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Jaybro
Social climber
The West
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Topic Author's Original Post - Feb 12, 2008 - 02:42pm PT
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My class is studying California Condors. In the book, 'The California Condor' (Snyder/Snyder 2000) There are two mentions of a John Yablonski who was part of the team when they had to go up to nests. The first mention is in a caption "...and John Yablonski, out of picture", -p292
The second is in a description of aid climbing a sequoia to get to a nest and names the team, including John. "...found their endurance and skills sorely tested in the process" p164. I'm guessing the authors didn't know Yabo very well, if indeed that was him.
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Ihateplastic
Trad climber
Lake Oswego, Oregon
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Feb 12, 2008 - 02:50pm PT
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John was involved since he had climbing skills and... needed money.
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survival
Big Wall climber
arlington, va
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Feb 12, 2008 - 02:51pm PT
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I see what you mean. It would've been a little difficult to "sorely test" Yabo's skill and endurance...
It sure wouldn't surprise me to find out he was their man though.
Maybe he hadn't eaten for a couple days...
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bachar
Trad climber
Mammoth Lakes, CA
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Feb 12, 2008 - 02:54pm PT
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He used to work with Kurt Stolzenberg (sp?) out of UC Santa Cruz.
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deuce4
Big Wall climber
the Southwest
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Feb 12, 2008 - 02:56pm PT
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I worked with John on the Pergrine project twice. John was part of the project the time Walt and I fixed the first three or four pitches of the North American Wall for the Peregrine folks. This is when the nest was up and left of the N.A. (We fixed to a ledge where you could travese left to get to the nest). I think the next day John went up to get or replace the eggs (I forget which).
The other time Yabo and I fixed ropes up to El Cap Tree. This is when the nest was just up and left of the big roof above the El Cap Tree. I think Yabo was sent up to count the eggs or something. I was just the grunt man on both occasions. The time was between 1984 and 1987 for both projects (different years).
I think Yabo was the key climber contact for the Peregrine folks for a while.
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Jaybro
Social climber
The West
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 12, 2008 - 03:25pm PT
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yeah I remember talking to Walt about that, I think. I was pretty sure Yabo was in with the Peregrine project,so Condors didn't seem that big a stretch.
Wasn't Werner involved with those Falcons, (egg switch?) too?
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deuce4
Big Wall climber
the Southwest
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Feb 12, 2008 - 03:42pm PT
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Jaybro-
Yes, I think the Peregrine Project was in charge of the condor reintroduction program too (although I believe The condor aspect started well after the mid-80's when I was working with Yabo).
The condor project in the Grand Canyon (a different organization, I believe) has some interesting stories too. We had a close up encounter at Badger Rapid once, on a Guide Training Trip where we were doing a beach clean-up. That's where I learned that condors have excellent eyesight, but no sense of smell. One of the guys had an open deck canoe for the trip, and one float bag was red, the other yellow. The condor shredded the red float bag into tiny, tiny bits looking for food. The yellow one was untouched. The biggest shred was about the size of a quarter. Must have taken that condor hours to finally figure out there was no food. We had a good clean up day, hoping we took more trash than we left!
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TrundleBum
Trad climber
Las Vegas
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Feb 12, 2008 - 04:50pm PT
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-"I think the Peregrine Project was in charge of the Condor reintroduction program"
Funny ...I just got emailed the other day from a guy (Nick Badyrka) who was hanging around Santa Cruz in those days. He mentioned a few names I had not heard in years. One being Rob Raymey, who as I recall (?) used to do weird El Cap route variations to get to aerie's.
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scuffy b
climber
Stump with a backrest
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Feb 12, 2008 - 05:04pm PT
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Heh--I had just opened this thread to ask about Rob Ramey.
Last time I saw him he was trying to recruit me for these
projects.
Anybody know his whereabouts?
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TrundleBum
Trad climber
Las Vegas
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Feb 12, 2008 - 05:07pm PT
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Scuffy I will shoot you the email I got from Nick and through him you might at least get more info on Rob's where abouts.
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WBraun
climber
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Feb 12, 2008 - 08:07pm PT
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Jay
I did the peregrine thing for a few seasons with Yabo both in the Valley and Hetch Hetchy. We'd climb to the nests and steal their eggs, Heh heh, and when the eggs hatched with babies we'd go back to the nests and put the babies back in the nests.
As to Yabo doing condors I have no clue.
Speaking of condors, in Mali Africa on the big towers we came across a big ass condor nesting at the top and walked right up to it about a few feet away.
It had that look like it wanted to eat me and peck my eyeballs out. I didn't get any closer to that monster bird.
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Jaybro
Social climber
The West
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 12, 2008 - 08:58pm PT
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Werner, I always wondered about that, did you guys put fake eggs in, in the interim? and, How did you manage to get live hatchlings back up there with all that jugging? Amazing stuff however you pulled it off.
Do you remember that photo in Life™ of the 'Vulture'(whatever it was)stalking the starving African kid? Dramatic, black and white photo (in my recall at least) the photog saved the kid after the photo opp but before further disaster.
John, the citations in that book were maybe '84 and '85, I dropped it off at the library today, but can check later.
Anyway, what a cool footnote!
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Chicken Skinner
Trad climber
Yosemite
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Feb 12, 2008 - 09:06pm PT
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Last I heard Rob Ramey had moved back East to Boston or somewhere near there. The few times I worked on the project, I remember bringing young birds up and switching them for the eggs. It was rather intimidating having the parents dive bomb you when approaching the nest. They had this bird puppet to feed the young birds in their cages during transport which I found amusing. It was quite interesting.
Ken
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john hansen
climber
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Feb 12, 2008 - 09:24pm PT
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Saw a condor in Zion last fall,did not know they were there. Seems they had released a few in "Escalante" and the birds decieded they liked Zion better.(I did too :)
I thought it was a turkey vulture up in the canyon by the tunnel, but when I looked thru my binos and saw the white wing patches my mind flashed..California Condor.
Definatly a lifer, thanks for making the world a better place guys.
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Toker Villain
Big Wall climber
Toquerville, Utah
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Feb 12, 2008 - 09:38pm PT
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I like the synergy; using an endangered specie to help protect an endangered species.
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john hansen
climber
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Feb 12, 2008 - 10:55pm PT
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so its true, Yabo Lives.
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ontheedgeandscaredtodeath
Trad climber
San Francisco, Ca
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Feb 12, 2008 - 10:59pm PT
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I saw condors in Chile, what amazing birds.
Also used to climb up into eagle nests for the Forest Service biologists. I'd wrassle the chicks into a bag (they do this right before they learn how to fly so they were about as big as small turkeys/ big chickens when I would square off with them) Then I'd would lower them down to the science guys for radio tagging, measuring, etc., haul em back up and be on my way.
Getting into the nests I had to tie myself off with a big bite of rope (way up in big NorCal firs) and then do the roof move and mantle up and in- all while fighting off a hissing bird lashing at me with its talons. Fun stuff.
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Double D
climber
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Feb 12, 2008 - 11:25pm PT
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You know, I do miss Yabo. That half-lit smirk he'd get on his face when our paths would cross after Yosemite would always brightened my day. I didn't realize he worked with the Peregrine group. I also saw the Condors in Zion this fall...thought I was back in the Andes or something. My wife's parents live in Carmel valley and look out over the tree tops on a steep hill. One morning a pair were drying out thier wings about 50 feet right outside the window. By the time I got my camera, they were gone....Those guys are huge!
Piton Ron...you crack me up. Yabo was indeed an endangered species...(RIP). Yabo might have milked out the time for the paycheck, but he certainly didn’t tire for lack of endurance!
Right after we finished Sea in '78 the three of us got summoned to a meeting with the park service regarding the Peregrines nesting. I was blown away by the care that was taken by the Government to protect them. It was a closed-door secretive type deal. The park service actually consulted with us about Spring closures on the Captian and wanted the climbing community to be behind it! That’s where I first met Kurt, the ornithologist.
Over the next several years I occasionally stole eggs for Kurt and the Santa Cruz predatory research group up around Chico. It was fascinating to talk with that guy. He could tell from their fight patterns exactly when the eggs were laid and tons of other really cool stuff. Someone needs to make a discovery-channel type documentary about that guy.
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Rob Roy Ramey
Trad climber
Colorado
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Feb 22, 2008 - 01:30am PT
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Yabo does deserve credit in helping to bring the California condor back from the brink of extinction - in a dramatic way that only Yabo was capable of doing.
Yabo helped on one crucial climb to a nest high in a giant Sequoia in the southern Sierra. The mission was to capture a condor nesting for the captive breeding program. Several years earlier I had recruited Yabo to help on peregrine nest climbs in Yosemite and we climbed to nests on El Cap, Half Dome, and the cliffs of Hetch Hetchy to take thinned eggs for captive incubation and replace them with healthy young, or collect eggshells to determine the degree of DDT-induced eggshell thinning. Participants on those ventures included Kurt Stolzenburg (who first recruited me), Chris Cantwell, Yabo (John Yablonsky), Charlie Row, Yvon Chouinard, Victor Apanius, Walt Shipley, Troy Johnson, Laura Brown, Cliff Neighbors, Pete Leeming, Tucker Tech, Peter Croft, Bill Rose, John Middendorf, and Lee Aulman and Claire Wegnat (keen nest observers from the Santa Cruz Predatory Bird Research Group), and others (my sincere apologies to anyone I neglected to mention - please write back). Plus, there was John Dill (who provided "retired" rescue ropes, radios, and a dry sense of humor), and Jeff Keay, Mike Webb, and Steve Thompson of the NPS who could see past our renegade tendencies for the greater good of the birds.
Anyway, back to condors. Yabo and I had aid climbed the back-side of the Sequoia tree, top-stepping lag bolts screwed into the shaggy bark, quietly fixing about 100' on the first day and not disturbing the birds. The next day, when the observers from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Condor Research Center saw the attending adult leave, we started climbing again and rigged a belay about 20 feet above the nest (~150' off the ground). The San Diego Zoo veterinarian, Phil Ensley, and his assistant Victor Apanius, started jumaring with the vet crate and net. Suddenly things became tense as the adult condors were spotted returning up the valley and the lead FWS biologist (known affectionately as "Chrome Dome") didn't want the adult birds to arrive with us in the nest and was ready to call off operation. (Recall that several years earlier an inexperienced biologist inadvertently over-handled a nestling, and it died in his hands. Nobody wanted to repeat that catastrophe or have the nestling prematurely fledge and crash land.
As the radio crackled with the news of returning adults, and to make matters worse, Yabo and I noticed that we had misplaced the belay station (3 lag bolts and a tied off branch). It was about 10' off-center and the lowering line hung out from the nest several feet, too far to swing in. The leaning tree had thrown off our perspective (not hard to do as the Sequoia was about 15' in diameter 150' above the ground). With the Phil and Victor almost at the belay and me hauling Phil who was nearly spent, Yabo untied from the belay, took the end of the lowering line in his teeth and scampered up the bark like a squirrel for about 15', flicked the line over a higher branch, caught it and was back at the belay in time to tie-in and clip the Phil into the repositioned rope and start lowering him to the nest, while I lowered Victor. They quickly had the nestling in the crate, we lowered them all to the ground, and rapped off before the adult condors showed up to an empty nest. Yabo the human squirrel, honed from decades of free soloing, saved the day.
At the time there were only 27 condors left in the wild so every bird and every egg counted immeasurably. Last year, there were 280 California condors, and 135 of these are back in the wild. And there will be even more this year.
In 1999, the peregrine falcon was removed from the list of threatened and endangered species. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates that there are now over 3,000 breeding pairs in North America. And there will be even more next year.
Many people contributed to these successes, but a rag-tag crew of Yosemite climbers, including Yabo, was pivotal in turning the tide of extinction by risking all and climbing for the birds.
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Jaybro
Social climber
The West
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 22, 2008 - 01:41am PT
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Thanks, R-3! I had a feeling there was a story like that out there. Brought tears to my eyes. If you ever need old guys with jumars you know where to look...
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