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Dirka
Trad climber
SF
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Whoop Whoop!
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Largo
Sport climber
Venice, Ca
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Amazing shot of Pratt on the wide - single wrap, bowline on a coil tie in, no cams or visible gear, just runnig the rope out easy as pie.
JL
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Doug Robinson
Trad climber
Santa Cruz
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May 17, 2009 - 04:32pm PT
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I'm just back from a long BC ski trip -- kinda whupped. And pleased to see this. Nice Read! I wrote a little about North Six Shooter before, but let's try it again.
It was my first desert trip. Chuck and I were camped at the end of the road in Arches. Had the campground all to ourselves, even though Desert Solitaire had just been published; it was April. We had climbed some pretty scary offwidth already on the Courthouse Towers, the kind of stuff where you might think about placing a bong, and then imagine it grooving its way into the soft sandstone without ringing that bong sound and just not bother deluding yourself.
Chuck had climbed the spire's only other route on a previous trip, I think with Roper. He remembered this crack and wanted to have another look. We drove down, but Indian Creek was not in our vocabulary. We were headed to North Six Shooter.
Long walk across the desert and slog up the skirt of the spire. No wonder there's still no chalk; it's backcountry. The crack loomed as we drew close, but when Chuck got to the base of it he didn't even touch the rock. He just said "Oh well," turned his back and got out lunch. We ate in silence.
Being the OW novice I didn't know any better. I had gotten up some of those FAs in the Courthouse Towers that were more rounded and grovelly, and I had followed Chris Fredericks up the second ascent of Chingando, where the climbing reminded me of cross country races in High School where you felt like barfing across the finish line. So I got up and started toying with the thing. Put my right side in experimentally and hoisted off the ground. Made another move.
Chuck got interested. He made several more moves and said "Toss me the rope." Being ambidexterous made him a great juggler, so he had no problem tieing a bowline with his left hand while hanging in the crack. When he pulled into the chimney section he hauled up the rack.
Later driving out Chuck looked up at the cracked red walls streaming by. With a big gesture he swept in the miles of rimrock and said, "Future home of crack climbing in America."
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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May 17, 2009 - 09:47pm PT
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Tossed him the rack when he got past the hard part ... great story, Doug.
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crunch
Social climber
CO
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May 18, 2009 - 10:57am PT
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From the 1975 Great Pacific Ironworks Catalog: “Technology is imposed on the land, but technique means conforming to the landscape. They work in opposite directions, one forcing a passage while the other discovers it.”
Seems like that’s exactly what Chuck did here. He had no gear, no big cams, no way of forcing his way up this crack. He had just his own confidence and curiosity.
Thanks Doug.
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donini
Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
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May 18, 2009 - 11:49am PT
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Chuck was such an enigma. He was the most gifted of the "Golden Age" Yosemite climbers and a great writer as well. His pioneering climbing and writing ended very early but he continued to guide in the Tetons and go on occasional climbing trips. He seemed, to me, to grow more and more inward as the years passed and he drifted away from his friends. His passing in Thailand was both tragic and sad. I didn't know him very well but I have always regarded him as one of the seminal figures in American climbing.
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Doug Robinson
Trad climber
Santa Cruz
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May 18, 2009 - 03:16pm PT
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Jim, that's a potent summary of the enigma of the "little round man" (his own self-depricating term). Chuck was certainly the leading crack climber of that wonderful, seminal time, and the Pratt Mantles scattered around Camp 4 are not to be trifled with, then or now. Plus his company on El Cap seemed to be highly valued by the likes of Robbins and Frost. Harding, even, if you include the FA of Watkins, because there was something deeply iconoclastic and irreverent in him that was really more like Warren's style than the white hats.
He was at the top of those games for fully a decade, which is maybe not so short a time. I see his moving on into self-imposed obscurity (and poverty) as the best example I've personally noticed of someone truly denying his ego. He just really cared a lot more, in a somewhat cynical but very heartfelt honest way, about seeing clearly how the whole human show worked than he ever could bother about being the king of it.
I knew him as well as anyone, valued his company as an honor. I wrote a piece about him after he died that struggled with his enigma; I'll dust it off and post it up, and maybe among us we can delve a little deeper or at least just appreciate once again so fine a human being.
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donini
Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
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May 18, 2009 - 03:33pm PT
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DR, please share your remembrances of Chuck. He never promoted himself and I feel that there are a lot of climbers who are unaware of his many contributions to climbing.
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Brian in SLC
Social climber
Salt Lake City, UT
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May 18, 2009 - 03:54pm PT
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Doug, that's a pretty great read for being whupped!
Thanks.
Used to see him in the Tetons a bit. Stayed in one of the climber's ranch cabins with a couple of kids taking Exum's entry rock stuff. I asked them who their guide was. "Oh, some old dude, kinda cranky, I think Chuck is his name." They had no idear who he was. I tryed to fill them in a bit...
Saw him not long before he went to Thailand for the last time, crossing Jenny Lake in the boat. He was sitting by himself, his clients kinda scattered back aways, watching him, kinda nerviously. He pulls out two or three Twix bars and just pounds them down. A nicely dressed woman on the boat wrinkled her nose in his direction. He takes note, and says, "what, you don't think I eat that granola sh#t, do you?"
I 'bout fell off the boat laughing.
Yeah, Doug, post up!
Cheers,
-Brian in SLC
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okay,whatever
Trad climber
Charlottesville, VA
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May 22, 2009 - 02:43am PT
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First off, all due admiration to the OW pioneers, without modern wide-crack protection (such as it is) -- Pratt, Donini, et al.
Just out of curiosity, has anyone OW'd Wheat Thin (or at least most of it)? About thirty years ago, I tried and failed about twenty feet up, and then ended up laybacking it as I should have done from the get-go. I was, um, a bit layback-averse then, and intimidated by how steep it was, and thought it would be more secure inside the flake -- ha! And I was only following!
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nutjob
climber
Berkeley, CA
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May 22, 2009 - 03:07am PT
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Excellent report! Thanks for the great read, and thanks everyone else for the extra details that are cherries on a cake that already had icing.
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Trad
Trad climber
northern CA
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Aug 13, 2009 - 12:17pm PT
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Just thought I'd bump this 'cause I was flipping through the latest Alpinist and the photo on page 18 looked REALLY familiar, and also in case anyone missed this excellent TR the first time around.
I ran into Max a few weeks ago in Tuolumne and he had a massive 3-inch diameter gobie (is it still considered a "gobie" if it's that big?) on the inside of his knee. "Gong Show," he said...
(Edit: In case it wasn't already obvious, the photo that made it into Alpinst #27 is the gobie shot at the end of the TR.)
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Impaler
Trad climber
Munich
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Aug 13, 2009 - 02:28pm PT
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Awesome TR! I missed it first time around and was really glad it got bumped up! Thanks for sharing.
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L
climber
Wrung through the paradox, broken into wholeness
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Aug 13, 2009 - 05:23pm PT
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*5-star rating to this guy!
Started laughing myself silly right around: "He sticks his right half in, and then appears to try to poop. He seems constipated and says he can't get off the ground."
Thanks for the excellent photos and mondo-great TR!
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