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rgold
Trad climber
Poughkeepsie, NY
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Topic Author's Original Post - Jul 24, 2014 - 10:41pm PT
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As of today:
With Exum guides Dick Pownall and Karl Pfiffner. I was 14.
Time flies when yer havin' fun!
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Al_Smith
climber
San Francisco, CA
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Jul 24, 2014 - 11:18pm PT
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That's fantastic! Climb on!
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Curt
climber
Gold Canyon, AZ
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Jul 25, 2014 - 02:42am PT
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Well, at least you didn't do that before I was born :-)
Curt
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tradmanclimbs
Ice climber
Pomfert VT
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Jul 25, 2014 - 03:06am PT
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Very cool!
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donini
Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
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Jul 25, 2014 - 06:18am PT
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Congrats young man! Rich, when you think of it, more than a couple of East Coast climbers got their first taste at Exum.
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couchmaster
climber
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Jul 25, 2014 - 06:22am PT
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That's awesome. Thanks for sharing it. The first climbing book I ever read was Dick Pownall's masterpiece instruction manual: "The Mountaineering Handbook, An Invitation To Climbing". Which starts out with a real engaging and detailed story of some climbers heading up to do a climb on Owl Rock (I think). Even the cover sucked me in with some fella doing a Dulfersitz rap off some total wild alpine rock looking vista. http://www.amazon.com/Mountaineering-Handbook-Curtis-Pownall-Casewit/dp/B001P6ZFYO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1406294759&sr=8-1&keywords=Dick+Pownall. His love of the Mt's was visible and transferred over to me very clearly in that work. The dude was clearly the man. I would have loved to have tied in with the guy. Here's the picture (below) of the cover at the one Chesslers Books has for sale. I wore that the pages of that book out.
Congrats yourself on a long and rich (not Rich) climbing history Rich.
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Reeotch
climber
4 Corners Area
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Jul 25, 2014 - 06:29am PT
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Oh yeah! Way to go, Rich. Proud to share a name with ya . . .
You are one of the people whose posts I bother to read. Appreciate your experience/wisdom.
There is hope for the Taco stand . . .
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yanqui
climber
Balcarce, Argentina
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Jul 25, 2014 - 06:58am PT
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Congrats: well at least you didn't do that before I was a fetus!
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phylp
Trad climber
Millbrae, CA
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Jul 25, 2014 - 07:04am PT
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That's great! Congratulations on such an interesting anniversary.
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Bad Climber
climber
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Jul 25, 2014 - 07:18am PT
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Fantastic, Mr. Gold! Keep on climbing.
BAd
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steveA
Trad climber
Wolfeboro, NH
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Jul 25, 2014 - 07:29am PT
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Rich,
Your definitely in a special group of climbers, who have been at it a long time, and still have the interest and ability to keep practicing our craft.
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guyman
Social climber
Moorpark, CA.
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Jul 25, 2014 - 07:52am PT
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Way to go
a life on the rocks
A toast to you
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PhilG
Trad climber
The Circuit, Tonasket WA
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Jul 25, 2014 - 08:01am PT
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Congratulations for keeping the love alive, and for being safe that many years.
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klk
Trad climber
cali
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Jul 25, 2014 - 08:03am PT
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nice
tetons in the 50s-- interesting time and place
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Peter Haan
Trad climber
Santa Cruz, CA
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Jul 25, 2014 - 08:03am PT
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That is great, Richie!
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MH2
climber
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Jul 25, 2014 - 08:31am PT
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An excellent use of time for a 14 year-old.
I can only guess what I was doing that day, aged 8: looking for snakes and then watching Zorro.
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rgold
Trad climber
Poughkeepsie, NY
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Topic Author's Reply - Jul 25, 2014 - 08:45am PT
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Tetons in the 50s--interesting time and place
...and the sixties, which is what I'm more familiar with. I stayed at the climbers campground, lurked at the Teton tea parties, was up in Garnet Canyon during both the Appie accident and the Tim Bond tragedy, participated in a nasty rescue on the Grand, encountered the Vulgarians for the first time, fell in with John Gill, and managed early repeats of some of the Moran south side routes like No Escape Buttress.
I mentioned in the McCarthy welcome thread the fascinating book We Aspired---The Last Innocent Americans, by Pete Sinclair, which documents that period, partially from the point of view of running the ranger station and having to do the rescues and police the climbers' campground.
Sinclair provides a deep and complex narrative, sometimes verging on allegory, of those singular times in American climbing. I must say I responded viscerally to the "last innocent Americans" subtitle, which immediately struck a chord with me, and yet I've never been able to explain what that means myself and have never been able to extract a satisfactory explanation from Pete's book, although I think the entire text is meant to elaborate on that concept.
The book seems to me to be suffused with a melancholy about the end of these special times, partially reflected in the end an aging climber's career. And yet it is not a sad book or a downer at all and ends at the beginning, with an account of the kind of human decency that is now muted if not obliterated by the red state/blue state divide.
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dee ee
Mountain climber
citizen of planet Earth
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Jul 25, 2014 - 08:16pm PT
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Dude, I was born 11 days later.
That ain't right!
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HighDesertDJ
Trad climber
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Jul 25, 2014 - 08:31pm PT
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Great stories, rgold. Keep em coming.
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jgill
Boulder climber
Colorado
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Jul 25, 2014 - 08:45pm PT
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We Aspired . . . is a fine book, capturing the spirit of that era. I can't recall how many times I dropped into the climbing ranger shack and chatted with Pete. He was getting a PhD at Wyoming and eating a lot of spaghetti to save money. He taught at Evergreen College for years, probably hired by Willi Unsoeld who was a dean. Pete's health wasn't so great when I talked with him 7 or 8 years ago. Anybody have an update?
Rich, I think I climbed the OS a year or so before you. Nice mountains, possibly even better than the boulders.
;>)
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Jaybro
Social climber
Wolf City, Wyoming
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Jul 25, 2014 - 09:20pm PT
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Very cool! That's how my family and I got into it too! Six years after your ascent, in 1963, when my old brother, Chasbro, was thirteen, he climbed the Grand with Exum & Barry corbet(?) starting us on the road tha got us here. Today we climbed on a climbing wall built to mimic Devils tower, tomorrow the real thing, that we've each climbed a hundred or more times in the last fifty one years, all starting with that adventure!
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Fritz
Trad climber
Choss Creek, ID
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Jul 25, 2014 - 09:58pm PT
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rgold: Always wonderful to read your posts! Since I am at a mere age 64.8 and my first significant peak in Idaho's Sawtooth Mountains was only 44 years ago-----you are an inspiration to me.
Please!
Keep posting stories and thoughts!
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jul 25, 2014 - 10:01pm PT
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I keep track of the first climbs I did in various areas, it's nice to revisit them from time to time...
what a wonderful fifty-seven years, I've got another decade to go to get there...
maybe we can get together and climb my first 'Gunks climb on the 50th anniversary, May 2030, it would be one of: Avocado, Bonnie's Household, Jackie or Updraft, your choice...
less than 16 years to go!
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Todd Eastman
climber
Bellingham, WA
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Jul 25, 2014 - 10:14pm PT
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A highlight of my climbing was being invited to jump in with Stannard and Goldstone on some bouldering off the Carriage Road in the early-1980s. I was living and working in either Vermont or the Adirondacks but had grown up climbing in Baltimore and John had always been a supportive presence at Carderock years before. Danged if lots of bouldering and training didn't help me work on this problem with Rich and John. Of course their coaching made this sequence possible.
Oh what we can learn if we just listen to the help offered by those several years more experienced.
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MH2
climber
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Jul 26, 2014 - 09:43am PT
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I must say I responded viscerally to the "last innocent Americans" subtitle
And much the same for me when reading rgold's post at the bottom of the first page. My first visit to the Tetons, in 1970, left enduring memories of climbs and friends. However, one of my classmates who was a ranger quit his job when they asked him to carry a gun (when he was tasked with catching speeders), and a climbing ranger (Dave?) gave a low-key but powerful slide show to an audience of tourists and climbers which he was later fired for. He and Kevin Bein, I think, had climbed Moran South Buttress on a bag of lemon drops and at some juncture, "blew some dope."
My own memory for facts is unreliable but I do remember a sense of innocent fun and freedom in the '60s. I'll have to look at We Aspired...
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donini
Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
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Jul 26, 2014 - 09:06pm PT
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Rich once told be that he went bouldering at Fontainebleau only hours after witnessing the beheading of Marie Antoinette.
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klk
Trad climber
cali
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Jul 26, 2014 - 09:31pm PT
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I must say I responded viscerally to the "last innocent Americans" subtitle, which immediately struck a chord with me, and yet I've never been able to explain what that means myself
i dont know pete. but know the book well.
innocence lost was a common motif in classic works of 20th century non-fiction, especially british ones but also among some of the jewish memoirs of the interwar years. and it was picked up and echoed in a good deal of the lit written by white americans in the postwar years. not so common with black authors, for the obvious reasons.
in this case, i always reckoned it was partly a "splendid isolation" reference. the tetons weren't monaco, and vietnam and the civil rights movements weren't ww1, but i always liked the title. the book gives you some layers, so it seems to work pretty well.
you never know if it's the author or an editor who actually contributes the title.
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rgold
Trad climber
Poughkeepsie, NY
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Topic Author's Reply - Jul 26, 2014 - 10:38pm PT
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Rich once told be that he went bouldering at Fontainebleau only hours after witnessing the beheading of Marie Antoinette.
I made it a point to never go bouldering after a beheading. But Marie and I did do quite a bit of bouldering in Fountainbleau BITD, although most of the routes then were a piece of cake. I suggested some multipitch climbing, but by then she had lost her lead head. It isn't widely known that it was she who invented the Versailles grades, commonly but mistakenly attributed to John Sherman, who only came on the scene years later.
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Fritz
Trad climber
Choss Creek, ID
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Jul 26, 2014 - 11:05pm PT
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Big Smiles for rgold & Donini historical humor!
Keep taking medication.
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Gunks
Trad climber
NY
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Jul 27, 2014 - 04:24am PT
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Congrats! I wish I started climbing at 14, but I didn't discover the sport till I was 45. I am looking forward to say "THIRTY YEARS".
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Jul 27, 2014 - 09:22am PT
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So many great climbers got their start in the Tetons.
I recently interviewed Steve Komito and he had a great story about pestering his parents to take a detour through the Tetons during a family trip to Yellowstone. He saw a sign that said "Learn to Climb" and lunged for the opportunity. He grew up in Indiana and thought that mountains like that only existed in Europe and was enthralled to find out otherwise.
That introduction and visits to his older brother who went to CU in Boulder and Steve couldn't leave home fast enough.
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