Old Timers--Where Did You Get Your Gear?

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Reilly

Mountain climber

The Other Monrovia- CA

Feb 16, 2017 - 08:48am PT

Mastadon, my REI number is 8*0*0. When I give it nowadays the cashiers stand there waiting
for more digits. My friend's dad had a two digit number.

The U Village Alpine Hut - where Marts worked. He sold me my first bolt kit, which was almost
my undoing. Another time I dropped by there to say hello and he asked if I wanted to guide a
nice lady up Rainier. Turns out she was in on several FA's in the Tetons. It also turned out
that not only was she fookin' ancient (like 55!) but she was on some med, which she didn't
deem telling me was relevant to the situation, but had run out of! And just why would not
taking, or informing me about, a med for her inner ear (which just has a teensy bit to do with
balance) be relevant? Because when we were descending the fooking Cleaver in the wet
glop with crampons balling up she suddenly started losing her balance and falling every 50'!
When I got her sorry ass down to Muir she confessed. I don't think I said a word to her the
whole way down to Paradise.

donini

Trad climber

Ouray, Colorado

Feb 16, 2017 - 09:33am PT

I ravaged corpses whenever I could but the glaciers were reluctant to give them up so I can recall even paying retail on occasion at stores like Midwest Mountaineering and Teton Mountaineering.

TYeary

Social climber

State of decay

Feb 16, 2017 - 10:15am PT

With climate change and global warming, you should be flush with new(old) gear Jim!!
TY

Alan Rubin

climber

Amherst,MA.

Topic Author's Reply - Feb 16, 2017 - 10:59am PT

Great stuff here--just what I was hoping for. It is particularly good to get responses from Fossil Climber, jgill, and BooDawg's report on his conversation with George Whitmore to learn what the situation was in the '50s. I hope we get even more responses, especially from folks active in that time period.

Bill I.--Ben, Karin (later Ben's wife and now sadly deceased), and Tony were all Mud and Slushers.

Mongrel--great to see input from you. Please get in touch directly--it has been WAY too long.

Jim--I thought that your gear had a 'funny' odor!!!!

I want to make a correction to one of my earlier posts. The visit I made to the original REL and ice axe purchase there was in 1962 not 66 as I originally wrote. That's what I get for writing something late in the day. It is funny, I recall purchasing that ice ax, ordering my first 'mountain boots' from Peter Limmer, and getting my first pitons, biners, and klettershue from Camp and Trails, but have no memory of where or when I got my first rope. I do remember that it was 120', 7/16 goldline---but weren't they all back then?

Fossil climber

Trad climber

Atlin, B. C.

Feb 16, 2017 - 11:33am PT

Anybody remember Dave Meeks sleeping bags? Got a couple - I think it was early 70s - and still use one occasionally. Great down bags!

BooDawg

Social climber

Butterfly Town

Feb 16, 2017 - 11:40am PT

BatRock: My dad had a Trapper Nelson. I think I used a Kelty from 1961 onward which I got directly from Kelty's store (in or near Glendale?). I think their factory was in the back.

Since I didn't drive much at the time, I can't remember the address of the Skunkworks. But it was less than a mile from Santoro's Submarine Sandwich deli. Everyday at noonish, the crew would go down there for our lunches. I remember Yvon's favorite was Prosciutto; mine was Italian sausage. I loved the onions and pickles! It's still in business on Burbank Blvd, west of Victory. Now that I think about it, I'd guess that the Skunkworks was farther west on or off Burbank Blvd., since I seem to remember driving eastward for our lunches. Perhaps Dennis Hennek (who drove us) would remember. Maybe I can get him to chime in.

Wayne: I got Dave Meeks to make me a down half-bag. Best down ever! Very light and compressible. Great guy too!

Edit:

I just spoke with Dennis Hennek, and he can't remember the exact location of the Skunkworks either, even tho he used to pick up and deliver hardware in various stages manufacture between the Skunkworks and the die-maker, heat-treating place, and finish-coating place among others. Yvon, who grew up in Burbank would certainly know.

Received an email from Guido today; he's sailing along the coast of Tasmania, so he may not chime in for a while...

clode

Trad climber

portland, or

Feb 16, 2017 - 12:59pm PT

Early 70's: most of my gear (climbing, backpacking and mountaineering) came from REI in Seattle, mail order. But we had a local store called Oregon Mountain Community on SW 12th & Jefferson. Later on the Alpine Hut and Mountain House became additional outlets for my meager teenage allowance!

Toker Villain

Big Wall climber

Toquerville, Utah

Feb 16, 2017 - 02:46pm PT

Early '70s I went to Paragon on 19th str.

donini

Trad climber

Ouray, Colorado

Feb 16, 2017 - 02:59pm PT

We used to get what we considered great gear for reasonable prices. Now on eBay you can get the same gear, shitty by today's standards, for astronomical prices.

Batrock

Trad climber

Burbank

Feb 16, 2017 - 03:11pm PT

BooDawg,
Santoro's is still alive and kicking, the hot pastrami is my favorite.

guyman

Social climber

Moorpark, CA.

Feb 16, 2017 - 03:22pm PT

I purchased my first rope a Edelrid, IIRC 10.5mm 165 foot long, + 20 aluminum Eiger Ovals and a pair of Kronhoffers.

At Sports LTD in Woodland Hills CA.

This was in 1973... One had to ask about "Climbing Gear" then they would break out a "steamer trunk" that was full of gear.

This young climber was smitten with the thought of what was in the trunk...

shortly afterwards Peater, Bullwinkle and myself discovered GPIW in Ventura and the throwaway hex bin out back.....

I also made my own chalk bag, butt bag and stuff sacks at my Grandparents awing shop in LA ..... my Grandma taught me how to sew that stuff up, I made some for myself and my friends, all 100% white rip-stop and some were tie-dyed just to be hip.

This is a great thread, reading about the wooden pack frames, Semi-Down Sleeping bags and cobbled together climbing equipment makes me understand just how far out of the mainstream climbing was at the time. Times sure have changed ..... maybe for the better.

Gorgeous George

Trad climber

Los Angeles, California

Feb 16, 2017 - 05:31pm PT

The Cobbler, Manitou Springs, Colo, circa 1974. My 14 y/o partner Lenny Coyne took me there.

My first pack was a tube pack made by Great Pacific Iron Works, bought in downtown Colorado Springs at the mountain shop (still there and still have it).

We bought our wool knickers and knee socks at an Army surplus store, our pot in MS also.

jg

MH2

Boulder climber

Andy Cairns

Feb 16, 2017 - 05:52pm PT

My first gear was bought out of a store in Boston run by some old timer, in 1968. We also visited a place called REI in the neighborhood that year or later.

I bought a Bell Toptex motorcycle helmet on the command of my mentors, and some other stuff.

Last night a full house at the Vancouver International Film Festival listened to Glenn Woodsworth talk about the history of climbing in the Coast Range of British Columbia.

There were many tales of hardship, and now long obsolete gear, including the Trapper Nelson pack, in which they often carried 80 pounds of supplies to spend weeks in places where the maps only said: INCOMPLETE.

Glenn and his good friend and partner Dick Culbert went in to the Waddington area in 1964. He showed us a picture of their ice-climbing gear. He described the ice axe as, "a refugee from the Mummery/Irvine days on Everest." The crampons looked woeful. Here is what the rest of the gear looked like:

from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_screw#/media/File:EishakenSchrauben.JPG

He then showed us this:

http://vimff.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/GJW-1964-Waddington-Radiant-headwall-from-Unicorn_595x400.jpg

It was old and inadequate gear, but they got up Serra V despite the handicap. Getting down was a problem.

bvb

Social climber

flagstaff arizona

Feb 16, 2017 - 07:59pm PT

In 73', there were two pretty good stores for gear that were within 2 miles of my parent's house -- A Striving After Wind in PB, and Stanley Andrews in the Clairemont Square. There was a third shop closer to downtown (it's been mentioned upthread) and there was gear at Andy Drollenger's A16 store in El Cajon, so, as I exited 9th grade and discovered climbing, it never occurred to me that getting gear was an issue. I mean, A Striving After Wind was literally two blocks south and five blocks west of the school where I attended in kindergarten. And there was already an established scene at Striving -- Werner Lander would lord over grommets like me and Mike Paul and Off White. I saw my very first climbing magazine there -- the 1973 issue of Ascent with Cerro Torre on the cover. They had copies of the seminal GPIW catalog with Robinson's article on clean climbing, and we were ditching school and hitchiking to crags on the weekends. Nothing else existed in our world. It was all climbing, all the time, and I barely made it through high school. Man, I was hooked. But we had no money at all. So the Goon and I shoplifted a rope from Stanley Andrews, we bought some 2.15 cent Eiger ovals, some slings, and about 6 or 7 of those newfangled stoppers and hexes, and we set off to teach ourselves to climb. Our development mirrored the guys up in LA. No classes, no teachers, no experience, no mentors, just copies of Basic and Advanced Rockcraft. We we high as kites on ragweed, Mountain Magazines, just overwhelmed with a compulsion to climb. In a space of about four weeks I went from being a curious kid to a hard core full time lifer. My parents were stunned but supportive and once they saw our first photos and realized this was it, that it was happening and there was no stopping it, my mom bought me a Joe Brown Helment, some EB's to replace my hiking boots, a pair of herringbone tweed knickers, and helped out with getting a proper rack together. Within just a couple of months we joined forces with the other raw newbies in the scene and we got busy, busy, busy. Two years later during a serious ragweed and Coors session at Off White's house the Scumbags were formed. The rest is history! Right place, right time, located in a Burmuda Triangle of climbing shops and nascent local scene that was really popping by 74 or 75. Good times.

Jim Herrington

Mountain climber

New York, NY

Feb 17, 2017 - 06:34am PT

1970s
Jesse Brown's
Charlotte, NC

guyman

Social climber

Moorpark, CA.

Feb 17, 2017 - 08:46am PT

BVB.... you have a very nice Mom..... My Mom always thought I was out hiking.... that ended when I had a projector and a copy of "The West Face of Sentinel" that I showed her.

the Scumbags ruined the whole scene at Josh... we- my friends and I- were all pure and totally focused on climbing before, but you guys somehow would score BEER and Green, well Brown and people would get sick and sleep in... wasting valuable daylight that could be better used climbing the rocks.

Ed Hartouni

Trad climber

Livermore, CA

Feb 17, 2017 - 10:15am PT

Ed H.--The store in Amherst was called Whitewater Outfitters back then--later changed to Adventure Outfitters. They closed about 2 years ago when the owner retired--kind of a funky store!!! When were you in western MA? Did we cross paths or just miss each other--I moved out here in the summer of '88? EMS in North Conway (now IME)opened in (I think) 1969, though the original store was in either Natick or Framingham MA. and itself was a combination of 2 earlier stores. This occurred, I believe, sometime in the mid-60s when they also opened a store on Commonwealth Ave. in Boston and the North Conway store followed not too long after. I now recall that there was an even earlier and quite 'eccentric' store in Boston that sold climbing gear--Wilderness Outfitters I think it was called. As rgold said Rock and Snow was another store that opened in 1970--after Ranger Donahue's back-of-the-truck operation was terminated by Mohonk.

I lived in Leverett from 1986 to 1995. We could have crossed paths, no doubt we did, but somehow didn't connect.

Now that you say "Whitewater Outfitters" some memories emerge... but at the time I was "all over the place," climbing for me during that time was mostly visits to the west in the summer, ice climbing in VT and NH, and trips to the 'Gunks and N. Conway. Along with hikes in the local hills.

IME, I remember buying stuff from them too, my current 3-man tent, marketed briefly by Wild Country, is still built by the same British company that markets them today (I had relatively recently bought a replacement rain fly, the old one died a glorious death from UV aging, well used!).

Al Barkamps

Social climber

Red Stick

Feb 17, 2017 - 12:07pm PT

I used to get my stuff at Tent and Trails in NYC...a couple of blocks from Wall Street if you can believe it. Paragon's was waaaaay too far uptown! There was a place in Brooklyn around 1978 that closed that winter after only 2 years, where I scored a matched set of Forrest Lifetimes and all the gear that would send me to Robson.

slabbo

Trad climber

colo south

Feb 17, 2017 - 12:42pm PT

This reminds me of a conversation with george Hurley years ago- I asked him about the legend that he had the first kernmantle rope in the USA around 1957 ? for the F/A of the Titan.

He said quite possibly

Tha old place in Boston was Wilderness House,, you could still buy army piton there in the early 80's and other crazy stuff