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guido
Trad climber
Santa Cruz/New Zealand/South Pacific
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Mar 17, 2010 - 08:17pm PT
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Ah, grist for the mill lads!
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Chris Jones
Social climber
Glen Ellen, CA
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Mar 17, 2010 - 08:26pm PT
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Roper has quite the way with words. He has a particular pattern of speech, and is both witty and mischievous. This story comes to me from R. D. Caughron, who regarded it as a favorite Roper yarn. RD wanted Roper to come on a climb in the Sierra. He proposed the classic Underhill, Dawson, Eichorn, Clyde 1931 East Face of Mt. Whitney. For a historian and lover of the High Sierra such as Roper, this is a route one might imagine he revered. Roper thought for a moment, then said: "Long drive. Long approach. Sh#t route. (a pause). Have fun."
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guido
Trad climber
Santa Cruz/New Zealand/South Pacific
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Mar 18, 2010 - 12:36am PT
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Famous Roper responses to just about anything and everything:
" Yeah man, no sh#t man"
MIckey's Beach - very early 60s
Famous Roper overtheshoulderdon'tgiveashit belay technique
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guido
Trad climber
Santa Cruz/New Zealand/South Pacific
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Mar 19, 2010 - 08:48pm PT
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"Yah man, no sh#t man" all of Cal was a nudist colony back then!
More Mickey's Beach photos and as you can see, yes we put up the bolt ladder and several other routes back then. Stinson Beach was my fav place to hang out in the summer before my life was destroyed by climbing.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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Mar 20, 2010 - 12:34am PT
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Is the Reva who was Kay's sister the same as Reva Colliver?
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Dick Erb
climber
June Lake, CA
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Mar 20, 2010 - 12:53am PT
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Jan - Yes Kay and Reva Johnson were sisters. Reva married Gary Colliver.
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Dick Erb
climber
June Lake, CA
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Mar 24, 2010 - 09:57pm PT
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Somebody must remember about Roper's climb of the Golden Gate Bridge. I heard about it from Steve, but that must have been over 40 years ago, and the only part I remember was that some kid's dad tipped off the cops and they got busted. Who can recall the details? Guido? Foott would know.
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guido
Trad climber
Santa Cruz/New Zealand/South Pacific
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Mar 24, 2010 - 10:12pm PT
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Foott would know
Somehwere I can visualize a cartoon or postcard or some graphical display of the time they were caught. Newspaper article? Note from his dad Ed? I will look through the "archives of antiquity" and see what materializes.
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Eric Beck
Sport climber
Bishop, California
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Mar 24, 2010 - 10:44pm PT
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Regarding the Golden Gate Bridge ascent, I remember this tidbit from Steve;
that the crux was stepping up on a rivet slippery with condensation from the fog and that they had to downclimb the move.
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guido
Trad climber
Santa Cruz/New Zealand/South Pacific
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May 18, 2012 - 11:11pm PT
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Well, what do you do with your life when you have climbed all the climbs you desired, drank all the best red wines you or your friends could afford and seen and checked off all the birds on your list?
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ms55401
Trad climber
minneapolis, mn
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May 18, 2012 - 11:36pm PT
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He's a fine writer. [My standards are higher than most.]
I have long regarded his Sierra High Route book to be essential reading for All Things Backcountry in the Range of Light.
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John Morton
climber
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May 19, 2012 - 10:54am PT
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It just popped into my head: the name of the kid whose father called the cops on the GG bridge ascent - Dave McFadden.
Speaking of Roper appreciation, I saw the Salathe 3rd ascent film with commentary added in connection with a 2008 exhibit at the Autry Museum. Has that been shown at gatherings of climbers? To my mind it's right at the top of climbing films I've seen - no throbbing music, no sickening zooms or preposterous camera angles. The narration is great, recorded casually over wine in Steck's living room. The personalities shine through wonderfully, subtle humor with no trace of self consciousness. Tantalizing sample here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1k5GE3MeLE
John
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Peter Haan
Trad climber
San Francisco, CA
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May 19, 2012 - 11:13am PT
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I agree, John. Their informally attempted movie of the second continuous ascent of the Salathe is all that you say it is. Just terrific. Al says that Long bought the camera the day before too. I think it is the best movie of that whole era. Al was passing out copies at the last AAC dinner at Spengers. And it is pretty amazing how much of the route they got filmed considering how heavy the ascent must have seemed at the time. It must have been a great climb for the three of them, Long, Steck and Roper. I imagine Roper must have been their young rope gun at the time!
Getting back to Roper. We are so lucky to have had him at the helm, so to speak. He still is socially connected to dozens of his old friends and does some of the parties locally. And as Eddie Hartouni says, his books are basically so good they are reference volumes for our sport and art.
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BBA
climber
OF
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May 19, 2012 - 10:40pm PT
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What I say here is amenable to correction by anyone who remembers it better than I.
In Berkeley, fall of 1960, I found a better environment for climbing at college than at UCLA because I could get to Indian Rock easily on a bicycle and boulder on a daily basis. Jeff (Foott) and Joe (Guido) and I would also ride our bikes to the top of the Berkeley Hills, Grizzly Peak Road, and then come down at breakneck speeds on the very winding Claremont Avenue. One day Joe went off the road to our amusement, but we hid it. Steve never had anything to do with bicycles, probably because the Berkeley Hills were steep and it took lot of work to get around.
Now and then we would go over to Steve’s house and he would cook a batch of cornbread from those little Jiffy Cornbread boxes which cost about a dime then. We would eat and Steve would put a Beethoven symphony on the turntable and wildly flail his arms to conduct.
One of Steve’s preoccupations was with climbing aid faster, speed climbing. The times in Yosemite on the big new ascents usually required a lot of aid, so if you could figure out how to do it better you could get up climbs a lot faster. He figured out the details and came up with using longer slings than were normally carried and tying the loops on a bias as you see Kor using in Guido’s photos above. Kor’s size dictated four loops, but at the time we all went with three, ala Roper (Layton had not yet arrived). Prior to that I had used only two loop slings tied in whatever manner I had wrongly figured out. Steve had a routine of just pounding a piton in with a few bashes with his adapted carpenter’s hammer and moving up. I practiced going up the old bolt ladder at Indian Rock many times until I had the routine down. It was like a time management study, and I used it in a paper for a business administration course my Forestry major required. The TA said he would give it a “D” because (a) it had nothing to do with business, but (b) it was an interesting application of rigor to solve a time problem.
The efficacy of Steve’s method can be seen in the Rixon's Pinnacle Register 1948-1963 thread. Steve and I went up the S. Face in 5 hours in winter as fast or faster than anyone had done it before (it’s hard to read the register to figure it out 100%), and I had done little aid in the Valley. With Steve’s speed climbing method it went easily and mechanically. I viewed things through a competitive lens, so it was nice to be up with everyone else, especially when you don’t see yourself as being in the top tier.
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John Morton
climber
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May 20, 2012 - 11:34am PT
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Yes, Roper had an enduring interest in technique and efficiency. I think he wanted to upgrade the basic Sierra Club knowhow of climbers to make them faster and smarter (and provide a pool of good partners). The RCS training produced safe and slow people, reliable partners who didn't see the possibilities ahead for California climbing.
Steve was like a graduate school for those who would accept his point of view. He was sometimes berated by the old guard for his apparent emphasis on speed, but that was really an emphasis on eliminating redundancy and the wasting of time. Fast times were merely a byproduct of doing things right.
I have told this one before: in 1963 or 1964 Roper and Jim Baldwin were canvassing Camp 4 for some Sun. morning action and spotted me and Steve Thompson idling. Idling was prohibited, so Roper proposed a nailing race, Roper/Thompson vs. Baldwin/Morton. We took some gear up to a pair of cracks behind the camp. I knew the outcome before we started - Thompson was a natural, tall and efficient though not experienced on aid. Baldwin had placed thousands of pins, but was shorter like me and didn't have Roper's top-loop moves and wide placements.
It was no contest. Cleaning behind Jim soon turned to agony. I had brought no hammer so had to use Jim's spare, a cheap claw hammer with one claw busted off. The head was rounded off to a dull point, and every blow would glance off the pin and bark my knuckles on the rock. I had a dim view of nailing for some time after that day.
John
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
merced, california
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May 20, 2012 - 12:03pm PT
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So good to hear such stories of America's leading writer on rock climbing.
Heirs to Roper will be hard to come by. The standard has been set. No other writer I have read is so consistently perfect.
I particularly love his reminiscence in the "most recent" Ascent. (I write that instead of "the last" Ascent for superstitious reasons.)
It shows he's aging like good wine ought to age.
And I've said it time and again, Roper's hyphenage skills are good, but I am in training and I never train! But he's too good. I must train-I must train-I must train...
Keep on typing, Stoper.
Tarbuster: Does your copy have its screws? I lost one of mine. A a screw can be replaced, but Roper? I think not.
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Don Lauria
Trad climber
Bishop, CA
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May 25, 2012 - 12:49am PT
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It was a party at Chouinard’s beach shack – late 60s, early 70s. Tompkins was supposed to arrive with people from the Bay area in his plane.
Tompkins put his plane down on the new highway under construction just above Yvon’s place. Roper emerged from the plane along with others –don’t remember who.
First thing out of his licentious mouth upon eye-balling my young daughters (11 and 9), “Oh my, nymphets.”
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Patrick Sawyer
climber
Originally California now Ireland
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Feb 20, 2017 - 03:24am PT
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I only know Steve from Indian Rock (Berkeley), though I have run into him in the Valley, but he probably wouldn't know who I am. A very nice gentleman.
Chris, Davis Bynum Winery, wow, I remember when they were in Bezerkley. My late brother Mac (and I a couple of times) would go there and talk with Davis and get tips (we started making wine - Saw's Vineyards - in 1969 in our little barn in Saranap - between Lafayette and Walnut Creek, we also had about 90 cab vines. Actually since we had plum, apricot and peach trees, and cherry, olive, mulberry, lemon and orange trees as well - Mac started making plum wine around 1965).
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AP
Trad climber
Calgary
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Feb 20, 2017 - 09:24am PT
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Steve told the Golden Gate bridge story around a campfire one night. It seems they had repainted the bridge just before Steve climbed it. They came down with red paint on their hands.
The headline in the local paper?
"Climbers Caught Red Handed"
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