Discussion Topic |
|
This thread has been locked |
Batrock
Trad climber
Burbank
|
|
|
Feb 15, 2017 - 06:12pm PT
|
Boodawg,
Where in Burbank's the shop? Down off Victory someplace? I have been in Burbank my entire life and would like to know if its still there. Lots of old shacks are still hanging on near the tracks and the freeway.
|
|
Fossil climber
Trad climber
Atlin, B. C.
|
|
|
Feb 15, 2017 - 06:41pm PT
|
1952, white 1" tubular webbing from army surplus stores. Often stained.
Pitons - ring angles and ringed wafers and verticals, same source. (And of course Gallwas and I made our own, which usually lasted a couple of placements before the heads came off.)
Army aluminum carabiners, same source, also some OD 120' 7/16" ropes which came on a tight little spool and crackled when you unwound them. I gave a dinged one to Ellen Searby for her horse one time, and he jerked his head and broke it. We discontinued those pretty quick.
I was in the Navy and out of the country between '54 and '56. Missed developments.
After 1956 or 7, Ski Hut in Berkeley and Holubar in Colorado for most stuff. Holubar was making some pitons which I liked. European pins from both sources, as well as steel and alu biners.
Got my first down sleeping bag, a Trailwise, from Ski Hut. Compared to the surplus "60%" down, 40% feathers" (Used on the Nose) it was like sleeping on a cloud. Thought I'd gone to heaven.
Harding gave Cindy and I a wedding present of a Kelty pack, purchased at Ski Hut, 1958.
Can't recall for sure, but Gerry in Colorado came into my viewvabout then and had some good gear. Got my my impecunious loyalty for a time.
I started the Yosemite Mountain Shop by persuading YP&C Co. to give me a couple of shelves in a dress shop at the Lodge to sell webbing and 'biners and a few pins. It exploded from there. At first we could buy only white webbing, but I asked them to dye some blue and some orange. That was a revolution.
After that I lost track.
|
|
Peater
Trad climber
Salt Lake City Ut.
|
|
|
Feb 15, 2017 - 07:07pm PT
|
While I've bought gear from many of the places mentioned above, I also used to dumpster dive in the GPIW dumpster up in Ventura on Sundays.
|
|
Batrock
Trad climber
Burbank
|
|
|
Feb 15, 2017 - 07:20pm PT
|
Who remembers or used the Trapper Nelson wood pack frame? That was my first pack along with a surplus down bag.
|
|
Fossil climber
Trad climber
Atlin, B. C.
|
|
|
Feb 15, 2017 - 08:39pm PT
|
Yes, Batrock, I remember them from when I was a Boy Scout carrying a frameless rucksack full of cans with shoulder straps about an inch wide. Trapper Nelsons were considered the best, but I never had one. However, in the late 50s I used an Army equivalent, a moulded plywood frame with a canvas back piece. The good thing about them was that you could lash damn near anything to them, no matter size or shape. The downside was no waist band to distribute the load. I carried one all summer in 58. At the beginning of the summer I was six feet four. At the end I was five foot eight. And still shrinking. Ought to hit five five pretty soon.
|
|
TYeary
Social climber
State of decay
|
|
|
Feb 15, 2017 - 08:43pm PT
|
REI, The Backpacker in Claremont ( where Largo worked),Sport Chalet,
and this place
TY
|
|
Bruce Morris
Trad climber
Belmont, California
|
|
|
Feb 15, 2017 - 09:24pm PT
|
The Ski Hut in Berkeley, California.
|
|
throwpie
Trad climber
Berkeley
|
|
|
Feb 15, 2017 - 09:49pm PT
|
Jeff Mathis' pickanik table in camp four.
|
|
BruceHildenbrand
Social climber
Mountain View/Boulder
|
|
|
Feb 16, 2017 - 12:30am PT
|
The Ski Mart in Costa Mesa, CA had climbing gear. In the early 1970's there were a couple of high school kids, Mike Graham and Steve West who worked there. They even brought in a 10 foot high granite boulder and put it in the parking lot so you could do a few problems. I am certain that the statue of limitations has long since run out so... Mike and Steve had developed a system for acquiring gear by supposedly sending it back as defective.
|
|
BruceHildenbrand
Social climber
Mountain View/Boulder
|
|
|
Feb 16, 2017 - 12:32am PT
|
The Swallow's Nest was a nice place up in Seattle that opened around 1972, but went out of business in 1998.
|
|
mcreel
climber
Barcelona
|
|
|
Feb 16, 2017 - 12:37am PT
|
Early to mid-70s, my father was ordering stuff from REI, Eastern Mountain Sports and Holubar, for the most part, as I recall. I recall studying the catalogs with great interest. He bought goldline, pitons (never got used), biners, tubular sling, maybe a hex or 2. I remember several body rappels using goldline - wow!
|
|
wivanoff
Trad climber
CT
|
|
|
Feb 16, 2017 - 05:37am PT
|
> Bill--I don't have any memory of Veterans,
Al, Veterans in Hartford was an Army/Navy surplus store that had pitons, army carabiners, goldline, etc. I think I first went there with the late Chip Tuthill.
I vaguely remember Rocky Keeler. After he passed there was a ton of snow pickets left in the store from one of his projects. At Ski Hut I more remember Ben Ailes, Karin Aleckson and Tony Julinelle. I remember the name "Mud and Slush" club but have no recollection of who was in it.
BTW, you and I first met early in my climbing career (1971) when I was a fledgling leader. I was alone at the Main Cliff at Ragged looking for someone to climb with and you happened along and were willing to follow me as I struggled up "Main Street"
|
|
Tom Patterson
Trad climber
Seattle
|
|
|
Feb 16, 2017 - 06:16am PT
|
Who remembers or used the Trapper Nelson wood pack frame? That was my first pack along with a surplus down bag.
Batrock: That was my first backpack, too. I inherited the use of it from my Dad who'd used it up in the Sierra. My first backpack trip also involved a few cans of pork and beans, and lots of water, so you can imagine how that sucker cut into my shoulders. I think I may still have some grooves worn into them...
|
|
EP
Trad climber
Osteoarthritis Shouldervile
|
|
|
Feb 16, 2017 - 06:18am PT
|
Bakersfield had Bigfoot. Still have my Camp Seven jacket bought there.
|
|
Nick Danger
Ice climber
Arvada, CO
|
|
|
Feb 16, 2017 - 08:06am PT
|
In the mid-1960's in Colorado Springs it was the Mountain Chalet run by Muff Cheney (a hella good climber in his own right). Got my first Goldline rope and steel biners there. The silly Goldline would twist up like a drunken rattlesnake every time I used it, but boy did it give good dynamic fall protection!
Hoobie, your remarks about the Bonna 2400s brought back fond memories. I loved those skis. I replaced mine with a pair of Europa 99s, which I am convinced had a core constructed out of the leaf springs from a 5 ton truck. Could not break them, though. All of that happy early ski gear came from "The Chalet" in Gunnison.
|
|
storer
Trad climber
Golden, Colorado
|
|
|
Feb 16, 2017 - 08:15am PT
|
My dad and I made a Trapper Nelson-style pack by bending ash slates in homemade steamer. Vertical pieces were oak. Bag made by mom...a thing of beauty. Load too high for skiing so l used an army rucksack.
The only places to buy "real" gear was the Ski Hut, REI, and Sporthaus Schuster, the latter two by mail order. North Face in SF came later. I could walk to the Ski Hut on University Ave. from campus and talk to Steck but had to wait forever for my order to come from Munich. I got my first kernmantel, a really long 30 m, from them, boots (carefully drawn foot outline), and a great pair of knickers which I still have although I've had to enlarge the waist a bit. I could order in german as I was taking it at Cal. The package would arrive wrapped in brown paper always ripped open presumably by customs. Dick Long and Al Steck came up to Lovers' Leap to climb with us Sacto boys and Dick gave me a couple of his angles.
Being in Sacto near McClellen AFB where they had a Saturday public surplus sale I got hermetically sealed and unopened droge chute webbing sewn into a peculiar shape. It could be carefully cut apart to yield 10 ft of pristine 1" webbing. Some friends at Cal (UCHC) were making sleeping bags with down from China, I think, and ripstop and one of those replaced my army bag. BTW UCHC prolly deserves it's own thread as quite a few here probably spent lunch time in Eshleman.
|
|
lars johansen
Trad climber
West Marin, CA
|
|
|
Feb 16, 2017 - 08:17am PT
|
Batrock-
My first backpack was a Trapper Nelson also. I grew up in WA State and backpacked in the Olympics with it. No waist belt and heavy wood and canvas construction.-lars
|
|
mongrel
Trad climber
Truckee, CA
|
|
|
Feb 16, 2017 - 08:48am PT
|
Starting in 1968 in a supplier and knowledge vacuum, I mail ordered some hiking boots (Henke Tundra) from REI, intending to rock climb in them, which I did despite their diamond-hard soles and the fact that I'd gotten them hiking boot size. This meant stuffing a pair or two of extra socks behind my heels in order to climb at all.
I got climbing gear from a hardware store in Santa Monica. About 3 or 4 Army pitons and 3 of those same heavy Army steel biners that Alan mentions up top, and some white 1" to make a couple of runners, and 120' of 3/8 yachting goldline (much softer than that wiry stuff that was used for climbing) from a big reel in that same store. And off we went to Tahquitz, with no guide and only the barest notion of where the rock even was (somewhere around Idyllwild, figured we'd see it - which worked). The following summer I led Mechanics Route on that same rope, which made for a very authentic ascent of that historic route (1930s?). "The leader must not fall" certainly applied to that rope, which by then was seriously fluffed out from toproping.
West Ridge existed at that time, within bicycling distance, but our knowledge vacuum was so interstellar we didn't even know about it. Once I did, that's where I got everything.
Ho, man, it is something else to see the Mud and Slush mentioned on ST!! Who was in it? Anyone who like to climb but didn't take himself or herself too seriously, and was willing to show up annually to participate in the spaghetti eating contest and risk winning the hideous trophy.
|
|
|
SuperTopo on the Web
|
Let us know!