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Doug Robinson
Trad climber
Santa Cruz
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Boy oh boy Roy,
Another fine shop. Gotta love that multi-functional feel when the acetylene rig is within reach from the sewing machine. OT, but I can't help noticing some boards off to the right with pins on em. And a couple of those tools appear to be still dripping from that Mendel Right black ice outing.
I'd pour a Scotch here but not yet. Enjoying too much the Peets hour.
We seem to have another case of simultaneous invention here, or at least ultra-rapid spread of drooped-pick experimentation worldwide. If there was a Nobel Prize hanging in the balance, or even if Oli was into ice, we could escalate to a full-scale Taco Brand(TM) conflagration. The only corner of the alpine world still apparently silent here is the Alps. Or maybe they represent the Old School -- been climbing ice for well over a hundred years, thank you very much, and forging tools for it so long too, that they had gotten stubborn or complacent about how it's done.
Pause again to look at that Chouinard Equipment catalog that started this thread. (Thanks once again, Steve) Happen to have an original, on paper, right handy. Really can't tell from the tiny prints of those classic shots of French Technique if YC's axe has a curved pick. And I can't find right now my copies of Climbing Ice, with better reproductions of the same photos. Certainly by the next catalog the date of introduction of the Piolet is listed as 1969. And by October of that year Yvon delivered to me on the edge of the Palisade Glacier the hickory-handled 70 cm one (and that hand-forged Alpine Hammer) that we put to good use on the V-Notch the next day.
None of this really answers the question of where first the droop. Yvon's Piolet was such a high point esthetically -- still is the most beautiful ice tool I own and use. And it was so well marketed, including adroit use of the media -- a Chouinard trademark -- like my article about the V-Notch "Truckin' my Blues Away" (which had to be in Mountain? 1970?), that the question never arose, for me, until forcefully presented that night in Sheffield.
Wish I recalled better. Certainly remember pushing through a loud, crowded Pub. Certainly he was a Climber of Standing (TM) -- I was being escorted around and introduced, after giving a slide show in a big, tiered auditorium. He was definitely poking a finger toward my chest, which sloshed his beer. He was very intent on letting me know in no uncertain terms about Scottish primogeniture of the droop. Others listening agreed. May have even said that YC had come through Scotland to take in their development.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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"If there was a Nobel Prize hanging in the balance, or even if Oli was into ice, we could escalate to a full-scale Taco Brand(TM) conflagration. "
hahahahahahahahaha!
We could only hope for such a sh#t storm of entertainment!
Sadly I think it's just you and me on the sidelines, toasting our scotches and coffees with this one...
No doubt, and no argument, the aesthetics, execution and branding of the Piolet stands as a masterpiece of our generation.
It ought to be curated in the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York City.
Not for sleuthing purposes but for flavor:
(Clearly, Chouinard set a new standard in ad copy aesthetics with his clean lines and innovative fonts)
(Ad Mountain Magazine number 40 November 1974)
Sometime this year there was a pretty darn good article in the New Yorker about simultaneous mass propagation, but independently, of parallel innovations.
Oh well,
Eagerly awaiting some Don Jensen tidbits.
He had a bit of the innovator in him yes?
I love the clean lines on that Rivendell Jensen pack.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Never used one of these tents designed by Jensen,
And by some accounts it was pretty tiny but very stable in high winds.
Certainly it has elegant lines from a design perspective.
Those Rivendell Mountain Works ads also displayed a bit of class:
(also from Nov 74 Mountain)
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Here's some reference to the adoption of the curved picks.
As a sideliner, I'm more interested in appreciating the craftsmanship and aesthetic of the tooling.
But the instigation and timeline of innovation is cool too:
Some general commentary on applicable designs:
Reprinted from Mountain number 40
full article to follow....
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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From Mountain Magazine number 40 November 1974,
The Changing Styles of Scottish Winter Climbing
Summary:
An appraisal of the last four years of Scottish winter climbing since the introduction of new techniques and equipment.
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Topic Author's Reply - Jan 2, 2009 - 09:01pm PT
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Man did those blokes get some mileage out of those Salewa adjustables! I remember that article well as it came out at what seemed to be the height of classic Scottish winter climbing activity. Great post!
All day today I have been pondering the crafty and Promethean Scots re-forging their axe tips over a Primus stove. LOL
There must be quite a few exciting pick failure stories to go along with all the tweaking and innovation. It seems like people were zeroed in on stick and not on ease of extraction for another decade.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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There can be now doubt about that stick priority.
That Curver beast really stuck and routinely manufactured some serious dinner plates on the way out.
Sibley and Roos told me that one of their early re-drooping exercises produced a pick which frequently came out of alignment!
Must have been some metallurgical considerations at play...
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Topic Author's Reply - Jan 2, 2009 - 10:19pm PT
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Lots of these early mixed routes were done with Salewa adjustable crampons strapped onto leather boots. Very light and simple design (complete with period duct tape anti-bot wrap).
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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My, aren't you the tidy archivist!
Just look at those cute little red twisty ties keeping order over your Beck neoprene straps.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Just how many axes of marginally differentiated design did a girl need back in 1979???
(From Mountain number 67)
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RDB
Trad climber
Iss WA
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What an awesome thread and so much fun to read. Man, what great memories of adventures for a gear freak like me.
I been lucky enough to use most of the tools mentioned at one time or another. Gotta say ice climbing is so much easier now with the new gear available. But the new tools just don't touch me like the the older ones still do. Hard to beat a bamboo axe or a Terro adze for simple, effective and beautiful designs.
Used a 55cm Piolet and alpine hammer on Snivleing Gully and Weeping Wall in '74. Couple of weeks later I borrowed a pair of Terro's from some guys thrashing about on Cirus Gully. Climbed Louise Falls with those tools. Hard to get me back on difficult ice after that without a Terro in at least one hand.
Even if you couldn't keep the picks straight on cold days. That problem never seemed to improved over the years. At least you could hammer them flat again easily enough.
But using a Terro didn't stop us from taking a torch to everything possible with a curve but a Chouinard axe.
We later did Cirus gully ourselves. One trip with a Curver and a custom "torched" NW hammer up to the last tier, then Terros on that last bit of slush. Then I decided a set of Clog Vultures were the "sheet" for some unknown reason having never used them and did the second ascent of Slipstream with them with no spare. A bit later popped the head off the hammer soloing Louise in front of students while hanging a top rope. (almost filled my trousers while begging for a second tool to be sent up). Always carried at last one full size spare and sometimes two after that. Polar Circus again that spring and cut our time in half with a set of Forest Lifetime tools with my first reverse curve picks.
Takkakaw with a Zero axe and a Chacal and the second solo of Cavel with a Terro hammer and a Curver axe. Chacal and Barracuda on Borgeau Left, Weeping Pilar and Pilsner.
What a grand ride over the years. Salewa hinged, Chouinard rigids, SMC rigids, Chouinard hinged, clip on Chouinard rigids, then BD Sabertooths and finally Darts and Rambos. Have yet to break any crampon. Who ever thought leashless would be easier? But a set of Quarks or Nomics quickly point that out.
Galibers, Trappeurs, Haderers, Koflachs, Scarpa, Sportiva. I'd rather have the Haderers back to tell the truth. Kept the metal around but the leather went by the way side when plastic came along. Too bad and to think only a plastic boot has ever broken in half on me.
Screws and ice pins? Have you guys tried the newest stuff....simply amazing. Bigger change than the invention of Friends.
But back on topic. This from Mike Chessler's web site..
"And if the climbers ice climbed, they used Chouinard Ice Axes and Crampons. Chouinard copied the steep drooping pick of European hand made axes, that planted firmly in hard ice or Neve, and made balance and esthetics primary."
I had thought I'd seen pictures of what was supposed to be Heckmair's Eiger axe with a distinctly curved pic years back. Maybe some one else has as well. Not all that hard to bend a axe pic with a gas torch, hammer and anvil. Taking nothing away from Chouinard and company but can't see why the local Chamonix smiths hadn't played with the idea earlier. Not like I'd be telling everyone about my "custom axe" if I was running up the local ice. Tight community in Chamonix but anyone ever seen one of the custom axes from before '69?
As we all now know a guy can get a lot done with stiff pair of boots, a tightly laced set of 12 point 'pons and a curved axe or two :)
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Topic Author's Reply - Jan 3, 2009 - 12:15pm PT
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Above all, be neat.......er drink neat......er whatever!
Just in case you can't get enough! From Mountain 20, March 1972.
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Doug Robinson
Trad climber
Santa Cruz
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Wild to see Scottish ice climbing and be reminded of the evolving style that followed, and then pushed, the gear. I love the bit about temporarily setting an ice screw, mantling on it, pull and repeat. Brings to mind Harding's then-new aid ploy of drilling a shallow hole and hanging a hook in it. Then it became a specially modified hook, ground to fit...
Staring at that Scottish ice, plastered improbably on rock as rime blown in off the North Sea. A wringing wet, freezing wind. Brrr, reach for the Dachstein sweater and wooly mitts.
It reminds me suddenly of the Chugach Range, Alaska panhandle, and a recent (last 20 years) flowering of steep skiing. (I mean, we were just enjoying a fine thread about backcountry skiing. There too the campfire burned down to nearly just Tar and me.) Similar relationship of peaks just inland, beaten upon by arctic winds off a cold sea. Same result: rime sticking to improbably steep mountainsides. In the Chugach the stuff can look like powder in ski footage, but the fact that it's sticking, somehow, beyond the normal constraints of avalanche steepness gives it away.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Yes nice to see this thread still has legs.
And a first post from Dane Burns,
That's a very tasty recapitulation you served up for us.
Welcome to the Forum Dane!!!
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Topic Author's Reply - Jan 3, 2009 - 01:55pm PT
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Tis madness, but it's a fine kind of madness.....
Doug Thompkins on Hell's Lum Crag, Cairngorms, Scotland. From Climbing Ice, 1978.
It's fun and he's having it!
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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In Fall 1981 I sold my Galibier Super Guides to a nice guy from Washington named Steve Massioli. (I had climbed Rainier that summer in a pair of used Koflachs which I picked up at the Seattle REI, and just “knew” I was never going back to leather). I remember Steve eagerly scampering around on slabs around Camp 4 testing the Galibier out on rock. That boot rock climbs fairly well with such a narrow last. You can still buy them new! Sadly Steve died a few years down the line on something like Moonflower Buttress in Alaska.
I never owned them, but once borrowed a pair of Trappeur Rebufatt for an ascent of a rock route on Clyde Palisade: “Thunderbird Wall”, Robinson I think that’s your line?
We stayed left of that nasty V slot at mid height and got into a 5.8 hand crack. Those were very well-made boots: they seemed to have a high craftsmanship quotient.
Mollitor was another very nicely crafted boot I had a chance to borrow and climb both ice and rock in: they did very well on both counts. Both Mollitor & Trappeur were higher volume than the Superguide, so noticeably warmer.
That was one of the nice things about leather; more versatile. My mistake was not popping for a double boot, or getting into Supergators early enough…
I think a pair of Habeler Superlights with the Aveolite liner and non-steel shank (wood/fiberglass?) would’ve been nice to try.
Now both my hands and feet get really cold (wait: so does my nose, crotch, face and everything else) so what little dabbling I still do with ice climbing, I use a Lowa plastic boot from the late 80s, the second-generation Civetta (remember the earlier Civetta were leather?) and on top of that it is augmented with a thermoform liner, I also use an overboot and heat packs as well!!!
Of all the earlier full bore plastic boots I think that one climbed rock the best; not nearly as clunky as Koflach. It had a narrow toe box; I’m told that is called a “French Toe”
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RDB
Trad climber
Iss WA
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Thanks Tar, glad to be here!
Tar sez..
"Who made the first bent-shaft tools?"
This thread brings up all sorts of stuff I have been thinking about lately. One source, Grivel's web site, gives credit to the bent shaft to the EBOC.
Boots? Where in hell can you still buy new Super Guides?!
Your teasing us aren't you.
My first look at Koflachs was at the bottoms of Gary Silver's soles while he was breaking trail between the ice falls on Slipstream. Gary was always really fit but man he was trucking that day. He'd soloed the Swiss route on Le Courtes that fall and bought his Koflachs in Cham before they were available in the US or Canada. I was still climbing in my Haderers with a insulated Supergaiter. The system was warm but must have weighted in at 7# a boot. Gary's less than 6 for the pair. I had a serious case of lust.
Bought mine at REI. Made the 600 mile rt drive to Seattle just to get them. Broke the first pair of shells 5 years later but have my second pair (white) I have on on right now :) Just checking, you know.
I have just about every current ice boot Sportiva makes and still none of them fit as well as the Haderer. And few of them are as warm or climb as well for me as the Haderer or the original Koflachs, boats they were.
Heat pacs are the "hot" ticket. Seems loosing circulation isn't something that we just read about anymore. Some of the the newest fast and light boots really do climb well (sticky rubber and all) but my feet need a little more insulation. Big boots these days really are BIG. The Spantik has just about dbl the exterior volume as my original Koflachs do. The Koflachs with a foam liner is lighter. The Spantik is a good bit warmer but they are pretty clunky as well.
Crampons? Read above that by 1972 they had crampon bindings out and "working". MTN Magazine was one of the few connections for us to modern euro gear. (still have my collection as well) I remember seeing the cable system and buying a a pair at some point. But in the fall of '78 Gwain and I found a single Stubia with a binding on it between the Wet Cave and the base of the Difficult Crack. That discovery ended my need for crampon bindings for years.
I finally did buy a set of the last "Chouinard" rigids with a clip on system by Salewa in '85. They worked extremely well. Took a while before the plastic boots caught up with what was needed for welts though. The first white Koflachs I cut the toe groove in myself with a dremel. Bit thin but seemed to work OK.
Played with a bunch of new and old crampons last winter on a modern boot. ( Batura in this case) Pretty hard to beat the original Chouinard design on steep hard ice. It still out performs just about anything out there on pure ice. Plus it is lighter.
I'm sure Doug and others would really appreciate the super soft tops in most of the newest rigid alpine boots for French technique. Myself, I still like all the support I can get and a some what rigid ankle. Newest boots sure do a nice job of stretching your calves out though.
Funny rereading all the old stuff on the beginning of "modern ice climbing". Much the same is being said again now about "modern mixed." One more time, man the tool maker, has made climbing a whole lot easier and safer for the next bunch of us.
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jfs
Trad climber
Upper Leftish
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Gotta say this thread is one of the coolest reads on ST. I don't have time to read all the article reprints and recollections right now...bookmarking for posterity.
Thanks to all. Makes me wish I had more than 30 years of memories to call up. From when climbing was more adventure and less sport.
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Doug Robinson
Trad climber
Santa Cruz
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Don Jensen. Friend, mentor, creative gear designer, and the driving force of Palisades climbing in the Sixties. Which, now that I think of it, made him the dominant High Sierra climber of that era, the era that ushered in a flowering of new technical routes that peaked in the Seventies.
When I met him, '66 or '67, he already had an odd puffy spot on one lip where it was torn in an Alaskan crevasse fall far beyond the help of stitching, and sometimes a little mustache. It didn't detract, though, from that boyish enthusiasm. Unlike Dave Roberts, I recall Don as more small and wiry. Powerful with big shoulders, sure, and he always seemed to be bursting out of his knickers with sheer physical energy. Something innocent about that energy too. Coming from Yosemite, it seemed distinctly different from the Camp 4 mainstream -- barely emerged sufficiently from provincialism at that point to even be seen as a mainstream. It wasn't until '69, after all, that Mountain 4 published a Yosemite issue.
It's odd, maybe, that I don't recall Don ever going to the Valley. Grew up in Walnut Creek, and I know he got as close as Fresno, because it was after he gave a slide show there about Alaska that Joan came up to talk to him. They were married in the Palisades and had a wedding feast on the Banquet Boulder, a fine block of erratic granite just off the trail in the idyllic meadow of Cienega Mirth just below Lon Chaney's old stone cabin.
But then again avoiding the Valley had been something of a pattern among Eastside alpinists. Clyde did it, kind of gruffly disdaining the place, and so had Smoke Blanchard.
On the other hand, climbers who started out in the Valley had always come up to the high country, beginning with John Muir and the boys from the Whitney Survey, and notably the crew in 1931 who first wielded the rope in California: Eichorn and Dawson and Brower and Richard Leonard. When they stormed into the Palisades that August it was obvious what peaks had been bugging them, like Thunderbolt, just beyond what they might solo. Later Harding broke out of the Gulch to climb Conness and the epic 8000 vertical of NE ridge on Williamson.
Further out on this tangent, I notice strong skiers in that progression too, from David Brower to Allen Steck. Don Jensen had skis in the Palisades too, though his rig was far out of the mainstream. Three feet long, a crampon-style binding I think, and permanent skins. Pretty utilitarian, but they gave him full freedom of the place when he roamed the range during the late spring, quite alone.
Yes, on one level he was just training for Alaska. But it was quickly obvious that he loved the Palisades for themselves. Built paper-mache relief models of both the Palisades and the Alaska Range. And he made up a second pair of those unique skis to take clients in for big climbs like the Twilight Pillar on Clyde Peak -- probably the most outstanding climb in the entire South Fork -- and even bigger traverses. He had spotted several bivouac caches just down off the backside of the crest in Kings Canyon NP. It's more than a day's stout travel just to get to those spots, and here he was setting them up with a pair of sleeping bags to be able to drop off the ridge with a client. No one since has done that level of guiding, let alone climbing, in the remote South Fork, and the location of his caches vanished with a lot of his lore of the climbs themselves when Don lost it on black ice on his bicycle and slid headfirst into a stone wall while a Postdoc in Mathematics in Scotland in the early 70s.
If Don had survived, I venture to say that the tone of that Golden Age of High Sierra development that flowered from his Palisades era into the Seventies would have ended up with more of an alpine flavor than the mood of more pure rock climbing in an alpine setting that actually developed. More winter ascents of the hard climbs, just for starters.
Don set a vigorous tone at the Palisades School of Mountaineering. He put up many of the FAs of the Celestial Aretes on Temple Crag, for instance, with a hand-picked client out of the weekly classes. And the Celestial Aretes -- his name, his vision -- have to stand out as the most prominent centerpiece of the Sierra part of his legacy.
Now that Bob Swift -- Swifty -- has joined our campfire, I hope he will fill in some of the transition at the Palisades climbing school, then known by its original name Mountaineering Guide Service. Larry Williams started it in I think the late 50s, and it was the first, and for over a decade the only, commercial climbing school in California. The Sierra Club's Rock Climbing Section, where I learned to tie-in in 1958, was the other big venue. I missed by two weeks the chance to meet Larry before he augered in off the Bishop runway, trying to bump start the second engine of his twin-engine plane. Bob Swift was the bridge from Larry Williams to Don Jensen. He was Chief Guide when I showed up, and I vividly recall leading a second rope behind Bob in my apprenticeship, including the East Face of Whitney.
It would be interesting to hear more about the early tone set by Larry Williams. Swift himself, who had been on the FA with Harding of the East Buttress of Middle in 1954 and of YPB with Steck in '52 -- not to mention the first American FA of an 8000-meter peak, Hidden Peak in 1958 -- was a classically calm and steadying influence to balance Don Jensen's energy and enthusiasm, as he burned onto new ground.
Winding down for now...
Doug
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