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jstan
climber
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Topic Author's Original Post - Dec 6, 2016 - 08:46pm PT
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In the early 60's my brother and I took to hiking with ice axes and insteps in the iced canyons of upstate NY parks. Those places were unbelievably beautiful. If the internet had existed and I had seen ice climbing versions of ST at the time, it never would have happened. People today aren't different. It's way more serious than that.
We are mutants.
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Ghost
climber
A long way from where I started
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Bill Murray and a few of his friends were doing ridiculously hard and scary ice climbs in unbelievably beautiful places in Scotland in the late 1930s. If the internet had existed then, and he had seen ice climbing versions of ST at the time, would it have happened?
What if he'd been able to see you setting new standards on rock? Would he have thought of you as a mutant?
People today aren't different. It's way more fun than that.
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jstan
climber
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 6, 2016 - 09:29pm PT
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I did not set anything. It was all just the same, Fun. Today we get all twisted up in our shorts about nonsense. Like what is Trad. Who is doing it and who isn't. Pick any thread. Barrels of nonsense.
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WyoRockMan
climber
Grizzlyville, WY
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I might be missing the point... EDIT: Barrels of nonsense, agreed. Sorry about below.
I took an intro ice climbing trip to the Genesis area in Hyalite my freshman year of college. A trip led by the one and only Dr. Pat Callis. As a late registrant to the trip, no boots in my size were available. I figured since we were skiing in from the reservoir anyway, I'd just use my ski boots/AT setup (Ramers). The skin in was fine, the ice was fat, it was cold. Really cold as I remember. The straight shafted tools with too tight of leashes restricted my blood flow, I had the barfies by the time I finished my first miserable lap. Somehow, despite the cold, liquid water had soaked my arms. This is the dumbest activity in the world. I'd rather ski frozen avalanche debris. And so it was, I relegated ice climbing into the dustbin of moronic hobbies.
...
Fast forward 20 years, add in the wild visuals from the internet, upgraded technology and presto, I was talked into giving it another whirl. This time I found it sublime and enjoyable. As if the polarity of the ice caps had flipped, I now prefer to swing the tools over skiing. Unless it is a big powder day. And only one thing tops that.
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survival
Big Wall climber
Terrapin Station
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One minute we're talking about Ondra, the next minute we're defining trad,.... again...
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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I hear you, John. When I began in 1953 I bought a pair of JCHiggins work boots, had red Brahmani lug souls put on them, bought fifty feet of natural fiber rope and had a whale of a time in north Georgia scrambling on the limestone bluffs. Naivete is precious and cannot be reproduced.
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Ghost
climber
A long way from where I started
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One minute we're talking about Ondra, the next minute we're defining trad,.... again...
Wait. I thought we were talking about Werner. And jstan setting stannards. And fun by the barrel as we climbed ice in ski boots and rock in work boots. Although Gill cheated. Getting special purpose soles put on your work boots is aid. Which is not trad. Unless the bolts are at least twenty meters apart. I read that in a thread on Supertopo so it must be true.
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Geez, and I thought I was badazz climbing at Joshua Tree in my Keds in '63.
I was decades late to the partay!
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nah000
climber
no/w/here
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have fun ole timers...
i for one look forward to some more stories once you settle back down into the ole rockin' chairs...
sincerely. :)
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jstan
climber
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 6, 2016 - 10:53pm PT
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Now that's better. We are getting into life. In JT I had a neighbor who played football for Kansas in the 30's. Really big dude, and interesting - but dangerous. I always took visitors over for happy hour to meet him, but made the mistake of taking two lady type visitors over on consecutive weekends. What does Lee say right off the bat?
"You are not the same girl John had here last weekend."
(By the way, you are not free to draw conclusions from this story.)
Moose:
My email is still broken. Beginning to rather like it that way.
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rgold
Trad climber
Poughkeepsie, NY
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We are all products of our time, none of us can go back, things change, and the activities that called to us may seem to have taken unrecognizable forms.
We had another thread about "would you get into climbing as it is now," and I thought about it and concluded that yes, I would. Don't get me wrong, I miss the solitude and simplicity of the truly bygone days, when the landscape seemed infinite, even the smallest crags were rife with as-yet undiscoverd possibilities, and there seemed to be only a few of us.
I've been climbing in the Gunks for almost 60 years now. Sometimes I think John would weep to see what has happened to the Trapps. And yet, and yet...I get on an easy route I first did as a teenager, heart pounding and brain churning, goldline rope hanging down too far to the last piton---and now it's a walk in the park. I walk past some of the harder routes of my youth, now beyond my capabilities, and smile watching some modern climbers dogging the daylights out of them.
Back on the rock, I reach up and curl my not-nearly-as-strong-as-they-used-to-be fingers around the same incut edge my boyish hand grasped more than a half-century ago...and I feel at home. Much is not the way it was, and that surely includes me, but that little hold hasn't changed a bit, and all the things I loved so long ago are still right there on that rock face.
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steveA
Trad climber
Wolfeboro, NH
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rgold,
Your last paragraph is pure gold!
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Gary
Social climber
Desolation Basin, Calif.
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If the internet had existed and I had seen ice climbing versions of ST at the time, it never would have happened.
Just about everybody on this forum is a better climber than me. My best has never ever approached the standard of what I've seen people on the Internets doing. It's never bothered me a bit. Walking around Josh and climbing all those 5.4 to 5.6 routes has always been a blast. Some of the best times in my life. And leading the occasional 5.8, what a hoot! Going back to camp and listening about the .10s, .11s and .12s everyone else did was OK with me.
You know all those crappy Todd Swain routes? I bet only Todd Swain has done more of those than me!
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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How come Richie gets all the cool posts?
I seldom get tired of philosophic discussion, but it's basically not productive and gets bogged down here in forum garbage.
It's just good to sit here and know that chocks replaced pitons and cams replaced chocks, while ten points weren't good enough and twelve points were better.
It's also good to sit here and contemplate what things would be like with no Sticht and not a single quick-draw.
Or chalk!
Or sticky rubber!
Or longer and lighter and stronger ropes!
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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T’would be interesting to be able to separate fact from the color of memory. But that seems impossible. What all of us are left with is our thoughts about our memories. How beautiful they are.
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rbord
Boulder climber
atlanta
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It's true.
When I think hard enough about the coming zombie apocalypse, I realize that there's no way that I'm ready for it! Not like I was before cams were invented, anyway. :-)
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Truth is life's just way too short and most of it's wasted on the young. IMHO.
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rbord
Boulder climber
atlanta
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Our memories of suffering are affected disproportionately (i.e. almost exclusively) by the peak and final intensity of suffering, with almost no consideration of the duration of suffering. Our remembering self remembers differently than our experiencing self experiences.
But then moving into the future, our remembering self is the one who calls the shots - creates our beliefs, and decides what our experiencing self should experience - based on our "memories."
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Outside the Asylum
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First impressions are always the most memorable. As Tolkien put it - not referring to climbing - it's "like elf-children in the deeps ot time peering out of the Wild Wood in wonder at their first Dawn."
And we can never go back, except in memory.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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T’would be interesting to be able to separate fact from the color of memory. But that seems impossible
How very true. Yesterday I watched the movie Race, about Jesse Owens and the Berlin Olympics in 1936. I have a vivid memory of driving through Hyde Park in the fall of 1958 and waving at Owens as he stood at a street corner greeting drivers, apparently running for some political office - at least that's what memory tells me. On checking the internet I cannot find any reference to him running for office, although he was in the Chicago area at roughly that time. He did support youth groups, so maybe that's what it was about. I'll never know.
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