Discussion Topic |
|
This thread has been locked |
Mark Rodell
Trad climber
Bangkok
|
|
|
Feb 17, 2017 - 07:24pm PT
|
In the San Jose area, Mountain Life, 1972-75. Fun and crazy times there.
|
|
rottingjohnny
Sport climber
Sands Motel , Las Vegas
|
|
|
Feb 17, 2017 - 08:32pm PT
|
|
|
Mungeclimber
Trad climber
Nothing creative to say
|
|
|
Feb 17, 2017 - 10:09pm PT
|
at the risk of not actually being an old timer, but loving to talk about old shops having worked at a couple, my first shop visit/purchases was either REI Orange, CA or Adventures Unlimited in Orange, CA on Tustin ave. This was in the early 80s. Gramicci posters adorned the walls. They sold scuba gear upstairs. My shweeenard Whillans look alike was awesome in retrospect. CMI figure eight to rappel with. Asolo Onsights for the foots.
It would likely be another 4 years before Doug Robinson's narration in Moving Over Stone would melt my brain and I knew that I wasn't ever going to stop rock climbing.
|
|
steveA
Trad climber
Wolfeboro, NH
|
|
|
Feb 18, 2017 - 03:26am PT
|
That shop in Boston was indeed named Wilderness House. I worked there briefly, but that type of job quickly bored me. I think the owners name was Charlie Kalman?
In Boston, in the mid 60's, the only shop I knew where you could buy any type of climbing gear was Asa Osbornes? I bought steel carabiners there, and several pair of 8 point Stubai crampons, ( which I still have).
|
|
Concerned citizen
Big Wall climber
|
|
|
Feb 18, 2017 - 05:41am PT
|
In 1969 at Leon R. Greenman, Inc., 132 Spring Street, NY. They were in an old industrial building and to my recollection they did not have a real showroom when I first visited; you told them what you were looking for and they would lay the items out on a counter for you. I remember buying a rope, goldline for slings, 12 Cassin Bonaiti carabiners, a pair of RDs, and two guidebooks. I bought the Gran guide to the Gunks and the red Roper guide to Yosemite, because I had a compulsive aspiration to climb (someday) in the Valley.
|
|
slabbo
Trad climber
colo south
|
|
|
Feb 18, 2017 - 06:42am PT
|
Wilderness House later served some of Bostons' "less desirable" citizens when it went upscale.....no names from me
|
|
MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
|
|
|
Feb 18, 2017 - 07:41am PT
|
Pretty sure it was Charlie we bought gear from in Boston, in the little store where it seemed things might fall off the shelf on you. The EMS store was bright and had neat displays.
|
|
Batrock
Trad climber
Burbank
|
|
|
Feb 18, 2017 - 10:01am PT
|
I also remember bumming rides to the REI in Carson. Seemed like an odd place for an outdoor store. When did the Carson store open? What year did it close?
|
|
Rick A
climber
Boulder, Colorado
|
|
|
Feb 18, 2017 - 11:44am PT
|
Got my first climbing magazine (Summit) before I started climbing and before I could even drive. My mom drove me out to Highland Outfitters in Riverside for some camping gear for Boy Scouts, talked her into buying the magazine, and the rest(46 years of climbing) is personal history!
I recall that the Backpacker store closer to home on Foothill Boulevard came later, but I may be wrong.
|
|
wayne burleson
climber
Amherst, MA
|
|
|
Feb 18, 2017 - 04:14pm PT
|
Thanks Al and everyone else for this great thread.
My first exposure to climbing gear was at REI Seattle like so many others.
My mom went to high school in Seattle with Jim and Lou so she was somewhat aware but I assured her that I would just be hiking.
But my first purchases were at Outdoor Traders in Greenwich, CT in summer 1975.
I couldn't drive yet so rode my bike and came home with a pair of yellow shoe-nards, some peck crackers, both on wire and loose, and an Edelweiss rope.
I also went into Manhattan and bought a few things at Kreeger and Sons, including some orange SMC biners and a bonatti D with an orange gate.
A few other things for Al:
Did AJ Lafleur's Mountain Goat in Northampton ever sell gear?
I caught your 1966-62 error Al, knowing that you already quite active by then.
I do remember Paragon in Manhattan and Wilderness House in Boston.
And we used to buy EB's and other Euro gear from Paul Duval at his home.
|
|
TRo
climber
|
|
|
Feb 18, 2017 - 04:25pm PT
|
Skimeister Ski Shop in North Woodstock, NH, just down the road from Cannon. John Porter (?). Had an early rudimentary guide to Cannon, which I still have. Al, you must have gone there.
|
|
Don Lauria
Trad climber
Bishop, CA
|
|
|
Feb 20, 2017 - 03:44pm PT
|
Batrock -
When I was asked if I wanted to go my first ever Sierra backpack trip (1957), I told the guy that I didn't have a pack. He suggested two alternatives: Buy a Trapper Nelson from the Co-op or make your own. Since I didn't foresee any future in backpacking, I decided to forego the expense of a Trapper Nelson. The guy that made the suggestion, a fellow aerospace engineer, said he had drawn up a set of plans for making your own wooden pack frame. I used them and made my own. Then I went to an army surplus store (remember those?) and found some padded straps and a canvas sack about 22"x18"x8". Don't remember how I attached everything to the frame, but it served my purpose until I purchased my first Kelty in 1961.
|
|
jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
|
|
|
Feb 20, 2017 - 03:48pm PT
|
Then I went to an army surplus store (remember those?)
Yep. Got my first backpack at one in 1953, USArmy surplus from WWII or the Korean War eras.
|
|
Chris Jones
Social climber
Glen Ellen, CA
|
|
|
Feb 20, 2017 - 09:53pm PT
|
At my English boy’s school, Marlborough College, one of the schoolmasters, Edwin Kempson, had been on the hoary Everest trips of the 1930s. (In fact three members of the successful 1953 Everest expedition, John Hunt, Mike Ward and Charles Wylie, were also alums). Kempson was the sort of figurehead of the “Mountaineering Club” at the school, and no doubt the reason there even was such a club. For the most part we climbed on the college buildings at the crack of dawn on those long summer days, or climbed the trees in the Savernake Forest. All illegal of course.
For the 1957 summer vacation, our ringleader, Peter Bell, proposed an actual climbing trip to North Wales. He was quite explicit on what we should bring, and where we should obtain it. One steel carabiner and a hawser-laid nylon sling. And a waist loop of small-diameter hemp cord that one wrapped several times around the waist; the thinking was that hemp was better than nylon, as in the event of a fall nylon could be burnt thru by the running rope. All this was to be purchased at Robert Lawrie on Seymour Street, in one of London’s fanciest neighborhoods. I remember walking down the street. There were no retail shops at all in evidence, but rather discreet nameplates for this surgeon or that solicitor. But there it was, “Robert Lawrie, Alpine Bootmaker.” I pressed the bell, and after a short while the door discretely opened and I was ushered into a small room. There in front of me, in what was rather like a specimen case at a museum, were a few Austrian pitons, a piton hammer, a desultory rope sling or two, a pair of crampons and a couple of French ice axes. The salesperson hovered around in that annoying way that such staff do in high-end stores, until I eventually purchased my kit. I remember buying a steel Stubai carabiner with a screw locking gate, which I must have figured was stronger. It likely was, but it was a real pain wrestling with first the hefty steel spring and then the damned knurled ring to lock the biner.
Here is an ad:
http://www.smhc.co.uk/objects_item.asp?item_id=31793
|
|
Charlie D.
Trad climber
Western Slope, Tahoe Sierra
|
|
Montrose Army and Navy for canteens, steel carabiners and awful backpacks before we discovered Kelty was right down in Glendale/Burbank. Sport Chalet opened in La Canada and that was the place only to be out bargained by the Saddle Shop up on Foothill Blvd. in La Crescenta which sold klutter shoes for around $10 or $15.....I had to deliver a lot of newspapers to afford those.
|
|
Tom
Big Wall climber
San Luis Obispo CA
|
|
In the mid-1970s there was a store in San Luis Obispo, called the Granite Stairway. Apparently, there was also a mothership store in Santa Barbara. It had everything from oversized topographical maps, to everything the GPIW manufactured, to Swiss ropes, to Snow Lion down jackets and sleeping bags. Nice.
I still have a rucksack I purchased in 1976, emblazoned with "Granite Stairway". I have dropped (and recovered) that rucksack off of El Capitan, as a sleeping bag container, twice. Both times, it was when climbing the same section of El Capitan, New Dawn, Dawn Wall.
In the Old Days, I was too young to know who Hot Henry Barber was, but the cashier at the Granite Stairway educated me, and my younger brother, about how Hot Henry had free soloed the Steck-Salathe. The cashier demonstrated the impossible-to-duplicate craft of Hot Henry by faux-bouldering around the shelves and countertops in the store.
My brother and I were impressed enough we bought a red 11mm Edelrid lead rope, and a yellow Edelrid 9mm haul line. No more Goldline, for us. The story about Hot Henry sold us on a better rope, that wouldn't twist and snarl and foul. We believed that our new kernmantle ropes were key to becoming Real Climbers. And, it was true.
That same cashier would not sell us bolt hangers, until he was assured that we were not going to just drill all over the rock, and ruin everything. We assured the cashier that we had read our Royal Robbins, and we had read The Vertical World of Yosemite, and we knew that our drilling had to be done judiciously, and not randomly, and that we had an obligation, to those who would climb after us, to not bring the level of the game down to an inferior level.
I was 14 years old, and my brother was 13.
Today, the San Luis Obispo Granite Stairway brick-and-mortar location is a head shop.
tempi cambiano.
|
|
Jaybro
Social climber
Wolf City, Wyoming
|
|
For a while, early 80's, there was a GS satellite store in Bezerkly on universoiy, by the university. John phelan worked there.
I joined REI in 1970. No gear stores where my family lived in Park Forest Ill.so mail order and as thing. I'd also bought gear at the holubar store in Boulder when on vacation.at that time Boulder struck meh as an outdoor oriented town by the mtns. Unlike the suburban strip mall sprawl it is today.
We moved to the sf Bay Area in '72. The north face store on telegraph and ski hut on university were Meccas. Shortly after that came wilderness exchange, sunrise, smiley, marmot, Eddie Bauer, and finally rei in Berkeley, (then many other ba locations.)
Mostly all gone now except for REI.
|
|
mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
|
|
"The north face store on telegraph and ski hut on university were Meccas."
And on behalf of the staff at TNF/Telly I thank you for your patronage, Jaybro. Did we have some hotties working there or did we not?
Gretchen, so fetchin', and Rebecca (not really from Mecca but Oakland), were two of the best salespeople I knew.
They once had a bet with Hap Klopp, the top dog, on whether they could sell something to the two ordinary-citizen types who were plastering a hole in the wall; so they sold one a cheapo P-38 can opener for a quarter and won lunch at Trader Vic's.
|
|
Nick Danger
Ice climber
Arvada, CO
|
|
Mouse, love your story about the P38 can opener. I think a whole thread could be posted just for that item. Even today my lovely wife and I will have can opening speed contests where I use my old and original P38 against her modern can opener - a continuing source of amusement for us.
BTW mine is still the original one I got to open my c-rats at Camp Pendleton in '69.
|
|
Reeotch
climber
4 Corners Area
|
|
I'd like to take this opportunity to thank the folks at Sunrise Mountaineering in Livermore, CA ( Kim G. and EC Joe).
I bought all my first gear there in the 80s. Those guys were sort of mentors to me although I never climbed with any of them. They gave me the "bro deal" after a while. They were also very forthcoming with route information and keen to hear about our latest adventures.
I think it still exists, although in a different location than the little hole-in-the-wall shop it was, with creaky wooden floors and barely enough room to walk around, down there on old Main Street in Livergulch . . .
|
|
|
SuperTopo on the Web
|
Let us know!