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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 1, 2009 - 12:25pm PT
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If you have a shot of those Stubai's, I would love to check them out.
Salewa put their adjustable out in 1962, pretty early on.
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Fritz
Trad climber
Hagerman, ID
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Gordon aka "Wee Jock" Christ man - please get that book published and flog the name on this site. The story with Tobin Sorenson was the most gripping alpine climbing epic I've read in ages.
photo from Pete Benson
I think this is the site of the epic--North Face Grande Jorasses??
thank you! Fritz
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 1, 2009 - 01:06pm PT
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Perfect spot for one!
The Stubai Aschenbrenner was a step cutting only design and never looked better than in this gentleman's weathered hands.
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Jello
Social climber
No Ut
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Well, Gordon, you were the best of your generation of Scottish clamberers, carrying on in a long, distinguished line of under-equipped, dishevelled and self-reliant mountain men. And now, by your excerpt, I see that you're also ready to step into the literary shoes of the likes of Murray and Marshall and Robin Smith, etc. I've got two days left on a deadline that will not allow me to participate much, here, but then I'll post up some stuff from my pilgrimage back in '75 to the birthplace of winter mountaineering and mixed climbing. I even have a pic of Tut on that route you spoke of. Tut and I did a few climbs in that rope-free style, and the most delicate aspect was trying to not fall off as we were each trying to top the other with our jokes as we climbed. I remember one point at the crux of Hadrian's Wall where Tut had outdone me, and I spent five minutes fighting paroxysms of laughter while clinging precariously to axes and crampons barely adhered to thin ice. Wonderful times!
Cheers to you, Wee Jock-
-StyrofoamJello
EDIT: And thanks, Steve, for the memories via the Squid pics. We didn't have much in the way of Scots styrofoam on this side of the puddle, so we had to make do with what we found on our own winter hillsides.
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Doug Robinson
Trad climber
Santa Cruz
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Great shot of Norman. The stare...
Sporting a skinny rope. Nylon, for sure, but definitely a guiding-only line. No leading on that, nope.
But they cut off his boots. The wonderful nailed mothas with about 26 eyelets lacing to mid-thigh.
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RDB
Trad climber
Iss WA
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Great stuff, thank you gentlemen.
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Wee Jock
climber
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Great Dane, the topo you just posted has an error ... Route A and Route B join about an inch (on the photo!) higher - at the top of the next steepening. The Desmaison original takes a corner (just discernable as a line on the photo) up the left flank of this steep section to reach the 'first ramp' while route B goes up a very obvious (and rather Scottish) ice gully hard up against the right hand bounding wall (ie the line as shown in the topo).
Jello - high praise from such as you, were it only true ... well actually 3 of the words are true - clamberer, dishevelled and under-equipped.
As to crampons I climbed for a while with a pair of Salewa Adjustables with tungsten tips ... to keep them sharp I suppose. Trouble was the tips fell off.
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Mighty Hiker
Social climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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The "Scottish" part may also be true. :-) Anyway, fascinating stories - thanks!
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Wee Jock
climber
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Actually, I was born in Calcutta, India
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 2, 2009 - 11:27am PT
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To continue the show and tell.....
In 1908 Oscar Eckenstein became the father of the modern reliable crampon with this hinged ten point design.
The front points were destined to show up around 1929 and revolutionize icecraft.
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RDB
Trad climber
Iss WA
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There have been so many good climbers posting and some amazing climbs on this thread. It is a fun read.
Question for Gordon, didn't you and Tobin do that route with two nights out in 1977?
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Wee Jock
climber
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Great Dane
Two nights out, but we also lost nearly a morning wandering up a red herring and rapping back down again...The route we did wasn't the Desmaison as it turned out but somewhat more direct. A high def photo shown me by Luca Signorelli showed me what I always suspected (remember Tobin and I had no route description, only Desmaison's name for the route as the 'NE Face Direct' of the Point Walker - so we kept our noses pointed to the summit at all times...actually, I broke my nose years ago so it is a bit bent therefore we followed Tobin's nose). I saw our route really clearly in Jon Griffiths photo that you provided the link for!!
Just to keep the post in keeping with the OP Tobin used a 60cm Chouinard Frost and Chouinard ice hammer and I had Terrors. I reckon that my Terror axe, with its big adze, would have coped better with the soft snow of the cornice!! I really loved that Terror axe because of the adze even though it was a bit light for climbing hard water ice. Terrors were really great for the very thin ice in the mixed climbing ... much better than the Chouinard stuff that Tobin had IMO. We climbed in the old fashioned way ... if there was no ice to stick the pick into we rock climbed with our hands - ie no torqueing and hooking.
I think we both had Salewa Adjustables and we did a lot of mixed verglassed rock and thin ice climbing in them. We found them great for the mixed climbing - essentially rock climbing up to about 5.10.
We had no ice screws, though there was a fair bit of very hard 'winter' ice in the gullies on the route that would have 'taken' them well.
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 3, 2009 - 11:15pm PT
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John Cleare wrote a chapter about Scottish winter climbing in Mountains, 1975. The modern portion.
Enter you lads!
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Wee Jock
climber
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Mr Grossman ... re Cleare's article - clipping in and resting on a Terror would be aid, would it not? Also, hooking (as per Hamish's spiel about the terror hooking small rock flakes) - is that not aid as much as using a sky-hook? Seems to me that the 'new' tools of the seventies brought in some ethical questions, particularly the angled pick of the Terror. Being a particularly impecunious example of Homo Scotus Winterclimbicus I was always careful to try not to use the terror on rock as it wore it out very quickly...the pick metal was kind of soft and once it had worn down to the first tooth it was fairly useless. As far as I knew most folk did a lot of clearing of snow from rock holds and climbing bare handed (hence the wee strings on the Dachsteins - which brought a problem as the mitt would hang upside down and fill with spindrift!).
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RDB
Trad climber
Iss WA
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The whole modern mixed thing went over my head for years.
My first exposure to a Terro was a set the hostel host borrowed from the Burgess twins while they were climbing around Cirrus gully in the winter of '74. (A year later it bacame Polar Circus) We had just climbed Louise and rapped off to find these guys playing with a bunch of different tools. They were nice enough to let us play too :)
We Inland NW Yanks were generally using curved gear. Although Roskelly caught on to Terros quicker than the rest of us and took advantage of the numerious "free" options available. Terros opened my eyes that day on Louise as to what might yet be possible.
As Gordon mentioned Terros and Chouinard gear for that matter didn't last long if you hit rocks. If if wasn't "FAT" ice we generally avoided it. With winter climbs like Slipstream or Takakkaw so handy why bother wit "winter mixed"? On alpine mixed like Deltaform, Temple or Edith Cavel you might end up climbing in crampons a lot depending on conditions with a tool in your holster or hanging on your wrist. No matter what you did, if you had a good alpine season (3 or 4 faces) in Canada, you'd generally wear out a set of tools. Dachsteins would climb pretty well on moderate stuff. Bare handed {in summer}seemed the norm when it got hard. Hooking a rock intentionally with an ice tool just never occured to us/me. The tools were expensive and Terros (in the NW anyway) hard to obtain let alone replace. Winter? A bit too cold to climb without a pair (or two) of mitts in those days.
Modern mixed? At least for some of us climbing in Canada early on, if it wasn't fat winter ice why bother? Heaven forbid you ever actually went looking for that kind of "shit". We'd typically got a stomach full in the summer or on the occasional winter alpine climb. I used a set of Terros and most importantly the adze to climb the last pitch of sun baked mush of Polar Cirus and Teardrop on an early ascents. I am not sure what other tools would have made them possible at the time. The long Chouinard tubes you could pull out with your hands in those conditions. The Simond Chacal and Barracuda that came later where the first tools I thought bettered than Terros. Since the sun baked vertical slop never seemed to get any easier over the years I still favored the big, dropped adzes. Something none of the newer tools seemed to think worth copying.
Salewa and Chouinard rigids came first. But the SMC rigids were the crampon of choice for most of us between '75 and the early '80s on water ice and alpine climbing. Footfangs swayed many from the SMC for hard ice. The Chouinard hinged stared to make in roads for alpine mixed.
Years later I finally bought a set of tools just for "modern"
mixed. Camming a crack or hooking a rock edge made perfect sense after rereading Jello's book for the 87th time:) And then first doing it on a top rope. Shafts come in many forms these days but funny to me that the best of them actually copy the same hooking angles of the original Terros. Just no need now to bang a knuckle.
From the posts in this thread an observation one might make is that it was Hamish McInnes and his Terro that made the biggest impression on modern ice and mixed climbing.
Louise in '74
Remember how the sharp edges on the hammer head would tear up your mitts?
Look familiar?
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Bldrjac
Ice climber
Boulder
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I can't believe this thread has gone on for so long and I've just sort of ignored it.........Guess I've been too busy guiding without a laptop close by.........
For me the big eye-opener with what was possible on BIG ice climbs was when Bugs did Nemesis. The long pitches of difficult ice and exposure was greater than I had seen. The fact that he used his Terrors for aid occasionally didn't detract (for me) the fact that he went up and and did the thing. Jeff Lowe's insistence on a "free-climbing" ethic in ice climbing also pushed climbers to do their best and challenge themselves in the ice area.
When I got my first pair of Charlet Moser Gabbaru Grade Six axes the challenge of climbing mangled waterfall ice became more manageable and safer. The only problem was that the picks were hand-forged and the metal quality was inconsistent so you never knew exactly what you were going to get. Tobin and I started the Grand Central Coulouir on Kitchener with five axes and finished with only two. The picks on the other three broken and useless.
Then the Chacal came out and that made all the difference.....
Steve, do you have any pictures of the Chouinard "Ice Screw rachet" that Yvon sold in his catalog?
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RDB
Trad climber
Iss WA
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Some of the Canadian terrain from the discussion.
Nemisis, 160m, Stanley headwall
N Face of Kitchener, late winter. Jack's and Tobin's direct finish still scare the tourists away.
N face of Alberta, late summer
Slipstream on Snowdome in early Jan.
Deltaform early summer
Lower and Upper Weeping Wall in fat conditions
Upper Pillars of Polar Circus in fat conditons
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Most excellent portraits!
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Nice to have some bona fide alpinists chime in on this thread.
Seems like a question for Wee Jock here…about tools.
I am currently reading Bonnington’s Annapurna South Face…
And am reminded of this picture of Nicki & Ian Clough & on the North Face of the Matterhorn:
(From Paulcke & Dumler’s hazards in mountaineering.)
I’m guessing this is mid-60s, sometime before Clough’s exit on Annapurna:
These tools look very short: maybe 45 cm & I can only guess predating curved picks as well,
Or maybe right on the cusp of that innovation.
Could these be handmade MacInnes axes?
They look like quality items.
Dane, Steve, DR, Jello, Jack et al?
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