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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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