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Squirrel Murphy
Trad climber
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Topic Author's Original Post - Jun 2, 2018 - 05:35am PT
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We wouldn't have R.U.R.P.S, YDS and be scared shitless on a 5.9 route with the FA name of Jim Bridwell.
what else?
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ec
climber
ca
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RURPS???!
I don’t think so...Chouinard/Frost.
Beaks, Peckers, Toucans, Tomahawks is more like it.
 ec
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Jaybro
Social climber
Wolf City, Wyoming
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Before a, ‘slide show’ once he said he thought his biggest contributions were the chalk bag, and the QuickDraw
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Charlie D.
Trad climber
Western Slope, Tahoe Sierra
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Jaybro, I first saw chalk being used in the late 60's by Bridwell and the crew during the evening bouldering circuits there in C4. Someone said (could have been Jim), "I know a climber who carries it in a small bag!!!" It was soon to become "white courage".......here's to the Bird, cheers!
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Jaybro
Social climber
Wolf City, Wyoming
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Very cool, Charlie D!
In roughly that same time frame I saw people at Devils lake using Chalk, they folded it up in a handkerchief..
This stuff is fascinating!
I think the biggest thing we have to thank the bird for, is his showing and reassuring us, that regular (?) people can do unlikely things, if they take a reasoned approach punctuated with Zest!
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Use of chalk in rock climbing started in 1954 when Jim was ten years old. But he certainly contributed greatly in other ways.
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EdBannister
Mountain climber
13,000 feet
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Tom Frost and Yvon Chouinard are credited with inventing the Realized Ultimate Reality Piton. Edit per Steve Grossman, please see below....
Many different sewn loops and rigs for clipping to cables and bolts were common in Europe by the 60's, including draws, which were in Edelrid, Bonaiti, and other European catalogs before "B" was climbing.
John Gill was using chalk in 1952.
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Ed- Tom and Yvon developed the RURP TOGETHER to solve the technical problem posed by the Southwest Corner on Kat Pinnacle in April of 1960. They tried lots of shapes and material options before Yvon broke through the crux on RURPs and tied off knifeblade tips.
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norm larson
climber
wilson, wyoming
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I thought Jim came up with the idea to break routes 5.10 and up with an a,b,c,d. But I could be wrong.
Thanks to Jim I found out that even hairy giant super climbers can also be really friendly nice guys.
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EdBannister
Mountain climber
13,000 feet
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Steve, so Yvon drew the shape? and the two holes? those were his ideas? the material also? who was the mechanical engineer? yes Yvon led the route. ok Yvon and Tom, but very clearly not Bridwell.
Steve, did you ever notice the steady flow of new designs from the quonset hut stopped when Frost left? if they were in fact mutual, some new things would have still come from Yvon, right??
In Tom's absence, i am not aware of a genuinely new design until engineers were commissioned at UCLA to design the cams, down to the logo, i believe Yvon only copied other people's ideas, ever look at an old Salathe pin?? the Diamond Peninsula Company logo!, Yvon just turned it and put a C in there. What i will agree with, is Yvon and Bridwell were a great match.
and a correction, Julio did have a couple of really good ideas that improved the Chouinard standard, but those, were Julio's not the other guy.
by the way Steve, did you ever try R.U.R.P. #0 ?
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Ed- They both made several versions starting with shapes cut from bandsaw blade material which was too stiff and shattered when they tried to hammer on them. They made several shapes which are larger than the later versions with two holes. I have one that was bought from Yvon in the summer of 1960 that has a single hole in that is what you mean by #0.
Tom is responsible for a lot of design work but I have come to understand that there was a lot more collaboration that is commonly understood.
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Cascade Mountains and Monterey Bay
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I made a crucial hook move on El Cap tree direct with Frank Sacherer using a claw carpenter's hammer worn out by Jim Baldwin on the Dihedral Wall FA. This trick saved placing another bolt where a crucial piece of rock had broken off at the top of the overhanging two pitch RURP ladder. And I normally never carried a bolt kit.
Back in Camp 4 I told Yvon about it and we fussed around trying to make a better hook by bending the tip of a long dong piton. After failed blacksmithing attempts on a rock we took it down to John Salathe's camp. Salathe hammered out the required bend on a rock with a few expert whacks. Yvon and I negotiated for a couple of years over the correct relationship between the hook and the eye. Salathe agreed with me, but Yvon's earliest marketed versions had it backwards until he saw the light and flipped it around for all the later versions.
I think Glenn Denny had a hand in the RURP design business with his URP, a cut down version of Will Siri's precursor horizontal knife blade pitons. The RURP improves on the URP by adding the little tang below the blade to help keep your weight on the eye from levering the blade out of a vertical crack. The second hole in the RURP allows it to be used like an URP in horizontal or overhanging cracks. Will Siri's vertical knife blade pitons were a similar design about twice as large and with a longer thinner blade that would crumble when hammered into Yosemite's shallow closed seam cracks.
I think Glenn developed the URP for his 6.8 (A5) route on Bear Rock near Camp 4. I soloed the second ascent using RURPs. I also used URPs and other tricks to do the 6.9 overhang left of Midnight Lightning on Columbia Boulder. Bridwell did the second ascent and I don't know that it has otherwise been repeated.
Chouinard and Frost adopted SAE 4130 chrome-molybdenum aircraft steel for all his iron products, including RURPs, as it has a good tradeoff between stiffness, brittleness and malleability.
I think Tom Frost came up with the clever Cracken-ups
Note that in the early 60s we didn't have swagged aircraft wire for our RURPS and we used parachute cord through the eye. This added the challenge of hammering in the RURP so as to not cut the parachute cord. I lost a tooth on that same RURP ladder when the parachute cord broke and the carabiner snapped into my front tooth. That entire route has since fallen off the wall.
Yosemite used to be famous for many long closed seam cracks that wouldn't accept the soft iron european pitons ... hence Salathe's model A axle Lost Arrow pitons adopted by Yvon ... and the later URPs and RURPS. Most RURP cracks converted with use into tied off angles sockets that now accept cams and finger tips. Before cams and copper heads came along, I was making use of tiny aluminum blocks with a drilled hole for the parachute cord: mashies and bashies. Modern Yosemite free climbing would be a rather different challenge if all those deep pin scars were filled back in.
Then Bridwell came up with the hybrid RURP/hook idea, aka 'bird beaks' that trumped these earlier designs.
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Craig Fry
Trad climber
So Cal.
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Well I agree the Bird did contribute to the last item on your list, you could have done a little more research before posting the OP
I was waiting for someone else to post the obvious, but I guess it's up to me as the resident skeptic to debunk any unfounded claims
The YDS was invented way before the Bird
looky here, it's on Wikipedia!!
Yosemite Decimal System
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Yosemite Decimal System (YDS) is a three-part system used for rating the difficulty of walks, hikes, and climbs, primarily used by mountaineers in the United States and Canada. It was first devised by members of the Sierra Club in Southern California in the 1950s as a refinement of earlier systems, particularly those developed in Yosemite Valley, and quickly spread throughout North America.
The system was initially developed as the "Sierra Club grading system" in the 1930s to classify hikes and climbs in the Sierra Nevada. Previously, these were described relative to others. For example, Z is harder than X but easier than Y. This primitive system was difficult to learn for those who did not yet have experience of X or Y. The club adapted a numerical system of classification that was easy to learn and which seemed practical in its application.
The system was later refined into its modern, well-known form by climbers at Tahquitz Peak in Southern California. The intention was that the classes would be subdivided decimally, so that a class 4.5 route would be a climb halfway between 4 and 5. Class 5 was subdivided in the 1950s. Initially it was based on ten climbs in the region, and ranged from the "Trough" at 5.0, a relatively modest technical climb, to the "Open Book" at 5.9, considered at the time the most difficult unaided climb humanly possible. This system was developed by members of the Rock Climbing Section of the Angeles Chapter of the Sierra Club.[2]
Did the Bird divide the upper ratings into a,b,c,d ??
could not find on the Wiki
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Most areas had a 5.10-, 5.10 and 5.10+ system in place so four divisions (a,b,c,d) wasn't a huge reach but Jim systematically and by type of climbing laid out a clear vision of the comparative difficulty of the established testpieces in Yosemite both locally in Ascent magazine and internationally in Mountain #31.
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Squirrel Murphy
Trad climber
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Topic Author's Reply - Jun 4, 2018 - 07:57am PT
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I thought he came up with grades beyond 5.10 and the a-d system. For the longest time 5.9 was the hardest route in the valley right?
The bird came up with the aiding system correct? And after some time and and contrived manner climbs were going he developed a different aid system (NBD, PDW?)
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donini
Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
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The hardest route in the Valley was always the one that climbers had the most difficulty ascending. The arbitrary grade attached to it, however misrepresenting it was, had nothing to do with it.
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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The Crack of Doom is commonly considered the first 5.10 in Yosemite and was done by Chuck Pratt and Mort Hempel in October 1961.The rating compression which resulted in four letter grades came about because in part because climbers were reluctant to rate anything 5.11. The Center route on the Slack, Serenity Crack and New Dimensions were a few early breakthroughs into that grade during the late 60s and early 70s.
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Cascade Mountains and Monterey Bay
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Rixon's East Chimney was considered the first 5.10 before Crack of Doom was done
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Having been active (though not in Yosemite) in that period when, at least in America, 5.10 through 5.12 were established, I could never really decipher amongst 5.10a,b,c,d, suspecting that that fine a gradation had more to do with a temporary artificial ceiling of 5.10 than anything else.
The arithmetic factor may have played a role, since 5.10<5.9, but 5.11>5.10
I'm curious if any of the oldtimers here might discuss this aspect of the evolution of YDS. Especially since the Bird was involved. When John Sherman advanced his Verm bouldering scale ratings went up by integer jumps, but I may be in error here and there may very well be V9a, V9b, etc.
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AP
Trad climber
Calgary
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Question for Steve Grossman
Do you have all of your climbing mags scanned?
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