Enormocast 298: Jim Erickson – Clean and Free in the 1970s

[00:00:03] Yeah, hi Enormonation, this is Jeff Bezos. Bezos? Yeah, however you want to say it. You may have heard of a little company called Amazon.com. It's not actually little, it's fucking humongous. But anyway, I'm kind of like your crack dealer for junk that you really don't need.

[00:00:22] But even though I need a solid gold ankler for my second superyacht, I'm going to make a solid gold suggestion this holiday season and ask that you help me get on the good side of Chris at The Enormocast by buying direct from the little guys that sponsor his enormously good podcast. Enormous, get it? It's in the name.

[00:00:43] Anyway, there's three small businesses that sponsor his show and buying direct from them really makes a difference to their bottom line as opposed to mine. I don't even know where that is, frankly. I mean, is it like when you only have one Lamborghini and not seven?

[00:00:59] PeterWGilroy.com makes incredible hats, jewelry, and artistic accessories out of a place called New Mexico. I don't know where that is, but it sounds amazing.

[00:01:09] BelaySpecs.com is just a couple of people, humans, I think, banging out those crazy glasses that save your neck.

[00:01:18] And BonfireCoffee.com roasts great coffee in a small shop out of Glenwood Springs, Colorado. Very resourceful. Extremely resourceful, these people.

[00:01:28] And they're all small and they're all supporting climbers. And look, I know it's hard to quit me and my robot overlords.

[00:01:36] You know, I kind of designed it that way. But click over to any of these small vendors and entry Normo or NormaCast at checkout.

[00:01:45] I can't remember which, but try them both. Anyway, you can get a discount, get a great gift for one of your friends.

[00:01:51] And maybe, just maybe, Chris will return one of my 40 emails I've sent him.

[00:01:57] Oh wait, hold on, let me press send. Okay, never mind. 41 emails.

[00:02:06] You are listening to the NormoCast.

[00:02:09] At Black Diamond, December is a time for giving back.

[00:02:13] They've spent the first two weeks of December matching your donations to the Access Fund, hoping to reach a $75,000 goal.

[00:02:21] And though November's Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Giving Tuesday noise has mercifully faded for another year,

[00:02:28] BD has decided to take the only good one of those and amp it up.

[00:02:31] So every Tuesday in December, BD will be shining the spotlight on a different partnership and donating 1% of sales that day to the cause.

[00:02:40] And I'm not sure the higher-ups realized this when the idea dropped, but there's five Tuesdays in this December.

[00:02:45] I hope that little office go-getter who suggested it didn't get canned.

[00:02:49] So, as you holiday shop this season, even if it's not on a Tuesday,

[00:02:54] remember that the climbers at Black Diamond are committed to the community and places we cherish.

[00:02:58] Go to BlackDiamondEquipment.com for more info on the who, what, where of their charitable partnerships.

[00:03:04] And maybe have a look at a couple Camelots or ice tools or whatever while you're there.

[00:03:08] What about a hug from a brand new puppy?

[00:03:11] We could all probably use another hug right now, even one from an inanimate object.

[00:03:25] Do you hear that?

[00:03:27] Do you know what that sound is?

[00:03:29] Well, while you and your crew scuttled off to the shade for some burns on the prod like so many mole rats,

[00:03:35] your rack of post-sen libations, or sad sack failure drinks as the case may be,

[00:03:40] are sitting in your increasingly scolding rig feeling the heat.

[00:03:44] And no, that Whole Foods foil cooler bag they guilted you into buying is not going to cut it.

[00:03:49] Luckily for you and your friends, Yeti has the answer for day trippin' sippin'.

[00:03:54] The Rohde 15 Cooler

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[00:04:03] but still ample room inside for cold drinks and vittles for yet another best day ever at the crag.

[00:04:09] And of course, the Rohde 15 Cooler is built by Yeti, so it will last practically until the burning orb in the sky goes supernova and vaporizes everything and everyone.

[00:04:22] Let's just hope you've sent the prod by then.

[00:04:25] Am I right there, one hang Johnny?

[00:04:27] So do yourself and your thirsty friends a favor and level up your Opry Grimpe with a Yeti Rohde 15 Cooler by going to yeti.com to find your local Yeti dealer.

[00:04:38] And remember, gifting a Rohde 15 Cooler to your best bud this holiday season just means more cold send beers for you, too.

[00:04:48] Listen, where are you playing in town?

[00:04:50] Are you playing here?

[00:04:50] We're doing the Normo Dome, whatever it is. It's terrific.

[00:04:54] Oh yeah, big place that's on the town.

[00:04:56] That's a big place.

[00:04:57] You sold it out.

[00:04:57] I'll say, so we really should.

[00:05:01] Look, you better get up there before you panic. Those pens are loose.

[00:05:05] You're very good.

[00:05:07] I have really enjoyed having them with you.

[00:05:09] You'll make it.

[00:05:11] I don't think so.

[00:05:12] But we shall continue with style.

[00:05:17] Good weather.

[00:05:25] Bad weather.

[00:05:25] Now or later, anytime.

[00:05:28] Today's show is brought to you by Black Time and Equipment, La Sportiva, and with support from Maxim Ropes.

[00:05:35] Maxim has been keeping the Normo cast off the deck since 2012.

[00:05:39] And now we can also thank the chill folks at Yeti.

[00:05:43] And don't forget our charter sponsor, Bonfire Coffee.

[00:05:47] Go to bonfirecoffee.com and entry Normo at checkout to get a great deal on great coffee and to support the Norma cast.

[00:05:56] And now back to the show.

[00:06:04] Hello and welcome to the Norma cast.

[00:06:05] This is your host, Chris Caloose.

[00:06:07] It is December 11th, 2024, about 9 a.m. here in Colorado.

[00:06:12] And this is episode 298 of the Norma cast with legendary Colorado Boulder rock climber Jim Erickson.

[00:06:25] And any of you old school listeners here at the Norma cast, the folks that have been with us for the whole time, recognize that name from the book, Climb.

[00:06:34] A seminal volume here in the history of the Norma cast, as well as my own history, 1978 or so book about the history of Colorado climbing.

[00:06:43] Because Jim Erickson was so influential, maybe the most influential person in the 1970s in Colorado, as far as free climbing is concerned, including being half of a very cool addendum interview at the end of climb alongside his longtime partner, Steve Wunsch.

[00:07:01] Anyhow, yeah, we're getting some deep history on this one.

[00:07:03] But before we get to that, let's do a little business around here at the Norma cast.

[00:07:09] First of all, I'd like to say that since it's December 11th, that makes this the anniversary of the launch of the Norma cast.

[00:07:17] December 11th, 2011, I think.

[00:07:21] Jesus Christ, I gotta look that up.

[00:07:23] Yeah, that's right.

[00:07:25] 2011, which makes it what?

[00:07:27] 13 years old?

[00:07:28] Can't believe I'm still doing it.

[00:07:30] Almost 300 episodes.

[00:07:31] That one's coming up.

[00:07:32] So, congratulations to me.

[00:07:38] All right.

[00:07:39] On the last episode with Paul Keene, I announced that I will be once again attending the Michigan Ice Festival up in Munising, Michigan.

[00:07:47] However, I am also going to another fledgling ice climbing festival in the Midwest.

[00:07:54] The Winona Ice Fest in Winona, Minnesota is in only its second year.

[00:07:59] And my friend Eric Barnard over there asked me to show up this year.

[00:08:04] He actually asked me to go last year, but I couldn't pull it off.

[00:08:07] But you know, it's like a new model of a car.

[00:08:10] You don't want to get the first one.

[00:08:11] I don't know why everyone invites me to these ice fests.

[00:08:15] I think they find it humorous that the non-ice climbing, a Norma cast guy shows up at their ice fest.

[00:08:21] Maybe they think it brings more people in.

[00:08:23] I mean, is there really someone out there that wasn't going to go to the ice fest and now that they know I'm going to be there, they're going to go to the ice fest?

[00:08:30] I don't see that really being a possibility.

[00:08:33] Maybe some people that were already going will be psyched to hang out.

[00:08:38] That would be great.

[00:08:39] Anyhow, I'm going to Winona.

[00:08:41] Winona, Minnesota, the boulder of the Mississippi.

[00:08:45] Eric loves when I say that.

[00:08:47] They do not have a Whole Foods yet.

[00:08:50] January 30th to February 2nd, 2025.

[00:08:54] If you're in the Midwest, if you're in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Chicago area, I don't know.

[00:08:59] If you wanted another ice fest on your dance card, here it is.

[00:09:04] So listen up.

[00:09:04] Go to bigriverclimbingguides.com for information, tickets, how to get signed up for clinics, all the stuff that goes with ice festivals.

[00:09:14] And plan your trip to the lovely berg, the Riverside Berg of Winona, Minnesota.

[00:09:20] Winona, Minnesota is super cool.

[00:09:22] Eric was on the podcast some years ago talking about how he's trying to kind of single-handedly turn it into an outdoorsy town from, I think it was sort of a steel shipping town on the Mississippi, sending barges down the Mississippi.

[00:09:36] I don't know what they did.

[00:09:37] But they're trying to add a little tourism.

[00:09:39] And the city has been awesome in embracing all this.

[00:09:43] And that does not always go that way.

[00:09:45] Little towns in the Midwest can look at climbing and mountain biking and hiking, cross-country skiing as some sort of thing that's going to bring a bunch of weirdos to town and they don't want it.

[00:09:56] But the smart ones embrace it.

[00:09:58] Because what the heck?

[00:09:59] Let's fill the restaurants.

[00:10:01] Let's fill the hotels.

[00:10:03] Let's fill the Airbnbs, the coffee shops with some psyched, fun people who actually usually treat these places with a lot of respect.

[00:10:10] Among other things, Eric has gotten the city and a bunch of psyched folks to build an ice park there.

[00:10:16] So let's go.

[00:10:18] Winona, Minnesota, January 30th to February 2nd.

[00:10:23] BigRiverMountainGuys.com

[00:10:25] I wonder if anybody in Winona is brewing kombucha yet.

[00:10:29] Let's get a kombucha.

[00:10:32] All right.

[00:10:34] Let's talk about Jim Erickson.

[00:10:36] I actually got this quite a few months ago.

[00:10:38] I've been sitting on it.

[00:10:38] I don't know why.

[00:10:40] But, you know, we just had Paul Keen on, Midwest ice climber, Lake Superior ice climber.

[00:10:46] And Paul had gone west, sort of cut his teeth on bigger roots, but ended up back in Wisconsin.

[00:10:52] Jim Erickson also has Wisconsin roots.

[00:10:55] He was born there.

[00:10:56] He learned to climb at Devil's Lake.

[00:10:58] But then he went west and kind of never looked back and actually defined himself in Boulder in the 70s.

[00:11:05] There's so much history in this podcast.

[00:11:07] I mean, we touch on, obviously, Devil's Lake, Eldo, Boulder, the Gunks, Yosemite, Takites, even a little bit of history in the UK.

[00:11:17] We also get a deep history of the emergence of free climbing and also the emergence of clean climbing, which did not happen simultaneously.

[00:11:26] And nor was it embraced by everyone in the way that Jim Erickson embraced it.

[00:11:31] Jim Erickson also helped define a lot of the ethics that we use when we approach the rock and approach climbing these days.

[00:11:38] Although his ethics went a lot further.

[00:11:40] My favorite thing in this podcast is a very detailed account of Jim and several others, mainly Art Higbee, coming within a couple few feet of free climbing half dome in the 1970s.

[00:11:56] As we were talking about it, Jim kept asking, do you want this kind of detail?

[00:11:59] And I'm like, yes, give it to me.

[00:12:01] Give me the detail, dude, right here in the veins.

[00:12:05] But yeah, those guys nearly free climbed it.

[00:12:08] By some modern kind of wonky definitions, they actually did free climb it, but not by their own definition at the time.

[00:12:15] A movie was made about it and it was done with a rack of nuts and reluctantly a couple pitons.

[00:12:21] The other little tidbit that I want to point out before we get to this interview is that Jim Erickson was also a practitioner of, I think, one of the most esoteric and rare forms of rock climbing.

[00:12:33] And that is, let me see if I can get it all in here.

[00:12:37] On-site free solo first ascents.

[00:12:42] And not just scrambly-rambly first ascents that, you know, you just happen to be the first one to go up that crumbly face.

[00:12:50] But actually, cutting edge, ground up, on-site, I guess that's redundant, first ascents.

[00:12:59] Which means he looked up, he said, yeah, it looks hard, but I probably can do it.

[00:13:04] No cleaning, no preview, just went for it.

[00:13:06] Sounds like he went up to about 10 plus, which I think in the modern equivalent would be like doing an on-site first ascent of a 512.

[00:13:17] So just sit there and imagine that kind of gumption.

[00:13:21] All right, no more previews.

[00:13:23] Tons of great stories in this one.

[00:13:26] Let's get to an interview with Jim Erickson.

[00:13:29] And I hope you enjoy all the climb references.

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[00:14:13] Well, if you have to ask, you'll never know.

[00:14:16] But it is a valid question.

[00:14:18] Don't get me wrong.

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[00:14:36] I think we just jump in with talking a little bit about what we were just talking about, which is caving.

[00:14:42] Okay.

[00:14:43] Because that's how I first met you.

[00:14:45] That's true.

[00:14:46] Right?

[00:14:47] Is on a caving adventure.

[00:14:49] And it connects to climbing in a lot of ways.

[00:14:51] First of all, I knew who you were as a climber.

[00:14:53] I had read Climb.

[00:14:55] Climb.

[00:14:55] Yeah, a bunch of times by then.

[00:14:57] That's the reason why.

[00:14:57] Had a lot of reverence because I also started climbing in Eldo.

[00:15:02] It was kind of where, well, I did my first lead there.

[00:15:05] In Eldo?

[00:15:05] Yeah.

[00:15:06] Then we're on this trip with you.

[00:15:08] And then it turns out that we're in this place.

[00:15:11] We were looking for Fixing to Die Cave, which obviously you've found and have probably been in many times.

[00:15:17] But on that trip, we actually had no idea where it was.

[00:15:20] We had a loose idea, or you did, on a topo map.

[00:15:24] And we were under the impression we had to rappel into it.

[00:15:28] And so we were walking around on top of these cliffs trying to figure out where we were.

[00:15:33] And I have a picture of us looking at a map and stuff like that.

[00:15:37] But the interesting thing is that there's this very popular now, really cool bolted sport climbing area up there by this cave now.

[00:15:47] And so once I started climbing there, I knew Fixing to Die was somewhere because people talked about that was up there.

[00:15:53] And I never found it.

[00:15:54] I mean, I never went back.

[00:15:55] Oh, really?

[00:15:56] Yeah.

[00:15:56] So I've never been in the cave.

[00:15:57] Oh, you haven't?

[00:15:58] No.

[00:15:59] But groaning's up in that area and stuff, too.

[00:16:01] And so I've been in all those.

[00:16:02] That's actually one that you and I went in together.

[00:16:05] But nevertheless, I went back and looked at my slides because I have some slides of us sort of tromping through the tall grass and things.

[00:16:11] And sure enough, there we were pretty much right about where the trail and the approach goes down to where this climbing area is.

[00:16:20] Oh, really?

[00:16:21] Yeah, it was a pretty cool memory.

[00:16:22] But even though it's a climbing podcast, let's talk a little bit about caving.

[00:16:26] I mean, it's something that also consumed your life for quite a long time, and I don't know if it still does.

[00:16:31] Actually, if it wasn't for caving, I never would have been a climber.

[00:16:34] Because when I was a little kid, I read a book and was interested in caving.

[00:16:38] I was 10.

[00:16:40] And I read a book at a library about caves.

[00:16:43] And I was in Wisconsin, and there were some little caves there.

[00:16:46] So I spent a couple of years trying to go caving.

[00:16:49] And eventually, we hooked up with some people who knew where caves were.

[00:16:51] And we did some caving.

[00:16:52] As a family, we would go to these places and go 50 feet into these little caves.

[00:16:57] And after reading about caves, I realized that eventually, if I wanted to be a cave explorer, that was one of my early goals, I would have to know some climbing techniques.

[00:17:07] I'd have to know, because I saw pictures of people rappelling into caves or rappelling in caves to continue or whatever.

[00:17:14] And I realized that I'd have to know some climbing techniques if I wanted to be a better caver.

[00:17:20] So we bought some climbing gear in Wisconsin at the University of Wisconsin climbing store.

[00:17:28] We bought three pitons and three carabiners.

[00:17:32] Right.

[00:17:32] Put it in perspective about what year.

[00:17:35] You don't have to be exact.

[00:17:35] This was 1962.

[00:17:37] Okay, 62.

[00:17:38] 1962 in the summer.

[00:17:39] And we had a rope.

[00:17:41] We had a nylon gold line rope, twisted gold line rope.

[00:17:45] And so my brother and I went to Devil's Lake in Wisconsin.

[00:17:48] And we did a climb trying to mimic a picture we had seen in a caving manual about how people climb walls.

[00:17:56] Now, back in 1962, most Americans believed that rock climbers had grappling hooks on the end of ropes.

[00:18:03] And they whipped them around and threw them up and hand over handed to the top of wherever they were going.

[00:18:08] And that's about all I knew about climbing.

[00:18:10] But it turned out that things like carabiners and climbing boots existed that we were unaware of.

[00:18:18] So we got a pair of lug sole climbing boots that, well, they were actually boots for caving.

[00:18:24] And then we took these pitons, these three pitons and the three carabiners, and went to a 25-foot rock wall at Devil's Lake up near Balanced Rock

[00:18:34] and tried to practice climbing like we'd seen in the picture.

[00:18:38] And in the picture, there was a leader who had pounded in a piton, and he had the rope tied around his waist, just around his waist, no harness.

[00:18:48] And then his belayer, the rope went through the carabiner to the piton and then down to the ground.

[00:18:54] And his belayer was holding him on tension.

[00:18:56] And he was sitting there, and he was merrily pounding a second piton above the first piton.

[00:19:01] That's all they had.

[00:19:02] That's all the picture showed.

[00:19:03] So we figured that's how you climbed, right?

[00:19:07] So we emulated this.

[00:19:08] I climbed up 10 feet, pounded in a piton, clipped in one of the three carabiners, ran the rope through the carabiner,

[00:19:15] and leaned back on the rope.

[00:19:16] And I was tied into the end of it.

[00:19:18] My brother was holding the other end.

[00:19:19] So I sat there.

[00:19:21] You know, he held me okay.

[00:19:22] Then I pounded the second piton in about three feet higher and put a carabiner on it.

[00:19:28] And then I couldn't figure out how to get the rope up into the second carabiner.

[00:19:34] Because as soon as, you know, I asked for a little slack in the rope, I went towards the ground and not up.

[00:19:40] And so finally, I figured out I had to grab the piton, pull on it, hold myself there with a great amount of energy,

[00:19:47] and then grab the rope and clip it into the second carabiner.

[00:19:51] And, you know, that took about 20 minutes of effort just to go a foot and a half.

[00:19:55] And by then I was so wasted that I only made it up 15 feet of the 20-foot climb.

[00:20:00] And so we retreated and left the piton there and knocked it out.

[00:20:04] And we didn't complete the climb.

[00:20:05] That was my first climbing experience.

[00:20:07] But I only did it because I was interested in caving.

[00:20:10] Right.

[00:20:10] And you hated aid climbing ever since.

[00:20:13] I didn't even know that there was a difference.

[00:20:16] There was no difference.

[00:20:17] Where in Wisconsin?

[00:20:18] It was at Devil's Lake.

[00:20:20] Yeah, but where were you born?

[00:20:22] I was born in Racine, Wisconsin.

[00:20:23] It was a three-hour drive from there.

[00:20:24] It's just south of Milwaukee.

[00:20:26] Yeah, yeah, totally.

[00:20:27] No, I grew up in Libertyville, Illinois.

[00:20:28] Oh, well, that's only like 15, 20 miles from there.

[00:20:31] Yeah, totally.

[00:20:32] Exactly.

[00:20:33] So my brother lived in Kenosha for a long, long time too.

[00:20:36] So anyway, but yeah, so I know it.

[00:20:37] We're both Wisconsin guys.

[00:20:38] I was born in Green Bay, actually.

[00:20:40] Oh, you were?

[00:20:40] Yeah, yeah.

[00:20:41] But I didn't ever bother climbing there.

[00:20:43] I learned to climb out here.

[00:20:45] And then I've been back to Devil's Lake to climb since I became a climber, but had no idea about any of it.

[00:20:51] How did you know to go over there?

[00:20:53] Oh, well, we didn't know.

[00:20:55] We just knew there were some cliffs there.

[00:20:58] Okay.

[00:20:58] And so we had this fiasco experience trying to learn how to aid climb, I guess it was.

[00:21:05] Sure.

[00:21:06] So we didn't climb at all again.

[00:21:07] We just did some more caving.

[00:21:08] But then about six months later, my mother, who was a conservationist and a bird washer, met some members of the Sierra Club on a bird watching hike.

[00:21:19] Right.

[00:21:20] And they happened to be also rock climbers in the Midwest Sierra Club group.

[00:21:27] And they invited our family to go on a climbing trip because she knew we were caving and she wanted us to be safe.

[00:21:33] And we talked about it a little bit.

[00:21:35] So she thought maybe I could learn how to use ropes safely because we didn't know how to use them, obviously.

[00:21:40] So we went on a weekend climbing outing with the Sierra Club in the spring of 1963, where I was taught how to belay, how to repel, how to really tie in with the correct knot, you know, how to belay, how to do it to roll into all of those things.

[00:21:55] You know, we learned a lot of that stuff and it was really fun.

[00:21:57] So we went on those for a few years every once a month.

[00:22:00] So your brother, when you were on that first thing, was he just holding onto the rope with his hand?

[00:22:05] Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:22:06] Oh, yeah.

[00:22:07] I mean, I used a body belay climbing for my first 15 years.

[00:22:13] Right.

[00:22:13] I mean, sometimes I eventually figured out after almost getting killed that it was really important to have a carabiner or two attached to your harness so you didn't lose the rope.

[00:22:23] Right.

[00:22:23] But I used a body belay up until 1998, to be honest.

[00:22:29] Until 1998.

[00:22:29] 1998.

[00:22:30] Yes.

[00:22:30] Okay, I heard that correctly.

[00:22:32] But you heard it correctly, but I didn't just stand there like the Swiss guides where you're standing up.

[00:22:38] All right, come on up like this.

[00:22:40] I never used a shoulder over the shoulder belay, which people use in the 30s in the Alps.

[00:22:46] I never did that because a hip belay is much safer than a shoulder belay.

[00:22:50] And a hip belay, if you have some kind of harness on with two carabineres to increase the friction, is every bit as good as an ATC or whatever they use now.

[00:23:02] So in 1998, were you still finding people that were willing to go climbing with you?

[00:23:07] Oh, yeah.

[00:23:07] Okay, cool.

[00:23:08] And in fact, when I first started climbing in the gyms, I was using those.

[00:23:12] And finally, I went in and I had a Swami belt and I had some of my homemade leg loops that I'd been using caving and climbing.

[00:23:21] And after a while, they looked at me and they said, you can't bring those into the gym, you know, and you have to use a belay device.

[00:23:28] You can't use a double carabiner brake on a hip belay.

[00:23:32] Okay.

[00:23:32] So then I had to switch over to the dark side.

[00:23:34] You should do that.

[00:23:36] You should just travel the country trying to get into a gym with that stuff.

[00:23:39] Well, I hear now pretty soon I won't be able to climb anywhere because I don't know how to operate a Grigri and I'm not going to learn before I die.

[00:23:46] So soon I won't be able to climb anywhere.

[00:23:50] Yeah, don't they?

[00:23:51] Where do you climb here?

[00:23:52] Which gym are you climbing?

[00:23:53] I climb at the BRC.

[00:23:54] They still allow ATCs.

[00:23:55] They still let you.

[00:23:56] You can't go to Momentum or the other one, right?

[00:23:58] No, Movement still allows them to, I think.

[00:24:01] But I think some of the newer gyms require.

[00:24:04] I thought I saw someone get kicked out of there.

[00:24:07] Or not kicked out, but stopped with an ATC.

[00:24:09] I don't know.

[00:24:09] Might have been me.

[00:24:10] I would have known if it was you.

[00:24:12] Somebody from your era, though, for sure.

[00:24:14] Oh, yeah?

[00:24:14] Yeah.

[00:24:16] Probably Leighton.

[00:24:17] No.

[00:24:17] Yeah, that's pretty wild.

[00:24:20] But let's not jump to 1998 yet.

[00:24:22] So you did learn to rock climb while you were in Wisconsin.

[00:24:26] Yes, I did.

[00:24:27] And so for a while we did both caving and rock climbing in 62, 63, 64.

[00:24:33] And about 65, my brother went to the University of Wisconsin, started climbing with the hoofers

[00:24:40] there.

[00:24:40] And we just sort of migrated and switched to climbing and stopped caving sometime in the

[00:24:45] mid-60s.

[00:24:46] Because it was outside and it was fun.

[00:24:49] And caving is dirty and gross and muddy.

[00:24:51] And so we kind of quit caving at least temporarily.

[00:24:54] Right.

[00:24:54] So I didn't cave at all between, say, 65 and 85.

[00:24:59] Right.

[00:25:00] Climb was something of a Bible for me when I started climbing only.

[00:25:04] I started in the late 80s, which is a little bit strange.

[00:25:07] And we were a strange group of guys that kind of because of that book.

[00:25:13] And then also it was about the time that Beyond the Vertical came out.

[00:25:19] Okay, yeah.

[00:25:19] And so those two books turned us into these kind of retro climbers.

[00:25:25] Now, we were willing to use harnesses with loops and blade devices.

[00:25:29] But we had this rate as sport climbing was taking over and the battles were happening

[00:25:38] over the bolts.

[00:25:39] We were back 20 years in the past thinking about what you guys were doing in the 70s in

[00:25:46] Aldo.

[00:25:46] Thinking about what Cor had done.

[00:25:48] And at that point, he wasn't climbing really heavily anyway anymore.

[00:25:52] I want to get to the Aldo.

[00:25:54] I want to get to your Colorado time because that's when you kind of created your own paradigm

[00:26:01] for climbing versus what you were learning, let's say, from the Sierra Club or anybody

[00:26:06] else.

[00:26:06] So talk about getting to Colorado or moving to Colorado or what drew you here and finding

[00:26:12] Boulder.

[00:26:13] So I spent my first five years climbing at Devil's Lake mostly.

[00:26:17] I climbed to the Teton some.

[00:26:19] We went to the Gunks and did a few things.

[00:26:21] And that was really exciting because there were three pitch climbs there somewhere, which I

[00:26:26] hadn't seen much of.

[00:26:27] I don't know.

[00:26:28] We did a lot of fairly hard things.

[00:26:30] So we got into doing pretty hard rock climbs at Devil's Lake.

[00:26:33] But really, although I started climbing in 62, I was really a 50s climber in terms of my ethics

[00:26:41] because we believe that all climbs were approached as, first of all, training.

[00:26:47] Rock climbs were just training for big walls or alpine climbs.

[00:26:52] Right.

[00:26:52] So we used to do first ascents at Devil's Lake.

[00:26:57] And the leader would carry a pack on his back on a new route because that's what you

[00:27:01] did when you were in the Alps.

[00:27:03] If you were doing a 30-pitch climb, you didn't say, well, wait a minute.

[00:27:06] I'm going to stop here and put on my rock shoes for this pitch.

[00:27:09] And then I'll put on my ice climbing crampots or whatever for the next pitch.

[00:27:15] You just carried what you had to carry.

[00:27:17] So we knew that if you were going to do a long route in the Alps, the Iger or the Walker

[00:27:22] Spur or something like that, you had to carry all your own stuff.

[00:27:25] And you started at the bottom and you went to the top.

[00:27:27] That's how you did it.

[00:27:28] So I put up a bunch of new routes there my junior and senior year in high school.

[00:27:32] I did my first new routes and first free ascents of climbs at Devil's Lake.

[00:27:37] And they were kind of cutting-edge climbs.

[00:27:39] We called everything 5-9.

[00:27:41] If we could barely on-site it, we'd call it 5-8 or 5-9.

[00:27:46] And if we fell off it and did it, then we'd call it easy 5-10 because 5-10 was the top

[00:27:51] of the grading system.

[00:27:52] Today, a lot of those climbs that were called 5-10 are 11s and easy 12s.

[00:27:58] So I decided when I was going away to college, I wanted to go someplace where I could climb

[00:28:05] and didn't have to drive three hours to go climbing.

[00:28:08] So I applied to a bunch of places.

[00:28:10] Luckily, I had a pretty good academic record.

[00:28:13] I got accepted at Berkeley.

[00:28:14] I got accepted at the University of Colorado and Dartmouth, which were all the three places

[00:28:19] I was thinking of going.

[00:28:20] I thought I'd be able to climb near there.

[00:28:22] And I never been to any of those places.

[00:28:24] I didn't even visit them.

[00:28:25] And I just heard Boulder had good weather and the climbing was close.

[00:28:28] So I just came to Boulder because I wanted to not have to drive three hours to go climbing

[00:28:34] whenever I wanted to go.

[00:28:35] Well, I arrived in Boulder in the fall of 1967.

[00:28:37] I was a freshman here.

[00:28:39] I had to live in a dorm.

[00:28:40] I didn't have a car.

[00:28:42] Boulder at the time, if you won't believe this, but it is true, Boulder at the time was

[00:28:47] a cowboy town and it was a university town.

[00:28:50] And there were only like seven hippies in Boulder in 1967.

[00:28:55] Everybody drank beer just like a normal college campus.

[00:28:57] There were very, very, very few drugs.

[00:29:01] And the people who came to school there, girls from Chicago and Miami and Texas would come

[00:29:08] to Colorado.

[00:29:10] And the first thing they would do is buy a pair of blue jeans, a pair of cowboy boots and

[00:29:15] a cowboy hat.

[00:29:16] And they'd walk around campus because they were in the wild west.

[00:29:19] Right.

[00:29:20] Right.

[00:29:20] In 1967, that's what they thought.

[00:29:23] There were only 10 or 15 climbers in Boulder at the time who were actively climbing, I would

[00:29:28] say.

[00:29:29] Not very many, maybe a few more.

[00:29:30] But there was nobody that I could recognize as a climber.

[00:29:34] I couldn't find anybody to climb with my first month.

[00:29:37] I went to the sink because I'd heard that Leighton Carr and Pat Amand and Bob Culp hung out

[00:29:43] at the sink.

[00:29:43] And that's where the climbers were.

[00:29:45] But I was probably in Boulder for a month before I ever saw anybody wearing a pair of lug

[00:29:52] sole hiking or climbing boots.

[00:29:54] I never saw them.

[00:29:55] I saw cowboy boots.

[00:29:56] I saw dress penny loafers and things like that.

[00:29:59] Right.

[00:30:00] But there were no bikes.

[00:30:01] All there were were cowboy boots and stuff like that.

[00:30:04] So I couldn't find any climbers.

[00:30:06] So my first climb, I took my roommate who was from New Jersey who had never climbed before.

[00:30:11] I said, hey, you want to go for a hike?

[00:30:13] And I took a rope and I took him up to the third flat iron and tied him into the rope

[00:30:18] and led all the pitches on the third flat iron.

[00:30:21] You know, I gave him a pair of hiking shoes or something.

[00:30:23] And we went up to the top of the third flat iron and, you know, it's a 5-2 climb.

[00:30:27] And so anybody could do it if they can walk up to the base.

[00:30:30] And then we rappelled off.

[00:30:32] That was my first climb in Boulder.

[00:30:33] And I could walk to it from the university.

[00:30:35] So I didn't have to have a car.

[00:30:37] And my second climb was one where I got the guy who lived across the hall from me to belay

[00:30:43] me.

[00:30:44] And I went to El Dorado and he belayed me on the first pitch of tagger.

[00:30:47] And he'd never belayed before.

[00:30:49] I, you know, gave him the rope and gave him two caravaners and said, hold this and hold

[00:30:53] me if I fall.

[00:30:55] But eventually I met some people who were climbers.

[00:30:58] Jim Walsh was my first good climbing partner because he lived in the dorm wing.

[00:31:02] And some people at lunch said, hey, there's a guy over in the east wing there.

[00:31:06] He's a mountain climber just like you are.

[00:31:08] Maybe you should go talk to him.

[00:31:09] So I went over and talked to him and I started climbing with him.

[00:31:13] And we went to El Dorado and failed on some 5-7s, you know, five.

[00:31:17] No, they were 5-6s at the time.

[00:31:20] We failed on some 5-6s, but we finally did the Bastille crack, which was rated 5-6 then.

[00:31:25] You know, I'd already led 5-10s and 5-9s in the Gunks and at Devil's Lake and the Tetons

[00:31:31] at that time.

[00:31:32] So I was already a fairly well-seasoned climber, but I didn't think I was, you know, because

[00:31:36] I was just a dumb kid from the Midwest.

[00:31:38] And I knew the hardest climbs in the world were in, you know, 70s supposedly or at Takis,

[00:31:43] but I'd never been there.

[00:31:44] So this is a little bit ways before the clean climbing.

[00:31:47] Oh, yeah.

[00:31:48] This was six years before for clean climbing.

[00:31:51] Yeah.

[00:31:51] So this is piton, I mean, banging in pitons and things like that.

[00:31:54] Oh, yeah.

[00:31:54] Yeah.

[00:31:55] I had a rack of 50 Cromali-Shanard pitons, mostly Shannard and CMI.

[00:32:00] Right.

[00:32:00] And I'd been using them at Devil's Lake and in the Tetons since the mid-60s.

[00:32:05] I started climbing on soft iron cadmium plate pitons, which worked pretty well at Devil's

[00:32:10] Lake.

[00:32:11] I did some hard, scary leads there using those.

[00:32:13] And I was very good at that.

[00:32:14] My brother and I were both pretty strong climbers at that time, you know, at Devil's Lake.

[00:32:19] And we were leading ground up.

[00:32:20] So we weren't climbing things quite as hard as Pete Cleveland was climbing because he would

[00:32:24] top rope these things that were horrendously hard, 11s and 12s and harder things.

[00:32:29] But he'd top rope them 30 times and then eventually some of them he would lead.

[00:32:33] But he had nothing more to prove leading after doing super pins.

[00:32:36] So he mostly just top roped.

[00:32:38] He put up the hardest top rope climb in the world in 1977 or something like that.

[00:32:44] You know, he did Bagatelle and Phlogiston, which are today are 12C and 13B.

[00:32:51] Like Phlogiston, he did it as a long top rope project.

[00:32:55] It's 50 feet long, but it would have been one of the three hardest climbs in the world.

[00:32:59] Wow.

[00:33:00] When you're leading with pitons, but you're free climbing.

[00:33:03] Yes.

[00:33:03] You're having to get stances to pound them in.

[00:33:06] Well.

[00:33:07] Or are you placing them by hand?

[00:33:09] Should we define the word stance?

[00:33:10] Yeah.

[00:33:11] Yeah, for sure.

[00:33:12] Yeah.

[00:33:12] I mean, tell me about that because I think it's just lost from.

[00:33:16] Well, I think.

[00:33:16] You either aid climb on pitons or you free climb with nuts and cams.

[00:33:20] But there was a period in there which was both.

[00:33:24] Up until 1971 or 72, every climber in the world, except for the British who scorn pitons

[00:33:33] or only use them occasionally.

[00:33:35] But every climber in the world on a short rock climb would carry a rack of pitons.

[00:33:39] And if you were aid climbing, you'd have a huge rack so you could do big walls or whatever

[00:33:44] you were doing.

[00:33:45] But free climbers would carry a rack of maybe 10 or 15 pitons from a knife blade, which would

[00:33:52] go in a really thin 16th of an inch crack up to a two or three inch bong in case you

[00:33:59] ran into a hand crack or a fist crack.

[00:34:01] So any climb you were doing, whether it was an old climber, repeating a new climber or whatever,

[00:34:07] you would have this rack of pitons.

[00:34:08] Now, I hadn't invented the quick draw yet.

[00:34:12] Okay?

[00:34:13] So the Yosemite climbers carried their racks over their shoulders on a sling and they would

[00:34:20] carry 15 pitons for free climbing.

[00:34:23] And then they would have about 12 so-called free carabiners, single carabiners that were

[00:34:30] also on their rack.

[00:34:32] And when they placed a piton, they would look at the crack.

[00:34:39] First of all, they would get to a place where they could at least let go with one hand.

[00:34:43] Then they would look at the crack that would be above them, hopefully, and find a piton that

[00:34:49] would hopefully fit in the crack.

[00:34:52] So you'd reach down with one hand, you're hanging on with a finger jam or a little edge or whatever

[00:34:56] you're doing.

[00:34:58] Then you would have to find the piton, reach up above you and stick it in the crack and

[00:35:03] set it in there in such a way that it wouldn't just fall out.

[00:35:08] And then you would have to reach back down for your piton hammer, which you carried on the

[00:35:14] other side, and start pounding the piton into the crack.

[00:35:18] Now, if you were standing on a big ledge and there was one hard move above it and then

[00:35:23] it was easy after that, it was fine.

[00:35:25] You'd stand there, you'd place a good piton, you'd climb five feet, and then you'd continue

[00:35:29] on the easy stuff.

[00:35:30] But if you were in the middle of a strenuous vertical or slightly overhung crack, like

[00:35:36] a supremacy crack or sometime crack at Devil's Lake, or a climb like Butterball, say, no one

[00:35:43] had done very many climbs like that because that would require someone to hang on and place

[00:35:49] protection three or four or five pitons where there was no place to rest.

[00:35:53] And nobody was strong enough to do that, at least on a single go.

[00:35:57] So the process to do that was pretty long.

[00:36:00] Like I said, you put the piton in, set it in.

[00:36:02] The first hit from the hammer, you had to hit it hard enough that it would go in slightly,

[00:36:08] but if you slammed it really hard, it might knock the piton out of the crack and then

[00:36:13] it might be the only piton that fits in that crack and then you were screwed.

[00:36:16] Yeah.

[00:36:17] I mean, I did that like aid climbing.

[00:36:20] Yeah.

[00:36:20] You know, you sort of strain up to get the thing set and then you whack it and you miss

[00:36:24] and it flies down the...

[00:36:25] Yeah.

[00:36:26] And then you lost it.

[00:36:28] Well, if you were, you know, if you were 15 feet out from your last piton and you were

[00:36:31] hanging on barely and you had a bad finger lock and you put a half inch angle in and

[00:36:38] you'd tap it once, tap it twice.

[00:36:40] And then once you realized it wasn't going to come out, then you'd beat the...

[00:36:43] Out of it.

[00:36:45] Then what you had to do is reach down, clip a single carabiner into it, then clip a second

[00:36:51] carabiner into it.

[00:36:52] So you, you, you, it wouldn't torque out because the carabiners, uh, you know, the, as

[00:36:58] I said, the quick draw hadn't been invented.

[00:37:00] And, and, and so if you, you, you, you would always put two P two carabiners on a piton

[00:37:06] and then you would clip your rope.

[00:37:08] Now today you reach down to your cam, stick it in and then clip the rope.

[00:37:13] So it's two operations.

[00:37:14] It takes, you know, and a quick thing, you could probably get a, a good nut placement or

[00:37:19] a good cam placement even in, you know, 30 seconds or 20 seconds.

[00:37:23] Not even.

[00:37:24] No.

[00:37:24] If you, you know, you're good, you keep going.

[00:37:25] Well, you get the placement, then you have to reach and pull the rope, right?

[00:37:28] But either way, the difference is huge.

[00:37:29] There are two operations.

[00:37:31] But with a piton, there were like five or six operations before you actually got clipped

[00:37:35] into whatever you'd pounded in.

[00:37:37] And it, it would take anywhere from two minutes to five minutes from the time that you started

[00:37:44] until you actually were clipped into the gear.

[00:37:46] I mean, the thing is, is that you just said that you climbed the, the, uh, Bastille

[00:37:50] crack in that style.

[00:37:51] Yeah.

[00:37:52] And like, I, I would challenge any modern climber of any level.

[00:37:57] It's difficult to pull that off because that, that's, you know, what, I don't know if it's

[00:38:01] five, eight now, five, seven, whatever it is.

[00:38:03] I mean, it's steep enough in several sections where that would blow everybody out.

[00:38:08] Oh, it would, if you were a five, seven climber, that would.

[00:38:11] Yeah.

[00:38:11] But if, even if you were a much better climber, it's a lot of, because then you're, plus you're

[00:38:15] carrying all that weight.

[00:38:16] Yeah.

[00:38:16] And modern gear.

[00:38:17] Yeah.

[00:38:17] A rack of, of 15, of 15 pitons, which are, which are chromolybid steel.

[00:38:23] They're, they're, they're pretty heavy as you know.

[00:38:25] So, and, and a hammer, by the way, and a hammer on the other side.

[00:38:28] And, and so it was a little more complicated, but I love it.

[00:38:31] So any of the strenuous leads from that day were significantly harder than they were

[00:38:38] generally in, in the nut era.

[00:38:40] Right.

[00:38:40] And, and, and, you know, way easier to protect nowadays, you know, with, with all of the

[00:38:46] nuts we have.

[00:38:47] Yeah.

[00:38:47] But let's, let's not even get to nowadays.

[00:38:49] So what happened in your climbing career that, that, that clean, when that clean climbing

[00:38:55] thing showed up, however it showed up, maybe you can explain.

[00:38:59] And then, you know, you obviously, it, it was a guiding light that you took to it immediately.

[00:39:05] By the mid sixties, Chouinard and a couple of other people, Leaper and, and Colorado CMI

[00:39:11] made really excellent chromoly pitons for aid climbing mostly, but they were very good for

[00:39:16] pre-climbing.

[00:39:17] So I use chromoly pitons to protect my climbs from 1964 to 1971.

[00:39:22] And I use them exclusively.

[00:39:24] I, I, I didn't carry any nuts until 1967.

[00:39:28] And, and the first nuts I carried were actual hexagonal nuts that I'd reamed the, the threads

[00:39:34] out of, because I'd heard that in some places you could get in a good nut where you couldn't

[00:39:39] get in a good piton.

[00:39:40] And this is true.

[00:39:42] Sometimes pitons are safer than nuts.

[00:39:44] And sometimes nuts are safer than pitons.

[00:39:46] It just depends on what the crack is like.

[00:39:48] And, and so Royal Robins in 67 wrote his article nuts to you.

[00:39:53] And, and he, he declined in England with, with Joe Brown and Don Willens and those guys.

[00:39:59] And he, he could see that there were places where a nut placement would be much safer than

[00:40:04] a piton placement.

[00:40:05] Cause as you know, in a very shallow crack, pitons aren't very good.

[00:40:10] Whereas sometimes in good rock at a shallow crack, that's only a quarter to a half inch

[00:40:14] deep can have a bomber nut for protection.

[00:40:17] Absolutely.

[00:40:17] A one, whereas the best piton, I'll have an example of this in a minute, but so anyhow,

[00:40:23] I, I climbed using pitons almost exclusively until 1971 and all of my original hard new

[00:40:31] routes in El Dorado and in Colorado and in California, all of those routes were done using pitons for

[00:40:37] protection until, until we climbed the naked edge in 1971, Duncan and I, that was October

[00:40:42] 3rd, 1971.

[00:40:43] And at the time we thought it was the hardest long free climb in the world.

[00:40:48] I think it was the second hardest long free climb in the world for 30 years.

[00:40:51] There was no climb that had that many hard free climbing pitches on it anywhere that we

[00:40:57] knew of.

[00:40:58] Greg Lowe did a slightly harder climb a few years before that, which was amazing, but nobody

[00:41:03] knew about it in any case.

[00:41:05] So after Duncan and I did the edge about two weeks, I'd climbed in the gunks a lot.

[00:41:10] I knew, knew Rich Goldstone pretty well.

[00:41:12] And I knew John Stannard, I climbed with those guys and I corresponded with them.

[00:41:15] They were idols to me because they were older and, you know, I was still a sort of a punk

[00:41:20] kid.

[00:41:21] And Stannard realized probably on Earth Day 1970 that the removal of the hardened steel pitons,

[00:41:31] which had revolutionized world climbing because you could do a wall where you placed 484 pitons

[00:41:38] like the cell of a wall, but you could do it in 30 pitches and you only had to take a rack of 25 or 35 pitons.

[00:41:46] You didn't have to carry 400 pitons because you could take them, pound them in and knock them out.

[00:41:52] And the fact that they cost a king's ransom compared to the other pitons, they cost 10 times as much as a steel piton.

[00:41:59] So you wanted to get your piton back.

[00:42:02] It would be like today if every time you placed a cam, a $40 cam, you had to leave it there.

[00:42:08] Yeah.

[00:42:08] Cams aren't 40 bucks anymore either.

[00:42:10] Are they more than that?

[00:42:11] Oh yeah.

[00:42:12] Whatever they are.

[00:42:13] But that's what it was like with chromoly pitons in the 60s.

[00:42:18] The second, you know, if a leader placed a chromoly piton, his second would waste three hours

[00:42:26] knocking that sucker out because it was worth the equivalent of $35 at that time.

[00:42:32] Anyhow, in 1970, John Stannard, in my opinion, started the clean climbing revolution.

[00:42:39] It's always credited with the California people, of course.

[00:42:43] And of course, they played a big part in promoting it.

[00:42:48] But John was really the first person to realize that something had to be done to protect the rock.

[00:42:54] And he realized that sometime in 1970, two years before the Stannard catalog came out,

[00:43:00] because he saw the rock damage that was being done in the gunks by the placing and removal

[00:43:08] of hardened chromoly pitons.

[00:43:10] And he realized that if that continued for another 10 years, all of the cracks would just

[00:43:16] turn into little serenity cracks with drilled out holes and nobody would be able to place

[00:43:22] anything in them.

[00:43:23] So he, in 1971, he came up with the idea of promoting clean climbing.

[00:43:30] I think he coined the term clean climbing, despite what I said in the climbing article.

[00:43:34] I thought Doug Robinson had coined it.

[00:43:37] But I think John Stannard, in his first edition of the Eastern Trade, which I received on November

[00:43:43] 5th or 6th, 1971, he had pictures of serenity crack showing the rock damage that had been

[00:43:51] done.

[00:43:52] Now, Duncan and I had just free climbed the naked edge, which was my major climbing goal.

[00:43:57] I was about to, I was going to quit climbing because that was the, I figured that would be

[00:44:01] the hardest climb I would ever be able to do.

[00:44:03] But I realized that I wanted to keep climbing.

[00:44:06] So I did.

[00:44:07] But within two weeks, I saw John's article and I said, I'm not going to be part of the damage

[00:44:15] to the rock anymore.

[00:44:17] So I talked to Duncan, who I'd been climbing with.

[00:44:21] I had him read the Eastern Trade article and I showed him the pictures of serenity crack.

[00:44:25] And I said, I'm going to sell all my pitons.

[00:44:27] I'm going to not place pitons anymore.

[00:44:29] If I place a piton, I'm not going to remove it.

[00:44:32] I'm going to leave it fixed because I'm not going to damage the rock.

[00:44:34] And so Duncan and I in, would have been November, early November, 1971, we both sold our racks

[00:44:41] of pitons.

[00:44:42] We put up a sign on the Boulder Mountaineer, said, we're selling all our pitons.

[00:44:46] And of course, people would come over because we just on the naked edge, right?

[00:44:49] I mean, it wasn't like anybody wrote it up anywhere.

[00:44:51] There were no magazines then.

[00:44:52] But people knew that we'd just done this hard climb and they said, are you guys quitting

[00:44:58] climbing?

[00:44:59] Why are you selling your pitons?

[00:45:00] And we said, no, we're going to climb with nuts.

[00:45:04] And they thought we were crazy.

[00:45:06] I asked my good friend, Steve Wynch, to join us and he wouldn't do it.

[00:45:10] He said, no, it wouldn't be safe to climb without pitons.

[00:45:13] We at least have to use some.

[00:45:15] And I said, no, if we get to a root and we can't get nut protection in it, we're just

[00:45:22] going to back off or be bold and lead it with no protection.

[00:45:26] So Duncan and I started climbing together.

[00:45:29] This would have been in December of 1971.

[00:45:32] We'd completely given up pitons and we did what were probably the hardest roots in America

[00:45:38] just using nuts at that time.

[00:45:39] We did a bunch of roots up on Lumpy Ridge, first free sense of things up there just using

[00:45:45] nuts.

[00:45:46] I suspect two months later when I did Insomnia Crack and Ataki Suicide, that's rated 11B

[00:45:53] now or something like that.

[00:45:54] But I led that completely on nuts with Scott Stewart.

[00:45:56] It was probably the hardest climb in America that had ever been led completely on nuts in

[00:46:02] 1972.

[00:46:03] It was my hardest onside lead at the time.

[00:46:05] I was very proud of it.

[00:46:06] But I placed four nuts on it or something like that.

[00:46:10] So the Chouinard catalog came out about that same time in March of 1972.

[00:46:16] Of course, Tom Frost and Chouinard, you have to give them a lot of credit because their business

[00:46:22] was to sell pitons to make money, right?

[00:46:24] They'd been making money off that for years.

[00:46:26] And here they're telling people not to use their products.

[00:46:30] Can you imagine if Reynolds Company back in 1965 who made cigarettes had said, well, we're

[00:46:38] going to stop making our cigarettes in North Carolina here because cigarettes cause cancer.

[00:46:44] Right.

[00:46:44] So we're just going to go out of business.

[00:46:46] Yeah.

[00:46:46] No, they did the opposite.

[00:46:48] They did the opposite.

[00:46:49] They got people to say that it didn't cause cancer.

[00:46:51] Yeah.

[00:46:52] But yeah.

[00:46:53] Well, that's what happened in that instance.

[00:46:55] But Chouinard and Frost, they both were good people who believed in protecting the rock.

[00:47:01] And despite the fact that they had both been involved in making the best pitons in the world,

[00:47:06] they realized that it was not a tenable paradigm for climbing to continue in popular areas.

[00:47:13] So they put their business on the line and their reputations to start making climbing

[00:47:19] nuts.

[00:47:19] And they did.

[00:47:20] And I've always had great respect for both those guys.

[00:47:23] And of course, Doug Robinson's article for clean climbing in the 72 Chinat catalog, that's

[00:47:29] what converted most of America to clean climbing.

[00:47:32] But that happened a year and a half after Standard had already made his all-night ascent logbook

[00:47:40] at Rock and Snow.

[00:47:41] And he'd been writing all these conservation articles to protect the rock.

[00:47:46] Was there also a realization in your own climbing that all of a sudden you got rid of all this

[00:47:51] iron and you didn't have to pound things in?

[00:47:54] I mean, did you feel like, okay, in a lot of instances, this is making things way more fun

[00:47:58] and way less work?

[00:48:01] Or was it just all like making things scarier?

[00:48:05] At first, we were petrified.

[00:48:08] We were totally petrified.

[00:48:10] Because all we knew was that the British had climbed with nuts.

[00:48:15] And they stuck them in the cracks.

[00:48:17] But we were smart enough to know that if you took a nut and you put it in a crack and dropped

[00:48:22] it down a half an inch, and it was just sitting there, and if you climbed above it 10 feet or off

[00:48:28] to the side-

[00:48:29] It could fall out.

[00:48:29] You could pull it out.

[00:48:30] Right.

[00:48:31] And so the first time Duncan and I went climbing up at Lumpy Ridge, I realized that that was

[00:48:40] a problem.

[00:48:40] And so our first solution to that fear was that, well, we just use an eight-foot runner.

[00:48:47] So you'd put in a nut, you'd clip an eight-foot runner, which was four feet between the nut

[00:48:53] and the carabiner, and then you'd clip into it.

[00:48:56] Well, you're not going to pull it out very easily with a long runner on it like that.

[00:49:03] But if you're on a hard climb and you reach up above your head and you put a four-foot

[00:49:07] runner on it, all of a sudden your protection has gone from a foot above your head to down

[00:49:12] by your knee.

[00:49:13] Well, yeah, because everybody enjoys that two feet of top roping.

[00:49:17] Yeah, yeah, exactly.

[00:49:17] You get out of place and a piece above your head.

[00:49:18] And so that's what caused me to come up with what is now called the quick draw.

[00:49:25] Right.

[00:49:25] Because I thought you can't just put in a wire nut and put just a single carabiner on it

[00:49:32] because that could get pulled out really easily.

[00:49:34] So I wanted to come up with something where you'd have a carabiner clipped into the wire

[00:49:39] and then you obviously want a carabiner that your lead rope is running through.

[00:49:43] So you had to have two carabiners in the system still somehow.

[00:49:47] But I figured you could get away with maybe eight or 10 inches between the two carabiners.

[00:49:52] It would still twist a little bit and provide some support.

[00:49:57] I mean...

[00:49:58] Some movement.

[00:49:59] Yeah, give you a little movement so you wouldn't pull it out.

[00:50:02] Because if you put a wire nut in, once you got your knee above it, you could easily just

[00:50:06] pull it out and then all of a sudden it's doing you no good.

[00:50:08] I mean, we didn't know at the time that you could actually pull down on a nut and seat it

[00:50:14] to help it jam in there.

[00:50:15] So for the first couple of months, we would...

[00:50:18] This is true.

[00:50:19] We still carried our hammers with us because if we ever came across a fixed piton to repel

[00:50:25] or something, you'd still test it.

[00:50:27] Right.

[00:50:27] We did that for a long time.

[00:50:29] Right.

[00:50:29] And you still should today, actually.

[00:50:31] I mean, people who don't know about pitons, they see a fixed piton.

[00:50:35] You never know if that's going to be good or not.

[00:50:37] It's very dangerous.

[00:50:38] So in those days, for the first couple of months, we carried a hammer.

[00:50:42] And if there was a fixed piton, we'd tap it.

[00:50:44] And you could tell by how it moved and how old it was and the sound, whether it was good

[00:50:50] or not.

[00:50:50] And then we figured, well, maybe we could tap these nuts.

[00:50:54] So we'd stick a nut in the crack and we'd just tap it just really lightly, just enough

[00:50:59] to...

[00:51:00] So the metal would just sort of mesh into the rock.

[00:51:03] At this point, there was already...

[00:51:05] I mean, Shannard or whoever was manufacturing wired nuts out of aluminum.

[00:51:09] He started making...

[00:51:11] He made his stopper nuts before that.

[00:51:14] Okay.

[00:51:14] Right before that.

[00:51:15] But I don't think anybody was using them.

[00:51:17] Standard was probably using them in the gunks.

[00:51:19] I suspect Standard did some really hard first ascents just using nuts in 1971 before we did,

[00:51:27] I suspect.

[00:51:27] But I don't know that for sure.

[00:51:28] Right.

[00:51:29] That's interesting.

[00:51:30] And John is so humble.

[00:51:31] He never...

[00:51:32] He won't admit to doing anything.

[00:51:34] But he...

[00:51:34] I mean, he was the greatest influence in American climbing in the 1970s, in my opinion.

[00:51:39] I mean, he invented projecting and he invented clean climbing.

[00:51:44] Right.

[00:51:45] In my opinion.

[00:51:46] So the quick draw means that you just had them ready, like pre-set up.

[00:51:50] Right.

[00:51:50] Right.

[00:51:50] So that was the invention.

[00:51:52] And then did you guys get the name too?

[00:51:54] So, well, then I started carrying three little quick draws with me whenever I put in a wired nut.

[00:52:02] Right.

[00:52:02] I mean, we carried some wired nuts, but we also carried nuts on longer slings over our neck and stuff.

[00:52:07] And on those, of course, you wouldn't need to use them.

[00:52:09] But if you put in a number two stopper to protect a hard move, like we did on wide country or the...

[00:52:16] I don't know what those climbs are.

[00:52:18] First pitch of cycle or whatever.

[00:52:19] When we first climbed with nuts in 71 and early 72, we were deathly scared because we didn't know.

[00:52:26] We didn't know.

[00:52:26] We didn't know how you could do it.

[00:52:29] So I figured out quick draws within a month and I carried three quick draws with me on every climb that we did.

[00:52:35] I think Duncan or Dudley named them.

[00:52:38] I did not name them.

[00:52:39] I can't take credit for that.

[00:52:40] But we were probably the first people who carried them regularly.

[00:52:44] Now, to be honest, I suspect someone in the gunks probably did something like that.

[00:52:49] Well, there's another thing that I think you adopted and you kept adopting in several different ways.

[00:52:56] And it sounds like these folks also did was that I am, you know, it's not that I'm going to use them as much as I can, but I'm willing to not do a climb if I can't protect it with nuts.

[00:53:07] And or I'm going to run it out.

[00:53:10] And, you know, but I'm not going to pull the piton out when it's necessary.

[00:53:15] Right.

[00:53:15] And that was a pretty big stance.

[00:53:17] And it sounds like you were kind of you guys were probably in the desert alone in that stance to a certain extent.

[00:53:23] Well, I adopted that stance right after, you know, right at the time when I converted to nuts.

[00:53:28] Yeah.

[00:53:29] And I decided that if I'm going to do a new route and if I'm going to lead a new pitch of climbing, if I can't lead it in a clean way, I'm not going to lead it.

[00:53:38] I mean, if there was a fixed bolt on a route.

[00:53:40] Right.

[00:53:40] Or a fixed piton on a route, I'd back it up or whatever I had to do if it was there.

[00:53:45] But if I was going up on a completely new route that, you know, didn't have something in it, I wouldn't go up and say, oh, well, I guess we could put a bolt here and then this will be safe.

[00:53:56] Jules Verne's a classic example.

[00:53:57] My stupid ethics that I had.

[00:54:00] I also adopted an ethic where I, if I was doing a new route, if I fell off or waited the route, you know, grabbed a carabiner or anything, I would not go back to lead it.

[00:54:11] I might climb the route, but I didn't want to lead it.

[00:54:15] Okay.

[00:54:16] So when we did Jules Verne, I did the lower half of it with Bill Putnam.

[00:54:21] We climbed the first three pitches in 71.

[00:54:24] And then we went up to look at the upper pitches in 72.

[00:54:28] And we were the first people, Duncan and I were the first people to go out onto the blank part of Jules Verne.

[00:54:34] And I recognized very quickly that if I was willing to place one good knife blade piton here, you know, this would just be a normal 5'11, easy 5'11 climb or 5'10 or whatever we called it then.

[00:54:46] And it would be no big deal.

[00:54:48] But I had made this decision and it was a personal decision.

[00:54:51] I didn't expect anyone else to follow it, but that's what I believed in.

[00:54:57] So I climbed halfway out on the crux of Jules Verne, out to where you can place some little gear now and where Steve placed the gear when he did it.

[00:55:07] And I climbed out to there and looked at the placements and I reversed the moves.

[00:55:11] And just as I was getting back to the, you know, the place where the good nut is, I was stepping back over the roof and I fell off and I fell two feet and weighted the rope.

[00:55:20] So I said I would never go back and lead it.

[00:55:22] And so I went up there with Duncan a couple of times and with Steve a couple of times in the early 70s before Steve started working on it.

[00:55:29] You know, I said, well, I'll come along because I could maybe lead the last pitch, but I'm not going to try and lead this pitch because I've already weighted my gear.

[00:55:37] And I did that on a number of climbs where I fell off once or grabbed a carabiner and I made sure someone else led that pitch on a climb because I, that I, yeah, it happened on Sidewall and on Dion Lights and a couple of four or five other 511 climbs in that era, you know.

[00:55:54] All right, we're here.

[00:55:55] Let's talk about this.

[00:55:58] First of all, I'll be referencing, there's an interview in the end of, of climb, but with you and Steve and, um,

[00:56:06] and, uh, Bob Godfrey, the author.

[00:56:09] Um, and, and this was something like, honestly, like I, I, when I was whatever, 18, 19 years old, I poured over this interview and I just read it on the way here.

[00:56:20] I was charging my car and I read it again.

[00:56:22] Oh boy.

[00:56:22] Um, and it's, it's fascinating.

[00:56:25] It's fascinating.

[00:56:26] But you had this ethic that was, I think, I mean, as sort of, I don't know if I want to say strong, but, but it was, I guess in some ways limiting or whatever.

[00:56:36] Very limiting.

[00:56:37] Yeah.

[00:56:37] In, in a way that I don't think I've really read about many other climbers having quite the length.

[00:56:44] I mean, climbing has always had these quote unquote ethics and people have adopted certain ways of doing things and look down on other people for doing them differently.

[00:56:52] Or, or, you know, with hangdogging is sort of the famous one, you know, that was, that was so evil for so long that we've just forgotten about.

[00:57:00] But I want to talk about your personality because here's this guy who you explained it in there is that you created these ways in which to kind of try to bring your best out of yourself on these climbs to challenge yourself in a way that would sort of force you to be the best you could possibly be.

[00:57:16] But anyway, who were, who was this guy?

[00:57:18] I mean, you were what, early twenties at this point.

[00:57:21] Who was this guy?

[00:57:22] Yeah.

[00:57:22] Is this guy, but you know, like against the wind, against the wind, you know, I mean, everybody else was doing it this way and you continually chose to do it a different way.

[00:57:33] Well, in the late sixties, nobody gave a SHIT about free climbing.

[00:57:39] Really?

[00:57:39] I mean, when people look, when historians look back on the era, people think everybody was pushing and trying to, to do hard, hard free climbing.

[00:57:47] And a few people were, but most people weren't.

[00:57:49] In 1970, when Wunsch and I did a Stex Salathe, there were probably seven climbers in the valley who were pushing free climbing.

[00:58:02] Bridwell, Barry Bates, Peter Hahn, people like that, who were, you know, trying to do hard, new cutting edge free climbs.

[00:58:09] But most climbers in 1969 and 1970, they just wanted to do a big wall.

[00:58:14] They wanted to climb the Nose or the Salathe or the NA wall because those were the big famous climbs.

[00:58:20] And that's why people went to Yosemite.

[00:58:21] They didn't, they didn't want to do little dumb.

[00:58:24] They didn't want to drive 2000 miles to the valley just to, to climb, you know, MF or Horseman and the Gunks or, or Britain's Crack at Devil's Lake.

[00:58:33] You know, they could do that at home.

[00:58:35] So people were very interested in big walls at the time.

[00:58:39] So, but the free climb, there were a few odd balls and there, there always have been.

[00:58:45] I mean, Atake's people were starting, were starting to try to eliminate aid on free climbs.

[00:58:50] Like Camps and Higgins did some amazing face climbs in the 60s, just amazing climbs.

[00:58:55] And they were pushing and they did, Higgins didn't do any, anything but free climb really.

[00:59:01] But Camps, you know, did the first descent of the diamond and he did some big walls and he did some aid climbing.

[00:59:06] But, but he was really a free climber.

[00:59:08] So there, there were four or five people all along who were sort of doing that.

[00:59:12] Robbins, of course, put up some really hard things when he chose to free climb, but he was, will, will be always remembered as a, as a big wall climber.

[00:59:20] Although he did do some of the hardest climbs, you know, in, in, in the world at the time, in, in the sixties, inadvertently almost.

[00:59:27] So there were people who, who wanted to free climb, but, but, and, and, and so in 1970, people like me and Wench and Peter Hahn and Standard and people like that who didn't want to do big walls started free climbing.

[00:59:43] And everybody recognized that if you were willing, well, if, if, if you wanted to do a, a, a hard climb, you could go up and, um, top rope it three times and then lead it.

[00:59:57] Or you could go up and put in a piton and lower off and then go up a little farther and then lower off like Pat did on supremacy crack.

[01:00:07] You know, I mean, he, he, he top roped it first and then he let it, you know, placing pitons in Clatter shoe, which, you know, I'm, despite the fact that he, he, he rested for a little bit at the very last piton.

[01:00:19] Still, that was the hardest hand crack maybe in the world at that time.

[01:00:24] It was still a very, very hard climb.

[01:00:26] And to climb that with no chalk in a pair of Clatter shoe in 1965, that was still a phenomenal achievement.

[01:00:34] You know, even though, you know, I used to give him grief about it because he, he, he'd say he'd done it free.

[01:00:39] And of course my definition was a real strict definition, but still I have tremendous respect for it because it was really a hard, hard, hard climb.

[01:00:48] And very, no one had done climb, a climb that overhung that strenuous, except for maybe Greg Lowe in America and, and maybe nobody else in the world at that time.

[01:01:00] So there were a few people who were doing that, but the free climbing movement didn't really start until the early seventies when people just started pushing longer climbs.

[01:01:12] And Stannard, you know, decided he just, just wanted to do foops.

[01:01:20] He, he, he, he, he wasn't really a, uh, uh, part of the scene in the gunks in 1967.

[01:01:25] He was a nerd, brilliant scientist from, from, uh, from Maryland and he started climbing and he didn't know much about it, but he was gifted climber.

[01:01:34] And, and he, he decided he wanted to climb this route that everybody thought was impossible.

[01:01:40] I mean, no one in the world had ever climbed a dead horizontal eight foot roof with fingertip holds anywhere in the world at that time.

[01:01:50] And everybody, all the gunks climbers thought it was impossible.

[01:01:53] I mean, the best climbers, Goldstone, who was strong as an ox and Williams was strong.

[01:01:59] You know, they were both great climbers and, and they'd all looked at it and they thought that'll never go free.

[01:02:05] There's not enough holds on it, you know, and standards went up there and decided, well, I'll just try it a few times.

[01:02:09] And he fell off at a bunch of times.

[01:02:11] Finally, one day he made it, you know, I think that was the biggest psychological breakthrough in American climbing in, in the 1960s.

[01:02:20] You know, the naked edge was a big psychological breakthrough.

[01:02:22] I think, even though it may not have been quite the hardest climb, it still was a huge breakthrough because it had so many hard pitches on it.

[01:02:30] And it w it was a standard route.

[01:02:32] It was like the nose.

[01:02:33] It was originally used as a big wall practice climb.

[01:02:36] You know, four of the five pitches were climbed on aid from top to bottom.

[01:02:40] And so, so there was so much aid on it.

[01:02:42] Nobody thought it would go free.

[01:02:43] And we just lucked out and got up at, you know, me and Steven.

[01:02:46] But foops, I think was, was the biggest breakthrough psychologically in maybe world climbing about what could be done.

[01:02:54] You know, maybe you could see, you might say the same thing about butter balls almost, you know, because that was another thing that nobody thought would ever be climbed.

[01:03:03] No, no one had ever climbed a dead vertical finger crack with no, uh, foothold that was 70 feet long ever before that, you know, and people had worked on it and said it was impossible, you know, blah, blah, blah.

[01:03:15] So I forget where I was going.

[01:03:18] Your question was, who the heck were you that you were?

[01:03:21] Are you, were you?

[01:03:23] I was just a young, stupid kid who, who saw that in El Dorado, Leighton Corr had put up some hard, uh, hard mixed routes, but he wasn't interested in free climbing.

[01:03:33] And half, half the routes in El Dorado when I came were aid climbs, they involved aid climbing and I'd climbed at devil's lake and I climbed in the gunks and I'd seen what was possible in free climbing.

[01:03:44] And when I first came, I was overawed.

[01:03:46] I couldn't climb anything.

[01:03:47] But once I went to Aldo, I realized that Aldo was like a slightly easier version of devil's lake that had a little more holes and a little better protection.

[01:03:56] And so I started picking out obscure climbs that nobody cared about that had aid on them and they turned out to go free pretty easily.

[01:04:03] Some of them were five, seven and five, eight and five, nine, you know, and I, I climbed them all pretty easily.

[01:04:09] And then, um, so I started doing harder and harder things.

[01:04:12] And eventually, you know, I repeated all the five nines and five tens in the Boulder area by 1970.

[01:04:17] And then Steve and I did the second free ascent of, I believe of country club crack, which was the one of the hardest climbs in America at the time that Pat had done.

[01:04:26] So then the next step was the naked edge.

[01:04:29] And I'd been on it a couple of times placing pitons and I'd only made it halfway, two thirds of the way up the first pitch because it's today with sticky rubber and nuts and little cams.

[01:04:41] You can just sort of stem in that shallow corner and people could just sit there and put gear in.

[01:04:45] We were fingertip lie backing, um, in Robin's boots, placing baby angles, pitons.

[01:04:54] And it was just too much.

[01:04:55] I mean, if there had been six pitons in the upper crux, Steve and I would have done it pretty easily, or I would have done it two years before when I first tried it because I would have just clipped into the things, but they weren't there.

[01:05:07] There, there were a couple of fixed pitons with none of them were near the crux.

[01:05:11] You and Steve were this kind of, um, I mean, you had this sort of buddy, uh, buddy movie through a few years in the seventies climbing stuff together.

[01:05:22] We, we climbed a lot of together.

[01:05:24] I mean, we did, we, we climbed for 15 years together all the time.

[01:05:26] But you guys had sort of different ethics and you kind of gave each other a hard time about it.

[01:05:31] We did, but it was, it was in, in, in fun, you know what I mean?

[01:05:35] I mean, it w it wasn't like, you know, these controversies where people get in fights about climbs and stuff like that.

[01:05:40] Steve and I were always great friends and we always climbed together, you know, once we, especially once, well, we, in the piton era, we climbed together for, for three years.

[01:05:49] And then, and then, um, in the nut era, we climbed together for the next 10 or 12 years.

[01:05:53] But Steve in the early seventies started climbing in the gunks with standard.

[01:05:58] And he, he, he realized that if you wanted to do harder climbs, IE climbs with bigger numbers, if that's our definition of hard, he realized that if you want to do harder climbs, you had to go up and try them and fall off them.

[01:06:12] Which is what standard had done on foops and then persistent.

[01:06:17] And I used to call that style aerial bouldering being a traditionalist.

[01:06:21] I started climbing a long time before Steve did, but, but, uh, we, we, we, we sort of, we were about the same age and we, we, we got into free climbing seriously about the same time.

[01:06:31] He, he and brag, you know, starting in 73 after climbing with John, they realized that if you want to do the, the big, hard new climbs in the gunks, which were the hardest climbs in the world at the time, technically, if that's all you're looking at, if you're just looking at the numbers, um, you had to go up and put gear in and fall off onto it.

[01:06:50] And so that's what John did on, on Kansas city.

[01:06:55] That's what Steve did on super crack.

[01:06:56] That's what standard did on persistent and foops.

[01:06:59] And, uh, you know, uh, all his even scary climbs, you know, have and have not all the, all those hard climbs that those guys did.

[01:07:07] They were, they weren't concerned about whether they were falling, taking aid.

[01:07:13] And of course, Steve said in, in the article, he said, well, you know, on some climbs like Jules Verne, where you have to, where the protection is so good, you, you're not going to go up.

[01:07:20] Go take 10 or 15, 40 foot falls off of Jules Verne.

[01:07:25] Unless you have a steel trap for a brain, you're not going to go back up there and say, oh, that was a 30 footer.

[01:07:31] Maybe we'll do a 35 footer this time.

[01:07:34] Even though it's a clean fall and people have fallen, they're not got killed.

[01:07:37] I mean, Jules Verne is, it's, it's a scary run out, but it's not a dangerous climb by, by perilous journey standards.

[01:07:44] Jules Verne is a well-protected climb.

[01:07:47] Yeah.

[01:07:47] But it's still a test piece.

[01:07:49] Well, it is.

[01:07:49] It's a classic group.

[01:07:51] People have to realize this is a climb in Elda that, that people still work up to with modern gear.

[01:07:57] Yeah.

[01:07:57] And, and yeah, cause modern gear doesn't change it that much.

[01:08:00] Yeah.

[01:08:01] It's, it's, you're, it's still really run out, you know, by today's standards, especially where people are used to having a bolt every five feet, you know, anything.

[01:08:08] All those climbs are pretty run out.

[01:08:09] So, so anyhow, Steve, Steve believed in, he, he wanted to do harder and harder climbs, which is fine.

[01:08:14] And he and, he and John and John standard were all pushing the limits of the humanly possible in the early and mid seventies.

[01:08:22] And I concentrated on two things.

[01:08:26] I concentrated on trying to onsite the hardest climbs that I could.

[01:08:29] That's what I wanted to do.

[01:08:31] Right.

[01:08:31] That's what always brought me satisfaction.

[01:08:34] You know, on the naked edge, I onsited the fifth pitch, which I have always been proud of, but the way we did the first pitch and the fourth pitch, you know, Steve and I sieged the, the first pitch when we did it.

[01:08:47] We both free climbed it, but we, we, we certainly lowered off it several times before we made it.

[01:08:51] And Duncan and I, you know, each fell once before we did the fourth pitch of the edge free.

[01:08:56] But, uh, on the last pitch, you know, um, I, I lucked out and was able to onsite the entire pitch, but, but, but, but I always felt guilty about the way we did the first pitch and the fourth pitch, because I felt like, you know, it was, you know, I mean, in 1960, 1969, you know, taking two falls to do a route was considered dubious.

[01:09:19] You know, if you fell off a climb in the sixties, once you, you just said, well, I'm not good enough for that.

[01:09:26] Maybe I'll come back in five years and try it again.

[01:09:29] And that's what I did with the edge.

[01:09:30] You know, I tried it once in 68, I'm not good enough.

[01:09:33] So I came back in 69 or 70 and fell off again, same place, trying to put a piton in, you know, and said, well, I'm not good enough to do this.

[01:09:43] So, well, it's interesting because you had these, these ethics.

[01:09:47] I think the word you use was taint.

[01:09:49] Yes.

[01:09:50] Taint, tainted a sense.

[01:09:51] And so, and it was kind of like, also you talked about how it was simulating basically naked free

[01:09:57] soloing.

[01:09:57] Like if you could, if, or at least it was simulating sort of free soloing.

[01:10:02] So there was like, if I fell, then I failed.

[01:10:04] And if I'd hidden have this rope, I'd be dead, which is true.

[01:10:07] Yeah.

[01:10:08] Failure.

[01:10:09] So the climb one, so to speak.

[01:10:11] And then you also moved into at some point, well, let me say this.

[01:10:15] One of the, one of the things, and I, you know, I think older climbers lament the loss

[01:10:20] of the ability for people to down climb, um, which was a big part of your method.

[01:10:25] Oh yes.

[01:10:25] Was to, to always be able to reverse moves, you know, and, and backer who was the, you

[01:10:31] know, maybe the world's most famous soloist before, um, Mr.

[01:10:34] Honnold.

[01:10:35] Yeah.

[01:10:35] You know, he also, and, and Croft and those soloists also talk about that you could reverse

[01:10:41] reverse moves.

[01:10:42] Although I think backer went quite a ways beyond that, um, in, in the height of his sort of

[01:10:47] career, but Croft was more of a practitioner of this idea that I don't go any higher than

[01:10:52] I could down climb.

[01:10:53] And, and that became part of your, your thing too, is down climb and maybe not come back,

[01:10:58] um, as opposed to risk of fall.

[01:11:01] Yeah.

[01:11:01] Yeah.

[01:11:01] Well, there were many times, for instance, when I went up on routes, climbed up a few moves

[01:11:06] and, and tried to figure out the moves and then climb back down.

[01:11:09] You know, I, I, I don't know if I was so much trying to make an ethical statement.

[01:11:14] I just was trying to avoid weighting the rope and using aid.

[01:11:18] Right.

[01:11:18] So, I, I mean, I, I down climbed all sorts of things.

[01:11:21] Uh, you know, sometimes 10, 15, 20 feet.

[01:11:25] If, if I would go up and it, I would, I had put all my energy into getting a nut placed

[01:11:30] and then I was, had no energy.

[01:11:32] If I could climb back down to a no hands rest, I would do it.

[01:11:35] Right.

[01:11:36] And, uh, because I, I said, that's something you could do if you were a free soloist.

[01:11:42] Whereas if you come up to a piton and you, and you, uh, clip into it and lower off or

[01:11:47] fall off, that's not something a free soloist could do.

[01:11:50] But you then took it to that level, you know, and actually started, which I thought, thought

[01:11:57] was kind of wild.

[01:11:58] And maybe again, you were something of a lone practitioner of this idea of doing first

[01:12:04] first ascent free solo, um, or at least first free ascent free solo.

[01:12:08] Well, I certainly was pretty alone in that.

[01:12:11] Right.

[01:12:11] I mean, I, I kept it pretty secret cause I didn't want people to know about it very

[01:12:15] much.

[01:12:16] Mm-hmm.

[01:12:16] I viewed that as the ultimate climb.

[01:12:19] You could sit there and try and decide what is aid climbing.

[01:12:22] Are, are climbing shoes aid climbing?

[01:12:23] Is chalk aid climbing?

[01:12:25] Is sticky rubber aid climbing?

[01:12:27] Is, uh, is wearing, uh, knee pads on an off with aid climbing?

[01:12:31] Is, is wearing long pants in an off with aid climbing?

[01:12:34] I don't know.

[01:12:35] I mean, you, you, there are a lot of, there are a lot of line that you decide for yourself.

[01:12:40] You, you, you make your own decisions about what is knee barring free climbing is, is, is

[01:12:45] knee barring.

[01:12:46] See, these things never go away.

[01:12:47] Yeah.

[01:12:47] So these debates never go away.

[01:12:49] So you've noticed.

[01:12:50] Anyhow, I, but I believe that, you know, anything that a, a free soloist could do was a

[01:12:58] legitimate free ascent.

[01:12:59] Now I, I, I never said to Steve or John standard or brag or anybody, Oh, you know, those great

[01:13:05] hardest climbs in the world that you guys did, you know, that, that wasn't really a free

[01:13:10] ascent.

[01:13:10] That's bullshit.

[01:13:11] That was bogus, you know, because they were my friends.

[01:13:14] And also, I was about to say that because you wanted to be friends with these guys.

[01:13:18] Well, but I, I still, I still respected that.

[01:13:21] It's just a different form of climbing.

[01:13:23] I mean, for instance, if, if you look at Connell today, he did an ascent of free rider.

[01:13:28] Well, big deal.

[01:13:30] Eight, eight to 800 people have climbed free rider or whatever.

[01:13:33] Right.

[01:13:33] But he did it in a different way.

[01:13:35] Right.

[01:13:35] Right.

[01:13:36] So the only thing that makes it significant is the style that he chose to do it.

[01:13:40] He chose to do a rehearsed, uh, free solo climb, right?

[01:13:45] He rehearsed, rehearsed all the cruxes and figured out and waited for years until he felt

[01:13:51] like he was ready to commit to something like that.

[01:13:54] I mean, that's a certain level of climbing and, and he allowed himself chalk.

[01:13:58] He allows himself sticky rubber or the best shoes of the day.

[01:14:02] Right.

[01:14:02] And he allowed himself to practice the climb and as much as he felt until he was ready.

[01:14:07] And then he would either decide to do it or not decide to do it.

[01:14:10] That's a certain level of game, you know, and, and, and that's how most free soloists

[01:14:16] operate nowadays.

[01:14:17] Very few people have done onsite free solos of, of climbs.

[01:14:22] Backer did one that I know of when he did moratorium by mistake.

[01:14:27] He, he, uh, hadn't done it before.

[01:14:29] I think that was the hardest thing he had.

[01:14:32] He did that he hadn't done before.

[01:14:34] And, and, and most of the other people who do free solos today, they're all rehearsed

[01:14:39] free solos.

[01:14:40] Almost everybody.

[01:14:41] I mean, unless they're like dead easy.

[01:14:44] Yeah.

[01:14:45] Yeah.

[01:14:45] I mean, what's his name?

[01:14:46] Uh, did romantic warrior, uh, um, Michael.

[01:14:50] Yeah.

[01:14:50] Michael Reardon.

[01:14:51] I mean, and apparently he did that onsite.

[01:14:53] I, I still think that's the most significant free solo ascent that anyone has ever done

[01:14:58] in the history of climbing.

[01:14:59] I, I, I'm nothing against Alex, but I, I, I think that's, uh, an incredible achievement

[01:15:07] far more impressive than, than, uh, most rehearsed free solos.

[01:15:11] Even there are people who are free soloing five thirteens and five fourteens that are 60

[01:15:16] feet long, but I mean, I bet none of them could do what he did on romantic warrior.

[01:15:20] Right.

[01:15:21] You know, but that's just me.

[01:15:23] That those are, those are the things I, I, I have, uh, that are close to my heart.

[01:15:29] And, and, and just like, I would never criticize Steve or John or John for, for the climbs

[01:15:34] they did in the gunks, you know, even though they took repeated falls to do them, you know,

[01:15:38] still in the style of climbing they were doing, they were the best.

[01:15:43] They were top notch, you know?

[01:15:44] So tell me a story about this then, uh, like going to, to onsite free solo something.

[01:15:50] I mean, besides the one that we should probably talk about, which is that ended poorly, um,

[01:15:57] but early on, um, I mean, just talk about walking in to, to Aldo and, and just looking

[01:16:03] up at something.

[01:16:04] Well, I got the idea.

[01:16:04] I got the idea when I was climbing in England with Steve in the summer of 72.

[01:16:08] Cause I, um, I did my first secret free solo there.

[01:16:11] Cause I, back then five tens were considered the hardest climbs.

[01:16:16] That was the hardest grade anybody gave to a climb by then.

[01:16:19] You know, there were a couple of controversial things that were harder, but so any climb that

[01:16:25] was cutting edge was called five, 10.

[01:16:27] Well, we went there, me and my brother and Steve and Tim, uh, climbed Senate half corner.

[01:16:34] They'd both done it before.

[01:16:35] And my brother and I hadn't done it.

[01:16:37] And then, and then we did this climb up above it called ground.

[01:16:40] It was an old Don Willens climb, a double overhanging corner with a really good hand

[01:16:44] crack at the back of it, 30, 40 feet tall above Senate half corner and to the right.

[01:16:48] And it's, but it's a short climb, although there's not much of a ledge below it.

[01:16:52] If you fell off it, you would go all the way.

[01:16:55] And, and so I let it, uh, on site, you know, after Steve and Tim had let it.

[01:17:01] And, um, but, but I saw that it was a hand crack and I was good at hand cracks.

[01:17:06] I'd done the last pitch of the edge and I'd done insomnia on site, you know, so I, I knew

[01:17:10] I could hang into hand cracks pretty well.

[01:17:12] And so one day I was feeling kind of sick in the morning and I, um, those guys went up

[01:17:19] to cloggy to climb white, white slab.

[01:17:21] And I, I, I didn't want to go walk up there.

[01:17:23] So, but by the middle of the day, I felt a little better.

[01:17:25] So I rode a bicycle up and I, there was nobody else on the cliff.

[01:17:29] And I went up and I soloed an easy route up to the base of ground and free soloed it

[01:17:32] because I wanted to climb something.

[01:17:34] It was obviously, it would be about 10 B probably by today's standards, you know, be like comparable

[01:17:40] to incredible hand crack or something like that, you know, pretty straightforward hand

[01:17:44] jamming, but strenuous.

[01:17:45] But I never told anybody about it for a while.

[01:17:47] I told Duncan a little later, but, but, but I didn't on site it, but I, but that was enough

[01:17:52] for my soloing urge at that time.

[01:17:54] But then I started thinking when I came back, I started thinking, well, maybe you could do a

[01:17:59] new route like that.

[01:18:00] And so I went to Eldor.

[01:18:02] So I, there were a couple of routes that I'd looked at, but I hadn't really tried.

[01:18:06] And so I started doing things.

[01:18:07] The first thing in Eldor was blind faith.

[01:18:11] And so in October of 1972, I, I climbed the lower five, seven part of that years before

[01:18:18] we traversed off, but I hadn't done the, the, the, the overhanging part.

[01:18:22] I hadn't done the crux mantle or any of that stuff.

[01:18:25] So I thought, well, maybe, you know, it's a, it's a hand crack.

[01:18:27] It's pretty solid.

[01:18:28] Maybe I can do that.

[01:18:28] But so I went up to solo it one day in October of 72 and I soloed the five, seven part and

[01:18:34] I could have reversed or climbed off to the right if I wanted to, but I jammed up the overhanging

[01:18:39] crack.

[01:18:39] And it looked like it was three perfect hand jam moves.

[01:18:42] Then you reach up and grab a jug and it'd be over.

[01:18:44] And it might be, you know, five, eight plus or five, nine or something like that.

[01:18:48] I thought it would be not so bad, but I jammed up and it was sinker jam, sinker jam, sinker

[01:18:54] jam.

[01:18:54] And I reached up for the jug and it's sloping shit, you know, and I'm going, oh fuck.

[01:18:58] So, so, so I, so I, I was about to reverse back down and rest and think about it.

[01:19:03] But then I noticed that there was a little foothold off to the left and I found a little

[01:19:09] tiny crimp on the right.

[01:19:11] And then up on the ledge up above, there was a little continuation of the crack that was

[01:19:16] about one and a half inches, not a great size, but I could at least get my hand into

[01:19:21] it.

[01:19:21] So I reached up off a good jam, reached up over the ledge and pulled a few little loose

[01:19:25] rocks out of the, out of the one and a half inch crack, got a hand jam in there and just

[01:19:30] sort of did this awkward mantle standing up there.

[01:19:34] It's, it's not the easiest way to do that move if, you know, cause I've gone back and

[01:19:38] done it by stepping a bit to the right and stepping up for it, but it was the most secure

[01:19:42] way.

[01:19:42] So that's how I did it.

[01:19:44] And I did that and I survived and I thought, well, no more of that.

[01:19:47] But then a week later I decided I would try another one.

[01:19:50] So then I started doing some more things that were a bit harder.

[01:19:53] I did Suburb, which is 10 plus on the West Ridge.

[01:19:56] Again, climbed up and down it four or five times, the crux.

[01:20:00] It's just a 10 foot roof, you know, and it was pretty easy to get near the lip and I just

[01:20:04] had to commit to two or three moves.

[01:20:07] Finally, I figured out the moves and decided, well, if I commit to these two moves there,

[01:20:12] there's probably a hand jab out there and there's probably a jug.

[01:20:14] So I did it and it worked out okay.

[01:20:17] So then I was still alive.

[01:20:18] So I did a few more.

[01:20:20] All right.

[01:20:20] So hold on, hold on.

[01:20:21] So you're mostly not telling people about this, but you are probably.

[01:20:25] I had told no, I told nobody about any of those climbs.

[01:20:28] Okay.

[01:20:28] I didn't tell anybody.

[01:20:29] So nobody's in your, up in your grill about why, why are you trying to kill yourself,

[01:20:32] Jim?

[01:20:32] No, nobody.

[01:20:33] I didn't.

[01:20:34] I rode my bike.

[01:20:35] Because I think I would be if I was your friend and I knew what you were doing.

[01:20:38] No, I didn't tell anybody about my new climbs in Eldorado.

[01:20:42] Right.

[01:20:42] Okay.

[01:20:42] I didn't tell a soul.

[01:20:43] I just, you know, back then you could go on a weekday and there was nobody in the canyon.

[01:20:47] Right.

[01:20:47] So, I mean, when I did Blind Faith, there was nobody anywhere nearby.

[01:20:50] Right.

[01:20:51] When I was on Suburban, the West Ridge.

[01:20:53] You hear that?

[01:20:53] Polar climbers, you can go on a weekday and there was nobody in the canyon.

[01:20:56] Well, that was in 1972 now.

[01:20:58] Okay.

[01:21:00] But that was true.

[01:21:01] You could go there and in the late 60s, you could go on a Tuesday and there would be

[01:21:05] no other climber in the canyon.

[01:21:11] Right.

[01:21:11] I thought it was really a solid, because I rated those climbs 5.9 then.

[01:21:16] Right.

[01:21:16] Right.

[01:21:17] And I wanted to do something that was really a solid 5.10, which is what they call 5.11

[01:21:22] nowadays.

[01:21:23] You know, a climb like Vertigo or the Naked Edge or Country Club Crack.

[01:21:26] Those were all called 5.10 back then.

[01:21:29] All those climbs were graded 5.10.

[01:21:30] And so I wanted to do a climb that was that hard, because I knew I could do something harder

[01:21:34] if it was hand jamming.

[01:21:36] So I found this climb down on Ralston Buttes, which is down near Golden.

[01:21:41] Do you know where that is?

[01:21:42] Well, anyhow, there's an obscure huge cliff down there that Wincher and I went up to look

[01:21:46] at in October of 72.

[01:21:49] Big, huge cliff up there.

[01:21:50] It's closed now for no good reason, but there's a whole bunch of climbs on it, but they closed

[01:21:56] it down.

[01:21:57] Jeffco Open Space.

[01:21:58] Anyways, Steve and I went down there in October of 72, and I'd done all these solos already,

[01:22:04] but Steve didn't know about it.

[01:22:06] And on the third pitch of this climb, to the left of where we were climbing, there was this

[01:22:11] severely overhanging hand crack, very similar to the top pitch of Vertigo, which hadn't been

[01:22:17] climbed at that time, or the top pitch of Psychosis, neither of which were free climbs

[01:22:23] yet.

[01:22:24] I saw this overhanging crack.

[01:22:25] So Steve and I did the route to the right of it.

[01:22:27] It had a couple of 510-ish, mid-510 pitches.

[01:22:30] But I looked over at this crack, and I thought maybe it would go free.

[01:22:33] So Steve went off to the valley or to the gunks or something.

[01:22:37] And so I sneaked back up there a couple of months later and was going to climb it, but

[01:22:44] it was a cold day, so I backed off.

[01:22:46] And then on January 2nd, 1973, I went up back by myself, post-hold steps up the snow on the

[01:22:54] north face of this cliff to get to the west face, which was dry and clean.

[01:22:59] And I sold this climb.

[01:23:01] It had two easy pitches, which Steve had soloed before.

[01:23:04] They were like 5'7".

[01:23:06] And then you could traverse off it, which was what Steve did.

[01:23:09] So I did it to Steve's first two pitches, and then I sold this hand crack.

[01:23:13] And I'm sure today, even in the valley, it would be at least 11A.

[01:23:18] It's probably 11A or B.

[01:23:20] And it goes out this big roof, just like the top pitch of Vertigo.

[01:23:24] It's similar in difficulty.

[01:23:25] But I never told anybody about it for years.

[01:23:28] I put it in my guidebook 10 years later and said I did this 5'10 crack, but that's all.

[01:23:36] Today, that was certainly my most significant climbing achievement of all time, by far.

[01:23:43] I mean, the naked edge and half dome, although they had harder pitches on them and harder

[01:23:48] climbing, the route that I did up there was certainly my most serious, committing, transcendental

[01:23:55] climb, whatever you want to say.

[01:23:57] I mean, it was because, of course, if I'd fallen, I would not be here.

[01:24:02] Right.

[01:24:04] I shouldn't laugh, should I?

[01:24:05] No.

[01:24:05] I mean, you are.

[01:24:06] No, you can laugh.

[01:24:07] That's the whole point, if you get this far.

[01:24:09] Well, I was lucky.

[01:24:10] And I didn't want to tell people about them because I was really afraid that some young

[01:24:16] kid would want to go up and try and do these things and somebody would fall off and get killed.

[01:24:21] So I tried not to talk about those climbs very much.

[01:24:25] So speaking of falling off and almost getting killed, you did end up falling on a free solo

[01:24:29] up in the Flatirons.

[01:24:31] Yes, I did.

[01:24:31] Yeah.

[01:24:32] That was August 13th, 1973, about nine months later.

[01:24:36] After I'd done this hard climb up on Oralston Buttes, I said I was never going to solo

[01:24:41] again.

[01:24:41] I sort of stopped for quite a while.

[01:24:43] But then I, you know, if I didn't have a partner and it was a nice day and I wanted

[01:24:47] to go out, I would find these little short hand cracks to do.

[01:24:51] And I did a whole bunch of them that spring and summer.

[01:24:54] And so I'd seen this climb up by death and transfiguration, 100 feet to the left of it.

[01:24:59] It was an easy chimney, 30 feet probably.

[01:25:02] You could sit there at the top of it and let go with both hands.

[01:25:05] And there was a short one and a quarter, one and a half inch crack that was in a dead

[01:25:08] vertical wall.

[01:25:10] Looked like it would be, you know, nine plus or 10 minus.

[01:25:14] And so I'd seen it two years before.

[01:25:16] So I thought I'd go up and take a look at that.

[01:25:19] So I rode my bike up.

[01:25:20] You could ride your bike up the road at that point.

[01:25:22] And I locked it to a tree up below the third Flatiron, hiked up the Royal Arts Trail by

[01:25:27] myself.

[01:25:28] Hot day, August 13th.

[01:25:30] And I climbed up the chimney.

[01:25:33] All I had was, I was in a pair of shorts, pair of tennis shoes, pair of VBs, a t-shirt.

[01:25:40] That's all I had, my bike and my keys.

[01:25:44] No chalk.

[01:25:45] And I never, I just looked at it from below.

[01:25:47] So I climbed up the chimney and was chimneed out two feet to the start of the hand crack

[01:25:54] and fell.

[01:25:54] And I looked down and there was a tree stump about three feet tall, big heavy tree stump

[01:26:03] that was a loose, it wasn't in the ground.

[01:26:06] It had been turned over.

[01:26:08] And it had a pointed edge pointing straight up right below me, straight below me where

[01:26:13] I would fall if I fell from the crux of this climb.

[01:26:17] And I hadn't seen it before.

[01:26:19] I hadn't really noticed it.

[01:26:20] And so I stepped back into the no hands rest in the chimney and looked down at it and I

[01:26:24] thought, man, if you fall here, they'll find your body skewered on this tree stump 30 feet

[01:26:30] below you.

[01:26:31] Right.

[01:26:33] And then I started thinking, I thought, well, you know, if I'm free soloing, you know, if

[01:26:37] you're up 500 feet, you're going to die.

[01:26:39] Who cares if you get skewered, right?

[01:26:41] So I started going through these mental gymnastics, trying to figure out what I should do.

[01:26:46] And so finally I decided, well, all right, maybe I'll just move it out of the way just

[01:26:50] in case I fall.

[01:26:52] So I climbed back down the 5-7 chimney, pull this tree stump out of the way so I wouldn't

[01:26:56] land on it, climb back up the 5-7 chimney, start jamming up this.

[01:27:01] Thin hands crack and my hand slips out and I fall 30 or so feet and land where the stump

[01:27:07] had been.

[01:27:08] And I broke both my legs and my wrist and had a concussion.

[01:27:12] I was bleeding from the back of my head.

[01:27:14] And so I was delirious.

[01:27:17] I didn't, there were no people around.

[01:27:18] I'd seen one lady on the Royal Arch Trail call for help.

[01:27:22] And I thought someone heard me, but I wasn't sure that I could only use my butt and my right

[01:27:27] arm.

[01:27:28] So I would push with my right arm down and then move my butt.

[01:27:32] And so I was scooting down the approach for about an hour.

[01:27:35] And eventually the Rocky Mountain Rescue people came and carried me out.

[01:27:39] So did that lady hear you?

[01:27:40] Is that who heard you?

[01:27:41] Yeah.

[01:27:41] So she, somebody must've heard me and gone to get help.

[01:27:44] I mean, there were no cell phones then.

[01:27:45] Right.

[01:27:45] Of course.

[01:27:46] And she, she would have had to walk a half an hour to the nearest phone.

[01:27:49] Right.

[01:27:50] But, but, uh, but I don't know who it was, but, but, you know, I probably would have lived,

[01:27:55] but, uh, it would have taken me a long time to get back to my bike.

[01:27:59] And either there were only a few people up hiking around there today.

[01:28:02] If that happened on a nice day, there'd be 80 people on the Royal Arch Trail or, you

[01:28:07] know, right below you or something.

[01:28:08] So, or you just get your cell phone out or whatever.

[01:28:11] I don't know.

[01:28:11] Right.

[01:28:12] Right.

[01:28:12] Anyhow, so I'm one of the few people who fell free soloing and lived to tell about it.

[01:28:17] Right.

[01:28:18] What had happened to your free soloing at that point?

[01:28:20] Did you finally keep your vow or not?

[01:28:24] No, you didn't.

[01:28:25] So I.

[01:28:25] I can tell by your laugh.

[01:28:26] Well, it's, it's kind of an odd story too.

[01:28:29] Your mind is a funny thing.

[01:28:30] And, and so I, I healed up after two months and I started climbing again and, and I started

[01:28:37] going out and I was doing some climbing.

[01:28:39] And I'd get out like five feet beyond my protection and I'd start to quiver.

[01:28:43] Right.

[01:28:44] I'd go, oh man, is that thing going to fall out?

[01:28:46] Am I going to die?

[01:28:48] And that happened to me a couple of times.

[01:28:50] And every climb I would try, I would just get on, on needlessly scared.

[01:28:55] And so I thought, what the heck is going on?

[01:28:57] So finally I went up and got on my bike and rode up into Boulder Canyon and found a overhanging

[01:29:03] five, nine hand crack that had never been climbed.

[01:29:06] And I free soloed one more climb and then my head clicked back into shape.

[01:29:13] And then I was fine.

[01:29:14] Okay.

[01:29:14] Very weird story.

[01:29:16] Very weird.

[01:29:17] I was going to say, I thought you were going to go back and do that climb.

[01:29:20] No, no, no, no, no.

[01:29:22] I never, I didn't go back there for 30 years because you won't believe this.

[01:29:26] I mean, I took a few drugs in the late sixties, but I was afraid that if I ever went back up

[01:29:32] to that climb, you're not going to believe this, but this is what my mind thought.

[01:29:37] If I ever went back up to that climb, I would get to the base of it and I would find my impaled

[01:29:43] bones with that sharp stick right through my heart.

[01:29:47] And you'd realize you've been dead the whole time.

[01:29:49] I've been dead the whole time.

[01:29:50] I was dreaming my whole life.

[01:29:53] I swear to God, I swear to God, that's what I thought.

[01:29:56] Oh shit.

[01:29:56] Weird story.

[01:29:57] Right.

[01:29:58] That is true.

[01:29:58] But you did go back finally.

[01:29:59] I went back in 1998.

[01:30:03] Okay.

[01:30:04] They had just cleaned the bones up.

[01:30:05] No body there.

[01:30:06] No, they just cleaned them up, dude.

[01:30:07] Yeah.

[01:30:10] I guess so.

[01:30:11] Yeah.

[01:30:12] That's what I'm here, where you're dead.

[01:30:14] They've sent me to tell you.

[01:30:18] So, yeah.

[01:30:19] This is heaven, I guess.

[01:30:21] I guess.

[01:30:22] I'll send out the Enormic.

[01:30:23] I guess.

[01:30:23] All right.

[01:30:24] Well, that's pretty wild.

[01:30:27] And you mentioned, I mean, we've been going, you need a break or anything?

[01:30:30] You need water or anything?

[01:30:31] I don't know.

[01:30:31] We can turn off the refrigerator.

[01:30:33] I don't care.

[01:30:33] No, it made me, it settled me down after it turned back on.

[01:30:36] I hadn't destroyed your refrigerator.

[01:30:39] It doesn't matter.

[01:30:40] And I can get rid of it.

[01:30:42] Okay.

[01:30:42] So, we're jumping around.

[01:30:44] You mentioned Half Dome.

[01:30:46] Okay.

[01:30:46] So, this was a pilgrimage that you would make to go out and try to free climb Half Dome.

[01:30:51] It went on for a while.

[01:30:53] You also made a film about it.

[01:30:55] Yes.

[01:30:55] Or it was made about you doing it, however you want to look at it, which I happen to

[01:31:00] have on VHS.

[01:31:02] I don't know that it's anywhere available digitized.

[01:31:05] You can maybe correct me on that.

[01:31:08] But Half Dome, talk a little bit about that.

[01:31:10] Well, the other thing is like you were among a group that wasn't as big as, I mean, you know,

[01:31:16] now we have just basically like these massive caribou-sized herds of vans that move around

[01:31:22] the country to climbing areas.

[01:31:23] But to have these, like, you know, these gypsy sort of climbers, you know, there weren't

[01:31:29] that many people that were just bouncing around climbing hard in a ton of different places.

[01:31:35] A few people started.

[01:31:36] Yeah.

[01:31:36] Henry Barber, obviously, is one that comes to mind.

[01:31:38] Eventually, Henry did.

[01:31:39] Yeah.

[01:31:39] Wynch was doing it before Henry.

[01:31:40] And Royal did to a certain extent.

[01:31:42] Royal did to a certain extent.

[01:31:43] He traveled around and climbed and a few other people.

[01:31:45] So, you know, Schoenard went to the Gunks and Pratt went to here and now and again.

[01:31:50] And they traveled a little bit, but none of them were rich enough or anything to just

[01:31:55] like be climbing bums.

[01:31:56] Wynch was really the first person that I knew who you would call a climbing bum because he

[01:32:01] had graduated from college.

[01:32:02] I met him in 69, right after he graduated from Dartmouth, I think he went to.

[01:32:07] He was in the Tetons.

[01:32:08] And he and Diana, I met them both first there.

[01:32:11] And we did a hard climb in the Tetons together as our first group.

[01:32:14] We knew each other through Errol Morris, the filmmaker, because Steve knew him from back

[01:32:19] east and I knew him from Devil's Lake.

[01:32:21] And and I first Errol was the first person who told me Steve's name, but I knew Steve

[01:32:27] was interested in in free climbing.

[01:32:29] And so when I was in the Tetons that year, I heard he was in in Jenny Lake campground.

[01:32:35] So I looked him up and I introduced myself and I said, we have a mutual friend in Errol Morris.

[01:32:40] And I know you're a free climber.

[01:32:41] Let's go try this route.

[01:32:42] Because he had been going up with my friend, John Behrens to try and free climb South Buttress

[01:32:47] right on Mount Moran.

[01:32:48] They'd made several attempts on that to try and find a route around the aid pitch, you

[01:32:54] know, back in the late 60s.

[01:32:55] So I knew Steve by reputation before I'd met him, but he he he climbed.

[01:33:00] He started climbing a little later than I was, even though he was a year or two older.

[01:33:04] Yeah.

[01:33:05] So anyway, we're back to this like traveling thing.

[01:33:07] So you're going around the country or in the world, actually.

[01:33:10] And when you I mean, when you get there, at least, you know, you went to England anyway.

[01:33:15] Yeah.

[01:33:15] Um, you know, you're not there to just futz around like you go and you try the hardest

[01:33:20] routes and and and also in some cases push it beyond what people are doing.

[01:33:26] And this is, you know, the half dome story.

[01:33:28] So tell us.

[01:33:28] Tell me about that idea and what you put into free climbing half dome to the point of, you

[01:33:36] know, something that you weren't happy with.

[01:33:39] And maybe maybe history doesn't give you the free ascent anyway, but talk about what happened.

[01:33:44] Yeah.

[01:33:45] I could go on a long diatribe of what's a free ascent and what's not.

[01:33:49] But after we did the naked edge, I did.

[01:33:51] I like I said, I was thinking of quitting climbing, but then I figured I have to have a new project.

[01:33:56] So I had by early 1972, I decided that I would try and do a bigger climb, you know, and I

[01:34:08] didn't know what else.

[01:34:09] There were some things around here that could be done, but it just seemed to me.

[01:34:13] Yeah.

[01:34:14] Back in 1970, Steve Winch and I did the technical first free ascent of the Steck South.

[01:34:21] Most people don't know this in May of 1970.

[01:34:23] Okay.

[01:34:24] You know, at that time, the Steck South, a Robins had climbed it all free except for the

[01:34:28] bolt ladder.

[01:34:29] And in 1970, Winch and I, Steve had been on it before and it failed.

[01:34:33] And then we went back up.

[01:34:34] I'd known him a year at the time and we met there and we found the way that people use

[01:34:39] now to get around the bolt ladder by climbing down about 30 feet and climbing that long hand

[01:34:44] and finger crack to avoid the bolt ladder.

[01:34:46] So we technically did the first free ascent of the Steck South, but it wasn't really an

[01:34:53] important climb.

[01:34:53] We just found a way around the eight pitch.

[01:34:56] Okay.

[01:34:58] And so I would posit that when Robins free climbed it all except for the bolt ladder in 1959,

[01:35:07] that was a more important ascent than the technical first free ascent that Steve and I

[01:35:14] did when we managed to do the whole wall without using any eight.

[01:35:17] Okay.

[01:35:18] I'll just use that as a reference.

[01:35:21] So in 1972, I'd converted to nuts.

[01:35:25] And so I decided I'd heard that I'd been in the valley and I knew that there was, I wanted

[01:35:32] to maybe see if one of the grade six routes would go free.

[01:35:36] I figured the only two likely ones would be the regular route on Half Dome and some variation

[01:35:43] of the Salathay wall.

[01:35:44] So in 1970, I started talking to Steve about that.

[01:35:48] Of course, we weren't ready for it at that time.

[01:35:50] We hadn't even done the edge yet.

[01:35:52] But by 72, we'd done the edge and Steve and I were both climbing very well.

[01:35:57] And so I decided that I would pick a new project.

[01:36:03] So I figured Half Dome was the most likely grade six climb to go free.

[01:36:07] Everybody thinks that, you know, in 1975, the three climbers went up and free climbed Astro

[01:36:16] Man and that nobody had ever even contemplated it before.

[01:36:20] Well, back in 1970, I was talking to Wunsch and Barry Bates and Phil Gleason.

[01:36:28] One day, I didn't even know those guys.

[01:36:29] Steve introduced me to them.

[01:36:30] We were sitting by Degden's Donuts right after we had done this Dexalathe.

[01:36:35] And I said, do you think any of the grade six routes in the valley will go free?

[01:36:40] And they kind of went, nah, probably not.

[01:36:42] They said the only one that would probably go free is East Face of the Column, Astro Man.

[01:36:46] But that's going to be downgraded to a grade five, which it was because it's only 12 pitches long.

[01:36:52] And so I would have tried that, but I thought, well, you know, it was immediately downgraded

[01:37:00] in the 72 guidebook to grade five.

[01:37:02] And it was only 12 pitches.

[01:37:04] And of course, Sackerer and Pratt had done the Lost Arrow Chimney and the DNB and other things.

[01:37:09] So there were obviously longer climbs than that around.

[01:37:12] So I figured if you wanted to do something, the next step would be half dome.

[01:37:16] So I figured, well, I'll go up and give it a try.

[01:37:18] I'd never climbed it and I didn't want to climb it.

[01:37:20] I purposely did not climb it because I wanted to lead it ground up the way they did in the

[01:37:25] Alps, you know, where you start at the bottom and, you know, hopefully do the whole thing.

[01:37:30] So in 72, in May of 72, I went up with Scott Stewart, who agreed to climb without nuts

[01:37:36] with me.

[01:37:37] Now you may remember-

[01:37:38] Without pitons.

[01:37:39] I mean, without pitons.

[01:37:40] Yeah.

[01:37:40] Because at that time, Steve had not quite committed to all nut climbing.

[01:37:45] In any case, so Scott and I went up to climb it and we had a rack of Chouinard stoppers.

[01:37:50] We had about 12 nuts and 15 carabiners.

[01:37:53] And just like you would take on a, you know, eight pitch climb, you know, we didn't take

[01:37:58] anything special other than some food and water.

[01:38:00] We came to the first bolt ladder and we couldn't free climb that.

[01:38:04] And Scott was a great climber.

[01:38:06] He was probably the best free climber of all of us.

[01:38:08] He was really good.

[01:38:08] But he climbed a devil's lake and put up some of the hardest vertical face climbs.

[01:38:12] He and Pete Cleveland were the best face, vertical face climbers in the world.

[01:38:16] I mean, Higgins was better on his feet on lower angle stuff, but these guys were really strong.

[01:38:21] So anyhow, we couldn't climb the bolt ladder.

[01:38:24] So then we started to the left.

[01:38:26] We moved over in a crack.

[01:38:27] It was all full of dirt.

[01:38:29] And so we started hanging on nuts, trying to clean the dirt out because I didn't want to

[01:38:34] rappel down and inspect the route before we climbed it.

[01:38:37] I wanted to climb them each pitch, you know, ground up.

[01:38:40] So that's what we did.

[01:38:42] So we did that for three years and didn't make much progress.

[01:38:45] Finally, in 75, I don't know if you want this kind of detail.

[01:38:49] Absolutely.

[01:38:49] In 75, I got tired of not making any progress.

[01:38:56] We were still working on the fourth pitch, trying to get around the bolt ladder.

[01:38:59] So I went up with Molly Higgins.

[01:39:01] I brought two pitons and I pounded them into the crack there.

[01:39:05] And then on this pitch we were doing and was able to clean out all the rest of the dirt

[01:39:11] and the cracks.

[01:39:12] Then I lowered off, you know, and pulled the rope or whatever we did.

[01:39:16] And then I went up and let it, and it turned out to be 11B or 11A, something like that,

[01:39:20] now that it was clean.

[01:39:22] And I thought that would be the key to the whole lower wall because once past the bolt

[01:39:27] ladder was pretty easy climbing till the bolt ladder at the midpoint, the Robins Traverse,

[01:39:32] the one there's eight bolts and a pendulum.

[01:39:35] And I knew that was pretty unlikely to go free.

[01:39:37] So we did this pitch.

[01:39:40] I placed two pitons, but I left them fixed because I wasn't going to knock them out and

[01:39:44] ruin the rock anymore.

[01:39:45] So, but I, but I agreed to fix the two pitons.

[01:39:48] I compromised my ethics.

[01:39:50] So I'm an asshole like everybody else.

[01:39:54] Noted.

[01:39:56] And so then I got up to this huge ledge that was as big as a, is this living room.

[01:40:01] And there was a big corner with a crack on above it.

[01:40:04] And then there was another big ledge right above that.

[01:40:06] And there was a little 10 foot step.

[01:40:08] And in that 10 foot step, as you may know, there was another dirt fill crack.

[01:40:12] So I went up and I had, I placed a piton there to clean all the dirt out of that.

[01:40:17] And I got it all.

[01:40:18] I thought it was just going to be like five, four, you know, cause it was only 10 feet

[01:40:22] tall.

[01:40:22] If there'd been one handhold, foothold, finger jam, hand jam, anything on the pitch, it would

[01:40:28] have been a pretty easy pitch.

[01:40:29] Turned out to be a totally blank, you know, knife blade rip corner, no holds on it, nothing,

[01:40:34] just some little tiny bumps.

[01:40:37] And so I, I clipped into my fixed piton and tried to top rope it.

[01:40:42] I couldn't even get started on it.

[01:40:44] The sun was, it was the afternoon, the sun was coming in and I dubbed it impossible and

[01:40:48] gave up on it.

[01:40:49] So that was 75.

[01:40:52] Then in 76, I came back with Art.

[01:40:54] Art, he wanted to try half dome again.

[01:40:57] Cause we, we, you know, that was our goal for three years.

[01:41:00] You know, he went up with me in 73 and Art Higby.

[01:41:03] Art Higby.

[01:41:04] Yeah.

[01:41:05] And so we went up the bolt to the old bolt ladder and then we traversed right to, to try

[01:41:11] the, there's a set of cracks to the right, which is now called the Hoover Hegel.

[01:41:16] And, and I thought that maybe that would go free, but it had dirt in it.

[01:41:20] So we went over there and started cleaning dirt out of that.

[01:41:22] Cause think, cause I, I told Art no one would ever climb that little 10 foot corner.

[01:41:26] I said it was impossible cause it was blank.

[01:41:28] You know, have you ever done that Boulder problem in the Collins corner down at engineering center?

[01:41:33] No.

[01:41:34] Well, it's, it's just like that.

[01:41:36] It's just this.

[01:41:37] The building one.

[01:41:38] Yeah.

[01:41:38] Yeah.

[01:41:38] It's, it's on a building and it's, it's, it's 15 feet tall and there's nothing on it.

[01:41:42] Just a little bumps like that.

[01:41:44] You're it's, it's hard.

[01:41:45] It's really hard.

[01:41:46] And this thing was like that.

[01:41:48] I thought it would never go free.

[01:41:49] So I told Art it was impossible.

[01:41:51] So we tried this thing to the right for a while.

[01:41:53] And then Art, Art had just done with Dave Reshears.

[01:41:56] The three of us went out to the Valley together.

[01:41:58] Art had just done the first onsite ascent of the Birch F. Williams, which was the hardest

[01:42:05] stemming problem in America at the time that it was, it was a very hard stemming thing.

[01:42:09] And Art and Dave had onsited it.

[01:42:11] They were both strong, good stemmers.

[01:42:13] And Art was a ski racer.

[01:42:14] He had very strong legs.

[01:42:16] So he, we were cleaning dirt to the right.

[01:42:19] After an hour, he was getting frustrated and he said, well, let me go look at this thing

[01:42:23] that you said is possible.

[01:42:24] I said, whatever, just handle over there and look at it.

[01:42:27] It'll never be climbed.

[01:42:28] You know, I said something like that.

[01:42:30] I told him it wasn't even worth looking at.

[01:42:32] He walked over and he swung over to the base of it and looked at it and said, I can climb

[01:42:37] that.

[01:42:38] So I said, oh, what the hell?

[01:42:39] So we didn't have much gear.

[01:42:40] We were just up there for the day.

[01:42:42] So we went down to the valley, got enough gear for an all out attempt.

[01:42:47] This is May of 1976.

[01:42:49] And we went down to the valley, grabbed our stuff, went back up.

[01:42:54] So Art puts a knot in and he starts stemming up this thing.

[01:42:58] And then he reaches up and clips the piton and does two more stem moves and lunges to

[01:43:03] the top to a sloping, big sloping mantle and does this mantle.

[01:43:06] It just walks up the pitch.

[01:43:07] He onsited it.

[01:43:08] You know, he used the piton that I put place there, but he, he didn't cheat at all.

[01:43:12] He just like climbed it.

[01:43:14] And I was, I couldn't believe it, you know, cause I, I, I would have bet that it was, it

[01:43:18] would never be climbed in the history of the world.

[01:43:20] What did I know?

[01:43:21] Right.

[01:43:22] Those claims have often been debunked.

[01:43:25] Yeah.

[01:43:25] Well, it certainly, you know, and here I told him it would never go.

[01:43:29] Right.

[01:43:29] It wasn't even worth looking at, you know, and he fucking walks up it, you know?

[01:43:33] And so luckily it was in the morning and it was cool.

[01:43:36] The times I tried it, the sun was on it.

[01:43:38] And so I was able to follow it.

[01:43:40] You know, I duplicated his move and I was able to follow without falling amazingly, which

[01:43:44] impressed me.

[01:43:45] But, and then I led the pitch above it.

[01:43:47] There was dirt in that.

[01:43:48] And so we figured the, the most ethical thing was to have one of us ate up.

[01:43:53] It was my lead.

[01:43:54] So he ate it up about 30 feet, cleaned all the dirt out, climbed back down, removed all

[01:43:59] of his gear.

[01:43:59] So we now had a clean pitch lead.

[01:44:01] And then I went up and put all the gear back in and let it, it was, that was 11 D pitch

[01:44:05] or something like that.

[01:44:06] And then we go back on the route.

[01:44:07] We made it halfway up.

[01:44:09] You still want to keep hearing this?

[01:44:10] Oh yeah.

[01:44:11] All right.

[01:44:12] Then we got up to the, so then it's six in the afternoon.

[01:44:15] We're halfway up the wall and we're at the middle bolt ladder and there's this blank

[01:44:18] wall with seven bolts and a pendulum.

[01:44:21] And, you know, the biggest hole on it is, you know, the size of a dime or whatever it

[01:44:26] is.

[01:44:26] I don't think anybody's ever clean, climbed right up that whole ladder to, to this day.

[01:44:31] Well, it's changed.

[01:44:32] Yeah.

[01:44:32] Yeah.

[01:44:33] But I had been up at the shoulder once and I'd looked for a way around it.

[01:44:37] I was trying to figure, cause I knew it probably wouldn't go.

[01:44:40] I, I, I once soloed up to there actually from, after rappelling down and, and looked

[01:44:45] at the bolt ladder from below and I knew it wasn't going to look good.

[01:44:48] And when Art and I got there, it just looked ridiculous still.

[01:44:50] You know, there's just nothing there.

[01:44:52] So from the shoulder I'd seen from, you know, a thousand feet away or 800 feet away up above

[01:44:59] it to the left, I saw what looked like a dike that kind of went across the wall and got

[01:45:03] into a crack system over there that led back down to the regular route.

[01:45:07] And I thought maybe if you stayed in the corner for another pitch, you could traverse

[01:45:11] over and then climb down 80 feet to get to the bivy ledge at the top of the, so Art

[01:45:18] and I got there at five o'clock and we, we, you know, we're halfway up the wall now.

[01:45:23] And we were, so we were just going to sit there and let it get cool off and try the next

[01:45:28] morning.

[01:45:29] But then I thought, well, let's look at this other way.

[01:45:30] So we zipped up two pitches and I looked across and there's this horizontal crack that goes 30

[01:45:36] feet to the right, right across the blankest part of the wall.

[01:45:39] So I did a finger trip traverse that's about five, 10, you know, little, little fingers,

[01:45:44] but not real hard, well-protected.

[01:45:46] And it got over to a big ledge there and we were back on the main face.

[01:45:50] And then I climbed down 80 feet down a right-facing corner and it brought us right back to the

[01:45:56] bivouac ledge above the Robin traverse, above the, the boat ladder, which was the, the one

[01:46:01] part of the climb that I thought would never go free.

[01:46:03] You know, everybody who'd thought about it realized that middle boat ladder would never

[01:46:08] go free.

[01:46:08] And I'm pretty sure today, no one has climbed it free up the boat ladder.

[01:46:11] Right.

[01:46:12] So, so then all of a sudden we're one day up, we're above the, the biggest blank part of

[01:46:19] the wall.

[01:46:19] Now we just have to deal with the zigzags.

[01:46:21] So we went up and the next morning and zipped up and climbed the two zigzags.

[01:46:26] Art fell a couple of times on the first zigzag and lowered off.

[01:46:29] And then I went up and, and I led it on site.

[01:46:32] Well, I, or whatever it's called flashes, because I'd seen what he'd done or however

[01:46:36] you want to call it.

[01:46:37] And then he led the second zigzag pitch and I started up the third zigzag pitch.

[01:46:42] And it was very easy.

[01:46:43] We'd heard it would only be 10 D if it went free, cause it was pretty easy.

[01:46:47] And, and it was 10 D until the last five feet, but then the crack went from sinker fingers

[01:46:52] down to half inch and no footholds and totally glassy.

[01:46:58] And so we fell off it and put some nuts in and fell several times and it got dark.

[01:47:03] So we bivouacked in that little hole right there, but we left our rope strong up there

[01:47:07] because we thought we had heard that thank God ledge and the two pitches above it were

[01:47:13] all five eight.

[01:47:14] And this would be the last aid on the climb.

[01:47:17] There was a mistaken topo that was circulated around bed that ignored the last slab pitch.

[01:47:22] And so we were convinced that if we did the last five feet of the third zigzag, the rest

[01:47:29] could be done free at five, eight.

[01:47:30] So next morning, Art got up and ate two walnuts and red pointed or whatever they call it.

[01:47:36] The last pitch and I followed it, you know, uh, it was very strenuous, but again, it was

[01:47:40] the morning and it was cooler.

[01:47:42] Two walnuts.

[01:47:43] That's all the food we had left.

[01:47:44] We were, we were, we were out of water.

[01:47:46] We took five quarts of water for three days.

[01:47:48] I just wanted to make sure we put an exclamation point on the double walnut send.

[01:47:53] It's true.

[01:47:54] Yeah.

[01:47:54] Very rare.

[01:47:55] It was all we had left.

[01:47:55] And we, we've been out of water since the afternoon before, you know, so we were dying,

[01:48:00] but we made it.

[01:48:01] And so we got the thank God ledge zipped across that.

[01:48:04] It got up to the last slab pitch and there was, there was supposed to be a five, eight variation

[01:48:08] off to the left somewhere that, where you could avoid that slab and the nailing, you know?

[01:48:12] And we, we couldn't figure out where it was, you know?

[01:48:15] And so we started climbing up.

[01:48:17] Cause it didn't exist.

[01:48:18] It didn't exist.

[01:48:19] It apparently was a mistake or maybe a sandbag.

[01:48:22] I'm not sure.

[01:48:22] But in any event, we, we, we tried it a few times and we weren't making any progress.

[01:48:27] Of course we were still in EBs.

[01:48:29] I would imagine that in with sticky rubber, someone could climb up almost anywhere.

[01:48:33] Cause that slab is only 70 degrees.

[01:48:36] You know, I suspect nowadays someone who was a good slab climber, you know, it would be hard

[01:48:40] five, 12 or 13 probably, but it would be climbable today.

[01:48:43] I'm sure.

[01:48:44] But anyhow, we couldn't do it.

[01:48:46] And, and we saw to the left that there was a better line of holes, but there was no protection.

[01:48:50] So finally we just, Ron Kalk and Dave Brashears met us at that point.

[01:48:56] They, they had just been aid climbing up the direct route.

[01:48:59] And, and just when we were starting to work on this thing, they came up and we thought,

[01:49:04] well, this is supposed to be a five, eight pitch.

[01:49:07] What's going on here?

[01:49:08] So we, we talked Dave into going out there.

[01:49:10] You know, he, he'd been on a wall for five days, but he was our friend and he said,

[01:49:13] oh, I'll take a try.

[01:49:14] And he, he could only get up 10 feet out and he was much better than we were.

[01:49:18] The kid.

[01:49:19] The kid.

[01:49:20] Yeah.

[01:49:20] So then we, we, we, we ate it up.

[01:49:23] We could have, if we had chosen, we could have clipped into a bolt and pendulumed over

[01:49:28] to the ledge over there and done the whole route with a single point of aid if we wanted

[01:49:32] to, but that wasn't why we were there.

[01:49:34] You know, we were, we were not interested in as free as can be kind of shit, you know?

[01:49:39] So we just, just said it, it wasn't possible.

[01:49:42] So, so we, we stopped, but we, we figured the other variation would go, but during over

[01:49:48] the summer, we were going to come back the next year, but over the summer, I, it, it turned

[01:49:53] out I was going to get married and have a kid.

[01:49:56] And so I decided I, I couldn't leave half dome without knowing if that pitch

[01:50:02] would go.

[01:50:02] So I went back there in the fall for three days and I hiked up, rappelled down the slab,

[01:50:10] you know, that to the left of the boat ladder.

[01:50:12] And I strung a rope and with the Jumar, I top rope the moves and they were doable.

[01:50:16] They were hard, but not, they weren't as hard as going straight up the boat ladder, certainly.

[01:50:20] And so then I put some bolts in on aid, although they, I could have placed them on the lead.

[01:50:24] I put them in places where you could stand, but I, I never went back and I didn't really

[01:50:30] want to go back to lead a climb where I'd put bolts.

[01:50:32] And I thought that was pretty shoddy thing to do, you know, cause I'm an old school climber

[01:50:37] and I think putting a bolt in on aid is pretty lame, but nowadays everybody does.

[01:50:43] So, but anyhow, I guess if I thought it was important, I would have gone back to try and

[01:50:48] do a legitimate set, but I didn't really care because I knew now that all the people who'd

[01:50:53] laughed at me in camp four for wasting six years, five years of my life trying to do this.

[01:50:58] At least I knew now that I'd done it.

[01:51:01] And first free ascent of half dump happened sometime after us.

[01:51:04] I'm not sure.

[01:51:05] I mean, Leonard may have done it legitimately, although he had support and he didn't lead

[01:51:09] every pitch, you know, he supposedly led a lot of the coin.

[01:51:12] Leonard coin.

[01:51:13] Yeah.

[01:51:13] Yeah.

[01:51:13] Cause three years later he came back and, and did the whole route free continuously.

[01:51:17] And he, he led the top pitch, which we hadn't done because the next year we went and

[01:51:22] made the movie and we were, okay.

[01:51:23] We didn't want to make the movie and, but Godfrey talked us into it because he was our

[01:51:28] friend.

[01:51:28] And you know, Tom Frost was a legend and a hero to us.

[01:51:31] And he said, Tom Frost and Greg Lowe who are, you know, it would be like if, if Alex

[01:51:37] Honnold and Tommy said, well, do you want to, we want to make a movie about you and we're

[01:51:40] going to film it.

[01:51:41] You know, do you, do you want to do it?

[01:51:42] You know, I mean, you're just some twerpy kid, right?

[01:51:46] Well, you know, we, we didn't know we'd done, you know, put, put up a really hard climb.

[01:51:50] We knew we'd done something, but we didn't, didn't really know what it was.

[01:51:53] I mean, today the route we did in 1976 was by far the hardest 22 pitches of free climbing

[01:52:01] anywhere in the world.

[01:52:02] By far.

[01:52:03] It was the first climb that had multiple 512 pitches.

[01:52:06] The third zigzag pitch that Art led was the hardest pitch of free climbing in the Valley.

[01:52:11] It, it, we called it 11 plus today.

[01:52:13] It's called 12D.

[01:52:14] Yeah.

[01:52:15] Yeah.

[01:52:15] I was about to say it's very hard, I guess.

[01:52:17] I mean, I don't know.

[01:52:18] We thought it was hard, but we called it 511.

[01:52:21] So, well, let me ask you, am I wrong in saying that Robert Redford narrates the movie?

[01:52:26] Robert Redford narrates the movie free climbing.

[01:52:28] Yes.

[01:52:29] Yeah.

[01:52:30] It is true.

[01:52:31] The reason for that is Bob Godfrey was the instigator and he got the, Greg.

[01:52:38] The author of climb.

[01:52:39] Yeah.

[01:52:39] Right.

[01:52:40] And he, he, he, he got those guys together to come and film it the next year.

[01:52:43] They, he talked us into going back and let's go back and do a complete, you know, free ascent,

[01:52:49] you know, an unquestionable ascent, blah, blah, blah.

[01:52:52] And, and, uh, so we, we agreed to it.

[01:52:55] Although we, I thought it was pretty lame personally.

[01:52:58] And Art was probably pissed that I'd sneaked up and done this, but, but you know, he wants,

[01:53:02] he, he'd done such a great job.

[01:53:03] I mean, he, he, he was climbing just so well then.

[01:53:06] And he never got any credit for his phenomenal climbing in my opinion.

[01:53:10] Um, because of course the valley climbers want every, all the big stuff to be done by the

[01:53:16] valley climbers and blah, blah, blah.

[01:53:18] You know, how regional jealousies go.

[01:53:20] And I understand that it's okay.

[01:53:22] But, but so we went back and made the movie and all sorts of weird things happened.

[01:53:27] We got snowed out.

[01:53:28] And then finally at the end had to come back in mid summer.

[01:53:33] We were there on, on the summer solstice.

[01:53:36] So it was extremely hot and Art agreed to climb it without shock.

[01:53:40] Like I had climbed it because we wanted to make an ethical statement about style and stuff

[01:53:46] like that.

[01:53:47] So we had a lot of problems because they wanted us to climb in the sun so they could get good

[01:53:51] camera stuff.

[01:53:52] At first they told us we could do whatever we wanted, but eventually when the money got

[01:53:55] involved, some, they donate, which got a friend of his to donate a bunch of money, a corporate

[01:54:00] guy.

[01:54:01] Then it became a movie.

[01:54:02] And then we had to make this movie that would be sellable.

[01:54:04] They wanted to make it out for network TV.

[01:54:06] It was eventually bought by public television.

[01:54:08] Then we had to do what they told us to do.

[01:54:11] And the kicker was, so we went up to do it.

[01:54:16] It snowed out.

[01:54:17] We came back in the summer.

[01:54:19] It was way too hot, but we, we agreed to do it.

[01:54:22] We tried it without chalk.

[01:54:23] Art went up to lead the pitch that he had unsighted without chalk and he fell three times.

[01:54:28] So it made him look like a dweeb, you know, despite the fact he'd done this phenomenal

[01:54:32] lead.

[01:54:32] And then we got up to big Sandy on the next attempt and we climbed from the bottom to big

[01:54:38] Sandy in eight or 10 hours, hauling a pack.

[01:54:42] We hauled all our own gear.

[01:54:43] We didn't take any food or water or anything from the climbing, you know, from the, the,

[01:54:48] the camera crew.

[01:54:48] You know, we hauled absolutely everything.

[01:54:50] We thought it was cheating to, you know, drink a sip of their water.

[01:54:54] And, um, we were about to get up early to do the zigzags.

[01:54:57] And at, at dusk, uh, another party of climbers came along who were aiding the route and they

[01:55:03] came up and they were, they bivouacked next to us on big Sandy.

[01:55:07] And of course they didn't want these guys in the movie because they wanted to make it look

[01:55:11] like we were alone on the wall.

[01:55:13] Right.

[01:55:14] So Godfrey talked to him and, and he, he agreed that they agreed that those guys would

[01:55:19] go up first and climb up till they were out of sight.

[01:55:22] So they, they got up at five in the morning, climbed all those zigzags and thank God leds

[01:55:27] and were out of sight.

[01:55:28] So that means we, we got to start doing the zigzags, which were the, were the cruxes of

[01:55:32] course, starting at 11 o'clock.

[01:55:35] So by the time we got up to those, it was really hot and we were both climbing without

[01:55:39] shock.

[01:55:40] So we didn't do very well, but eventually we, we, we, we clipped into the piton and did

[01:55:45] the first pitch.

[01:55:46] I led the first pitch and then art got up there.

[01:55:49] You can tell from the movie that it's, it's five in the afternoon and it's, it's 85 degrees

[01:55:54] up there in direct sun.

[01:55:56] And he's, he's climbing in a, just as his shorts with no shirt on and he's dying from

[01:56:01] the heat.

[01:56:01] You know, he's sweating and it was pretty poor conditions, but we, he managed to finally

[01:56:06] lead this, the second pitch.

[01:56:07] And we did that.

[01:56:08] And we got zipped over to the slab.

[01:56:10] But by the time we got to the slab, there was, um, I, I started leading up it, but there

[01:56:15] was like 10 minutes of daylight left.

[01:56:16] If you look at the movie, you can see the sun setting in the distance.

[01:56:19] Nobody on our crew had a flashlight.

[01:56:21] And so we, we didn't have any bivouac gear there or we did, but those guys didn't.

[01:56:26] So there was no time to like work on the move or, and it was too hot anyhow.

[01:56:31] So I, I climbed all by about the last 10 feet of the slab, you know, by the new variation,

[01:56:36] but I didn't do the, you know, I pulled on a, the last bolt or the last two bolts or so.

[01:56:40] I don't remember, but, but we ate it up the last bit again though.

[01:56:44] So that's what happened.

[01:56:46] Nice.

[01:56:47] This has just been so jam packed.

[01:56:50] You've got, you know, 10 years in there.

[01:56:53] You know, it's, what is that?

[01:56:54] 76.

[01:56:55] You said?

[01:56:55] 76.

[01:56:56] Yeah.

[01:56:56] Yeah.

[01:56:57] 77.

[01:56:57] 77.

[01:56:57] Um, you know, but how much further did you like live this, this climbing lifestyle?

[01:57:04] I mean, it sounds like the eighties, it tapered off.

[01:57:06] Not longer.

[01:57:07] Well, because I got married in 1976, uh, uh, in the fall, October.

[01:57:14] And I had a kid six, eight months later.

[01:57:17] Son, daughter, what are we talking about?

[01:57:18] Yeah.

[01:57:18] My son, Rudy.

[01:57:19] Okay, cool.

[01:57:20] Okay.

[01:57:21] So, so I was, I was still climbing and, you know, I, I, I could still climb, but you know,

[01:57:26] the days of, of going off.

[01:57:27] I mean, even when we made the movie the next year, Rudy was six weeks old and he had to

[01:57:33] come along on the trip and my, you know, and you know, you know how the first six weeks

[01:57:38] of a child life, it's, it's not so easy.

[01:57:42] And of course my ex-wife, she was a real trooper.

[01:57:44] She, you know, she'd been, she'd been a climber and a mountain hiker all her life, but she,

[01:57:47] she, it was a lot to ask of her, you know, taking care of the kid.

[01:57:51] And not, you know, and I, I, I was a, a dutiful parent at the time too.

[01:57:56] So I did a lot of stuff, you know, and for the kid and, you know, we were both working

[01:58:00] and both taking care of the kid.

[01:58:02] So, so in 77, the next year.

[01:58:04] Wait, wait, wait.

[01:58:04] Were you working at the slingshot factory?

[01:58:06] Yes.

[01:58:07] Okay.

[01:58:07] Yeah.

[01:58:08] And that's an important part of this.

[01:58:10] I don't want to talk about the slingshot factory, but just everyone needs to note that,

[01:58:13] that Jim worked at a slingshot factory for quite some time.

[01:58:16] 42 years.

[01:58:17] Yeah.

[01:58:17] Yeah.

[01:58:19] But I, I didn't make slingshots for more than the first couple of years after that.

[01:58:22] I was upper management.

[01:58:24] I was upper management of, of seven people.

[01:58:26] So I was in the, what was the slingshot brand?

[01:58:31] I noticed it in one.

[01:58:31] True Mark wrist rocket slingshots.

[01:58:33] They, they invented the wrist brace slingshot.

[01:58:35] Okay.

[01:58:35] I had one.

[01:58:37] Yeah.

[01:58:37] The birds in my, in my neighborhood feared me.

[01:58:41] Okay.

[01:58:41] Anyway, that was just part of the movie.

[01:58:43] It was part of my lore with Scott.

[01:58:45] The other caver that we talked about.

[01:58:47] Yeah.

[01:58:47] I remember Scott.

[01:58:48] Totally.

[01:58:48] No, there's actually, this is another part of the movie before we move on is there's a

[01:58:53] point where you guys are lacing up and, and art says, how are we going to get across

[01:58:58] the snow?

[01:58:58] Yeah.

[01:58:59] And you say, do you don't even look up and you go, we can do it easily.

[01:59:01] Yeah.

[01:59:03] So you and I and Scott, you don't remember this, but we're standing in a circle looking

[01:59:08] at the map on that fix it to die.

[01:59:10] On fix it to die.

[01:59:10] Yeah.

[01:59:11] Yeah.

[01:59:11] And somebody says, well, how are we going to do that?

[01:59:14] And Scott mumbles, oh, we can do it easily.

[01:59:20] And I do believe you looked up and made eye contact with us.

[01:59:24] Oh my God.

[01:59:24] No, I don't know.

[01:59:26] So anyhow, and I, and to this day, to this day, I will, if someone, if we're climbing

[01:59:31] and someone says, how are we going to do this?

[01:59:33] I'll go.

[01:59:33] I will honestly go.

[01:59:35] We can do it easily.

[01:59:36] Well, finally, after 62 years of climbing, I've, I've been quoted.

[01:59:41] Many, many times we can do it easily.

[01:59:43] You have to say it like that too.

[01:59:45] We can do it easily.

[01:59:45] We can do it easily.

[01:59:46] Yeah.

[01:59:47] Anyhow.

[01:59:48] So you're, you're, you've got a kid, you're married, you're, you're, your climbing life

[01:59:51] is changing.

[01:59:52] Yeah.

[01:59:52] So we had this young kid, but you know, it was, it was my, my life's dream to, to do

[01:59:57] this.

[01:59:58] And they, they paid us some money, which I'd never done gotten before.

[02:00:02] They paid us money to go out and work and do this climb.

[02:00:04] So, so I could justify, you know, going out to the Valley for two weeks to do this thing.

[02:00:10] So we, so my wife and, and my son and I, you know, they put us up in a little tent cabin

[02:00:16] and written nice place.

[02:00:17] Nancy, Nancy was there and I stayed there, you know, when I wasn't up on the climb or doing

[02:00:21] a day shoot.

[02:00:22] So it was a difficult time in many ways, you know, cause Godfrey, you know, he, I, you

[02:00:27] know, he, he'd gotten this money and he had to do this project.

[02:00:29] So he, he, he had to sort of sweet talk Nancy and me into doing certain things that we didn't

[02:00:35] really want to do.

[02:00:36] But, but you know, that's what you do when you're in Hollywood.

[02:00:40] So, so, I mean, the, the climb we did in 77 was just sort of a reenactment really.

[02:00:45] I mean, if, if those guys hadn't shown up, you know, in the middle of the night on big

[02:00:51] Sandy ledge, and we'd been able to go up on those hard pitches, you know, early in the

[02:00:54] morning, it would have been a different story probably, but that was the will of Allah or

[02:00:59] Yahweh or God or the world or the universe or whatever it was.

[02:01:03] So, I mean, you know, I think God didn't want me to quite free climate cause I, it wouldn't

[02:01:08] have been good for me or to do it completely legitimate.

[02:01:11] And nowadays, you know, doing something like that, you know, would be fine.

[02:01:15] I mean, all those other guys, I mean, the nose is only a free climb because there's all

[02:01:20] those chipped holes that Ray Jardine put into it.

[02:01:23] I mean, no one has ever really honestly, completely free climbed the nose.

[02:01:28] I mean, I'm not criticizing Lynn or Tommy or anybody like that, but if those holes hadn't

[02:01:33] been chipped there, the nose probably would not be a free climb today.

[02:01:38] Right.

[02:01:39] Certainly nobody's ever free climbed the King swing where it is.

[02:01:42] I mean, maybe they would have figured out a variation.

[02:01:45] That's 514 C somewhere.

[02:01:47] I don't know.

[02:01:47] Tommy would have in the 2000s, maybe.

[02:01:49] I don't know.

[02:01:50] If we had chipped a single hole on that slab, you know, in 77, you know, an inch wide, we

[02:01:58] would have done it.

[02:01:59] You know, we just would have.

[02:02:02] But, you know, we chose not to do that.

[02:02:05] And, you know, Jardine and Bridwell believe that it was okay to occasionally chip a hole

[02:02:10] on a wall.

[02:02:11] But I mean, we, you know, we weren't the Valley locals.

[02:02:14] So if we'd done that, we would have been ostracized.

[02:02:17] So because they would have said we chipped holes and it was illegitimate.

[02:02:21] Like they said to Jardine, even though he was sort of a Valley local, even though he

[02:02:25] wasn't accepted really.

[02:02:28] But, but, but he, I mean, he was mostly accepted, but they, they criticize his climbing style

[02:02:33] A and his chipping B.

[02:02:36] But, but of course, Bridwell was as bad or worse as far as chipping.

[02:02:40] He chipped way more holes than Jardine did.

[02:02:42] Right.

[02:02:43] So, yeah.

[02:02:44] So you're, you're climbing life.

[02:02:46] What does it look like at the end of the seventies and the eighties?

[02:02:48] Oh, well then, well, I climbed for a little while more, you know, I, I, and I did some

[02:02:52] guiding cause then I could go climbing and make some money to help support the family.

[02:02:57] And so I had a couple of kids and I was married for almost 10 years, but then we finally

[02:03:02] split up and, uh, and then I moved back to Boulder.

[02:03:07] Okay.

[02:03:07] Where had you moved at that point?

[02:03:08] Oh, we were living in Lafayette.

[02:03:10] Oh, okay.

[02:03:10] Oh, right.

[02:03:11] So locally anyway.

[02:03:12] Yeah.

[02:03:12] Yeah.

[02:03:13] We, we bought a house in Lafayette and we lived there from 77 to, well, I moved out

[02:03:18] in 85.

[02:03:19] Did you adopt friends when they came in?

[02:03:24] Um, I mean, this, this dyed in the wool nut guy.

[02:03:27] I, I didn't really like the idea because I, I mean, I liked the fact that they were clean

[02:03:34] climbing and I, I'm again, you know, kind of like Steve and John and John do it, doing

[02:03:40] aerial bouldering, you know, in the early seventies, falling off climbs to make, to make them into

[02:03:45] free climbs.

[02:03:45] Um, I, I could see that it was a good thing in a certain way, but also it's, it's just another

[02:03:51] device that makes climbing a little bit easier.

[02:03:54] You know, sticky rubber is the same way, you know, and, and better chalk and, and, uh, all

[02:03:59] sorts of things, all these things.

[02:04:01] I mean, the reason I never used chalk was because I started climbing without chalk and it seemed

[02:04:06] to be silly to put something artificial onto yourself that made you climb a harder climb

[02:04:15] theoretically.

[02:04:16] When, when you, you weren't a better climber, you were just using a technological device

[02:04:21] that enabled you to climb better.

[02:04:23] But you did adopt sticky rubber.

[02:04:26] Cause I see a pair of mirrors, box of mirrors right over there.

[02:04:29] I do.

[02:04:29] Yeah.

[02:04:29] Yeah.

[02:04:29] Yeah.

[02:04:30] Did that take a while?

[02:04:32] Well, no, I mean, cause I don't care anymore.

[02:04:34] You know, I mean, I'm not doing, if, if I were, if I were a cutting edge climber today,

[02:04:39] I would think about it.

[02:04:41] I mean, it's kind of weird.

[02:04:42] You know, people say, oh, barefoot climbing is all natural, but then they put chalk on

[02:04:45] their hands.

[02:04:46] Right.

[02:04:46] I mean, what's the point?

[02:04:47] If you, if you're going to climb barefoot, you ought to climb barefoot, barehanded.

[02:04:52] Naked free solo.

[02:04:54] Naked free soloing.

[02:04:55] I mean, and for modesty's sake, you could wear a swimming suit or something, but,

[02:04:58] but that's about it.

[02:05:00] You know, anything else beyond that really is, is some form of cheating, but, but that

[02:05:05] changes.

[02:05:06] Right.

[02:05:06] So, but, so people today who think that climbing has advanced, you know, significantly, which

[02:05:13] it has in many ways, but still, you know, much of that advance as Royal Robbins famously

[02:05:18] said back in the 1960s, the reason we climbed harder and taller climbs is primarily technology.

[02:05:27] Right.

[02:05:28] You know, and you know, I mean, if, if, if Royal had been there in, in rope sold shoes

[02:05:33] with soft iron pitons on, on half dome or, or any wall, it would have been much, much, much

[02:05:40] harder for him or anybody.

[02:05:41] I'm not picking on Royal of course, but, but, cause he obviously was a great inspiration

[02:05:45] to me and everybody.

[02:05:46] But, but you know, we all, people do better things cause technology improves a little bit.

[02:05:53] How old are you now?

[02:05:54] 75.

[02:05:55] 75.

[02:05:56] Still climbing.

[02:05:57] I climb in the gym.

[02:05:58] Yeah.

[02:05:58] I climbed outside till about two years ago.

[02:06:02] I can still climb outside.

[02:06:03] I can't carry a pack very well.

[02:06:04] I have a kind of a week back.

[02:06:06] Okay.

[02:06:06] And I have a bad ankle from my climbing accident, which is bothered.

[02:06:10] The older I get, the more it bothers me.

[02:06:12] Right.

[02:06:12] From the free solo fall.

[02:06:14] So I still gimp around.

[02:06:15] It didn't heal up very well, but you know, I could have been dead or crippled.

[02:06:18] I'm not complaining.

[02:06:19] So.

[02:06:19] And you might still be dead.

[02:06:20] I might still be dead.

[02:06:22] I'll go up there and look again.

[02:06:23] It would suck though if you died, but you still kept the injuries.

[02:06:26] That's not fair.

[02:06:28] And the arthritis and things.

[02:06:31] Yeah.

[02:06:31] So, but you are still, you're, you embrace the gym and that fitted your lifestyle.

[02:06:36] Well, yeah.

[02:06:36] So I'm retired now and I don't, you know, I don't have a lot of money, but I, I have some

[02:06:40] freedom and I have people who still talk to me like you're yourself.

[02:06:44] And, you know, so I mean, many of the people I knew and loved have died or are pretty old

[02:06:50] and out of it.

[02:06:52] You know, most of the climbers that I admired are dead now.

[02:06:54] You know, the people of the generation before me, almost everyone.

[02:06:57] Gil's still alive, maybe one or two.

[02:06:59] Dave Erick's still barely alive, you know, but most of those guys are gone, you know,

[02:07:03] and they were my heroes when I was growing up, you know.

[02:07:06] And despite the fact that I followed in the footprints of some of them, you know, I mean,

[02:07:12] some of them, I, you know, I, I, I didn't believe in that style of climbing, but that's

[02:07:17] okay.

[02:07:17] I mean, people do what they, they do.

[02:07:19] We were lucky.

[02:07:20] Winch and I were pretty lucky in standard because in 1970, it really looked like the future was

[02:07:26] climbing.

[02:07:27] I mean, of climbing was just do bigger and longer big walls.

[02:07:31] But for some reason, people got interested in, in, in pushing free climbings and, and

[02:07:37] eventually longer free climbings.

[02:07:39] And we were sort of at the forefront of that, uh, just more of my mistake than anything.

[02:07:45] I mean, you know, we weren't any better than anybody else.

[02:07:48] We just happened to be in the right place at the right time, you know?

[02:07:51] And I mean, obviously, you know, Steve had tremendous willpower and, and, and great perseverance

[02:07:57] and standard did too.

[02:07:58] And they, they both influenced climbing.

[02:08:02] Well, I guess I did a little bit, but.

[02:08:04] Well, in that article, which was, I think that book was printed in 1978.

[02:08:08] So I don't know if it was that, that.

[02:08:11] The interview was from 75.

[02:08:12] Okay.

[02:08:13] Um, you said, quote, everything has already been done pretty much.

[02:08:38] All right, folks.

[02:08:39] Thanks for listening.

[02:08:40] And thanks to Jim Erickson for getting that done.

[02:08:43] He was very accommodating.

[02:08:46] We had a long, awesome chat in his apartment.

[02:08:49] And I know a lot of people have been asking for that one actually for the last couple of

[02:08:52] years.

[02:08:53] So thank you, Jim.

[02:08:55] And I don't really think there's a way to follow Jim Erickson.

[02:08:58] I believe him to be delightfully free from social media.

[02:09:03] Aren't we all a little jealous of that shit right there?

[02:09:06] But I did find that the movie free climb is available on YouTube.

[02:09:13] I found it.

[02:09:14] Just Google Jim Erickson free climb and you will find it.

[02:09:17] It's a little bit of a wonky digital copy, but worth watching.

[02:09:22] Totally worth watching.

[02:09:23] And yes, it was narrated by Robert Redford, which is pretty cool, actually.

[02:09:29] I mean, I think the 70s is like when he was the biggest deal.

[02:09:32] So check that out.

[02:09:33] And of course, you can always go to the Boulder Rock Club and climb probably right next to

[02:09:38] Jim Erickson on any given night.

[02:09:40] Just look for the guy that doesn't have any chalk and is not using a grigri.

[02:09:44] But he does have a pair of Sportiva Miras, which, you know, are only 20 some years old.

[02:09:50] So that's getting there.

[02:09:51] They probably don't let him just run a Swami anymore, though.

[02:09:54] All right, folks.

[02:09:54] Merry Christmas.

[02:09:55] Happy Hanukkah.

[02:09:57] I think that starts on the 26th this year, right after Christmas.

[02:10:00] Why it moves around, I don't remember.

[02:10:03] Happy Festivus.

[02:10:04] Festivus is something you could celebrate all year, as I do here on the EnormaCast, airing

[02:10:08] my grievances.

[02:10:09] Remember, during your gift giving, there are some very inexpensive small little gifts over

[02:10:15] at the EnormaCast shop, EnormaCast.com, to remind that Enorma fan in your life that you

[02:10:20] love them.

[02:10:21] And of course, since you're going to be doing some shopping anyway, might as well support

[02:10:26] our sponsors, Black Diamond, Sportiva, Yeti.

[02:10:29] Those guys make this show free for you.

[02:10:31] You got to pay for the full catalog at most other podcasts these days.

[02:10:35] And finally, the holidays can be a stressful time, despite the veil of merriment.

[02:10:42] So let's look out for each other.

[02:10:44] Reach out to your friends, your family, people you haven't talked to in a while.

[02:10:47] Why not?

[02:10:48] And check those metaphorical knots, the knots of love and friendship and goodwill.

[02:10:55] Kum-bye-ya.

[02:11:16] I'm always really nervous.

[02:11:18] In fact, I don't even want to go up there.

[02:11:21] I'm just scared.

[02:11:22] That's all there is to it.

[02:11:23] So I know how much work it's going to be.

[02:11:26] Yeah, I think.

[02:11:27] And climbing work and freezing work and sweating work and hauling work.

[02:11:31] If there wasn't somebody to push me right up there, or if I didn't have some sort of attitude

[02:11:36] that I was brought up with, that say that I had to go up there,

[02:11:40] I sure as heck wouldn't I go back down and have another cup of coffee.

[02:11:43] Plus I do know how rotten you feel when you go back down and you have a cup of coffee.

[02:11:47] So I'll put the shoes on, and I'll start the pitch, and we'll be off and running.

[02:11:53] How am I going to get across the snow without getting wet?

[02:11:55] Oh, you can do it easily.