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| Messages 1 - 12 of total 12 in this topic |
Farley
Mountain climber
Portland, Oregon
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Topic Author's Original Post - Nov 24, 2017 - 06:13pm PT
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I believe that Chuck Wilts's early climbing guide for Tahquitz included the first breakdown of the Sierra Club "fifth class" rating into separate grades 5.0 to 5.9. Would like to obtain, at the very least, scans of the Wilts guidebook with this writeup. Can anybody help?
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Charlie D.
Trad climber
Western Slope, Tahoe Sierra
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Nov 24, 2017 - 06:34pm PT
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Ha, Clint beat me to it.....I don’t have anything earlier than the 1962 edition.
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donini
Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
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Nov 24, 2017 - 07:23pm PT
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A nice summation of the development of the YDS. It would have turned out so much better if it had been developed as an open ended system like the Australian. There would have been less bunching and fewer sand bagged climbs.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Nov 25, 2017 - 09:33am PT
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My first serious girlfriend was Janet Wilts (who made an early female ascent of El Cap in the early 70s), daughter of Chuck Wilts, and I got to root around all of Chuck's notes and previous guides and grill him on the history and so forth. Very interesting stuff and Chuck was a pioneer and a wonderfully gracious person.
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Eric Beck
Sport climber
Bishop, California
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Nov 25, 2017 - 10:14am PT
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When Roper was doing the first Yosemite guide, he received a letter from Leigh Ortenberger (author of the Teton guide) imploring him to adopt the "F" system and pointing out that whatever he adopted would become the standard for the entire country. This proved prophetic.
Did the open ended Australian system exist then (early 60s)?
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
Sands Motel , Las Vegas
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Nov 25, 2017 - 02:13pm PT
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Cosmic....Is that because you got F's on your report cards..? rj
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BBA
Social climber
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Nov 26, 2017 - 08:00am PT
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Here are some of the pages of the 1956 Wilt's guide
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Farley
Mountain climber
Portland, Oregon
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Topic Author's Reply - Nov 26, 2017 - 06:46pm PT
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Thanks to all for the postings, and in particular Clint and BBA for the scans. Just what I was looking for!
Now if someone just had a copy of the'56 for sale...
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Alan Rubin
climber
Amherst,MA.
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To answer a question Eric Beck posed upthread, the open-ended Australian grading system was "introduced" by John Ewbank "in about 1967" (Classic Climbs of Australia, Joe Friend). So this was approximately 3 years after Roper's Yosemite guide was published in 1964. But even had the Australian system been in place at the time Roper was working on his book, it would have had no impact. In the early/mid-'60s there was relatively little international information exchange available to US climbers in an era of very limited climbing media. It is unlikely that more than a handful, if that, of US climbers were even aware that there was climbing in Australia, let alone being familiar with the nuances of any grading system there. All this changed in the late '60s with the appearance of Mountain Magazine (1968)and, to a lesser extent, Ascent (1967),both of which greatly improved our knowledge of other climbing 'cultures' and both of which published articles on Australian climbing, with reference to the grading system, in some of their earlier issues. By this time, however, the Decimal System was well-established in North America--though proponents of the NCCS were still waging a 'rear-guard' action and others were proposing new systems as well (such as Harvey Carter with his "Universal Grading System"). In the mid-'70s Henry Barber tried to introduce the Australian system in the Gunks, but with no success.
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F10
Trad climber
Bishop
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I got pretty used to the F rating system with the Wolfe JT guidebooks
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| Messages 1 - 12 of total 12 in this topic |
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