normal year into each route.
I've seen a bit of the world since those early days at Tahquitz, have done my share of crazy things, and have seen humanity with all the bark on, primal and raw. But I've never since experienced the electricity of watching Tobin out there on the quick of the long plank, clawing for the promised land. He finally found it in 1980, attempting a solo winter ascent of Mt. Alberta's north face. His death was a tragedy, of course. Yet I sometimes wonder if God Himself could no longer bear the strain of watching Tobin wobbling and lunging way out there on the sharp end of the rope, and finally just drew him into the fold.
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SteveW
Trad climber
The state of confusion
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Bump for Tobin's memory!
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Gnome Ofthe Diabase
climber
Out Of Bed
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Jan 21, 2016 - 04:29pm PT
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Bumping for the clan & cause of what he meant
to those of us who saw in him what we wanted to become
Bumping for his youth and drive and for the stars in his eyes
A boy/man a child past the cusp of greatness,
We all wish he had survived that noble goal,
But alas, lost to the toil and the spindrift,
A silent Avalanche ?
We will never know
Tobin was and remains, to me, the greatest climber/hero
of that generation
that has been the mold for the finest and most bold way to go
Alone and up
Solo
As it has been said - it is hard to believe 35 yrs
Peace and healing prayers ... .
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mooser
Trad climber
seattle
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Jan 21, 2016 - 04:48pm PT
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Very nice tribute, Gnome.
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rmuir
Social climber
From the Time Before the Rocks Cooled.
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Jan 21, 2016 - 06:22pm PT
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^^^ Undoubtedly hanging with Yabo and Bachar…
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Bushman
Social climber
Elk Grove, California
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Jan 21, 2016 - 07:35pm PT
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Thanks for bumping his memory, Gnome.
No words, except to say
I'm so very, very grateful to Tobin and the Stonemasters
for mentoring so many of us and showing us a whole new world.
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Pocha
Social climber
Anaheim California
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Mar 16, 2016 - 02:36pm PT
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Had the pleasure of meeting Tobin Sorenson, he was my Sunday School teacher at Palcentia Nazarene Church in 1980. Great person, he would tell us about his climbs, the class was so excited to here he had proposed to his girl friend and he was going on his last big climb before tieing the knot. The following week I received a call form our pastor to inform me Tobin would not be back...at age 14 it was one of the most difficult things I ever had to deal with, I spoke at a service we had for him, It was a celebration of life for someone that truly had died doing what he loved.
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Poplar
Trad climber
Los Angeles
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Apr 21, 2016 - 12:45pm PT
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Through our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire. It was given to us to learn at the outset that life is a profound and passionate thing.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
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