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Don Lauria
Trad climber
Bishop, CA
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May 23, 2009 - 06:45pm PT
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You will always be "Little Joe" in my heart, but my eyes tell a different story.
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Doug Robinson
Trad climber
Santa Cruz
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Topic Author's Reply - May 23, 2009 - 07:21pm PT
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??
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Doug Robinson
Trad climber
Santa Cruz
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Topic Author's Reply - May 23, 2009 - 07:30pm PT
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Got it, thanks for stooping to the literal. One more case of inflection-sensitive texting. I've heard the expression issued with an FU tone. Made me want to see your reading list...
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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May 23, 2009 - 10:28pm PT
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American Alpine Journal, 2001, p448
CHARLES MARSHALL PRATT
1939-2000
Ah, Chuck, Chuck, so lately here, so soon gone. How can I be writing this? You, gone? Yes, irrevocably. Your death sudden and shockingly unexpected. It seems not real. Somehow...wrong.
Only a few weeks ago you had phoned me, out of the blue, from Lafayette, a small community nestled in the hills east of Berkeley. You called about the speech I had given last November at the Banff Mountain Summit.
Before putting the phone back in its cradle I told you of a slide show I would be giving the following week in Danville, a town just over the hill from Lafayette. I hoped you would come. I would be proud to have you in the audience. It would be a pleasure to introduce my old climbing companion and to have you actually there when I paid my usual tribute to you as “the best climber of our generation, and the best climbing writer as well.” Back when I saw you at the Yosemite Camp 4 Reunion in September, 1999, after an interval of many years, I told you I had been saying that in my talks for a long time, and I noted that you, even you, Chuck, though ever alert to the stealthily cat steps of Pride, seemed pleased, even touched, by the accolade.
I didn’t really expect you to come. If you had, you would have been, for a few minutes at least, the center of attention, and you had always treated the limelight as if it were poison gas. You were very consistent that way, Chuck, always wary of allowing a chink in your personal honor. And so it was, when I called a couple of days in advance to invite you to dinner with friends and then to the slide show, you couldn’t come. I didn’t argue, Chuck. I just knew I couldn’t drag you to that show with a team of wild horses, especially if you thought all eyes might be at one point turned on you.
So I let it pass. I never thought this would be the last time I would speak to you, the last time I would hear your voice. And I had vague plans of following up, of getting together.
Some of the greatest moments of my life were spent with you. We were together with our buddy Tom Frost on the first ascent of my favorite climb of all, the Salathé Wall. I will never forget it. Such beauty. Such a grand and pure adventure. And you never hesitated. You were at the top of your game, as smooth as glass on all of your leads. You could have led the Ear with a lot more aplomb than I did. But you got the last pitch, and the last word, so to speak, with a brilliant lead up the final overhanging crack. Such a perfect expression of your genius. Those climbs became the glue that cemented a lifelong friendship among all of us.
But I thought of a third reason for the sense of vacancy, of something irretrievably missing because you are gone, Chuck. And that is this: that the people we love the most and miss the most when they are gone are those who are irreplaceable. We all sensed that about you; you were one of a kind. You were uniquely, irreplaceably, absolutely yourself. You never tried to be anything or anyone else but yourself. You never tried, you only did. You were always the master. We love that which is truly itself. We never miss posers. We miss that which is real.
And then back on El Capitan again, the North America Wall, 1964, ten days, the “hardest technical rock climb in the world.” Our companions were Frost and Yvon Chouinard. Another truly memorable climb--once again, total commitment, “hard rock, thin air, a rope,” the most splendid aid climbing we had ever done, storms, mystery, fear, discovery, joy, and triumph. And one other thing: fellowship, as good as it gets. We did so much laughing. The combination of the piled-up stress and your sense of humor had us rolling in helpless laughter on whatever ledges we could find. That’s one thing that comes back strong, Chuck, is how much laughing we did together. It was a good life.
And there were all your other climbs, Chuck, among them the East Face of the Washington Column with Harding, the South Face of Mt. Watkins with Harding and Chouinard, the second ascent of the Northwest Face of Half Dome with Fitschen and Frost, the north faces of Middle, Higher, and Lower Cathedral Rocks, and the second ascent, with Kor, of the Arches Direct.
But your shorter free climbs inspired just as much fear and respect, especially your string of brilliant crack climbs, surely the hardest in the world at the time-routes supplied with names that aptly attest to their character: Crack of Doom, Crack of Despair, Twilight Zone. There were many others, but those were three of the fiercest. I later thrashed up them with great effort, and my admiration for your gifts and mastery rose with every vertical foot I scraped my way past. One fear we all had, Chuck, was you going off with someone and making a first ascent and then we hearing the horror stories from your still-trembling partners of a terrifying lead you had done up some slippery unprotected ogre of a jam crack. We would look forward with deep anxiety to the prospect of leading these pitches to say we had done your route. One great advantage about being with you on first ascents, Chuck, was that you could lead the most daunting offwidth cracks, and we could follow with a top rope and still get full credit. We wouldn’t have to lead any Pratt test pieces.
But you weren’t just a crack specialist. You were at home on any sort of rock, using any sort of technique, free or aid. Nothing ever stopped you, and I never saw you become stumped or even slow up. Yes, Chuck, you were the best. We were often following you, and not only on those appalling crack climbs. There were also boulder problems. Especially confounding were the mantleshelfs, of which you were the preeminent artist. When we heard the phrase, “Pratt mantle,” we knew to expect the worst in a corkscrew boulder problem.
The Valley, Chuck, was particularly your home, even more so than for the rest of us. And you amassed the best record of first ascents in Yosemite. But one thing drew you from Yosemite, from the vertical crucible of smooth granite, and that was the red crucible of the spare and lonely south-west desert spires. This was adventure to your liking--the solitary sandstone pinnacles of Utah. There was something that suited you about the desert, something beyond the welcome heat. Did it speak to your soul, Chuck? Did something strike the severed cord of Faith? Did you see the divine in the arid and cruel beauty of the desert?
And then you went at last to the Tetons, as a guide--an honorable profession, and one that allowed you to again and again rediscover, in the delight of those you taught, the joy of those early moments when you first came into contact with the wonder of climbing. How artistic, in a way. I sometimes talked to people who had been your clients. They uniformly spoke of your friendliness, your skill, and especially of your patience. It was always a special memory to them to have climbed with and been taught by Chuck Pratt.
I learned later that it was exclusively Thailand where you spent the winter months in welcome heat. You did that for years and years. What a shame you stopped writing. As I said before, you were the best writer of our generation. We all wished you had written more, much more. A couple of your masterpieces come to mind: “The South Face of Mt. Watkins,” and your magical essay on desert climbing, “The View From Dead Horse Point.” I know you could have penned marvelous stories of your adventures in Thailand. You always did have a gift for spinning a tale. I know you could have done it professionally. Why you didn’t we will never know. You kept to yourself.
Then, someone got the bright idea of having a Camp 4 party to celebrate the success of the effort to save Camp 4, traditionally the Yosemite climber’s camp, and the target of plans for obliteration and replacement with employee housing. Of course, our buddy Tom Frost led that effort. This party would become a remarkable reunion of many of the players inyosemite climbing in the 1950s. ‘60s, and ’70s.
When I saw Pratt at the Camp 4 reunion, after all of these years, it was like a barrier had been broken through. I walked up and gave him a big hug. He hugged back. It was something we had never done before. We had been friends, companions, but not bosom buddies. But this was a special occasion, and I wanted Chuck to know how much I loved him. I was struck, as I embraced him, by how slight he was. I had always known that Chuck was small. He was one of the little big men of Yosemite. But I never thought of him that way. I was aware that he was frustrated at being small. He made jokes about it. But I never saw him that way. He always looked “regular” to me. So it was a bit of a shock to realize he was not only small, but also slight. He had lost what bulk he had in his prime. But, as Tom Patey wrote of Joe Brown and as Chuck showed so often on his fearless leads, “His heart was as big as the mountain, and his nerves were made of steel.”
The Camp 4 reunion was, indeed, a special occasion. So many of the old gang were there. Together again for the first time since the North America Wall, Pratt and Frost and Chouinard and I hung out, talking, getting our pictures taken, hiking, and joking and laughing. And it all came back; it all came back in the laughter. My friends, now as before, took life and its tears, and turned them into laughter. And it was so wonderful, so refreshing, so freeing! And I remembered why my best friends were climbers, why I loved them. Because in them burned the joy of life.
And Pratt, with his cynical and mocking air, hadn’t lost a step in his sense of humor. We had a good time together, and when it came to an end we four found ourselves talking together in the parking lot. We talked and then we kept talking, past the logical point to split up and go our ways. We didn’t want this to end. We had grasped something, something precious, something that hadn’t been in our lives for a while, though we were not aware of it having been missing. And we didn’t know when we would be together again. It had been 35 years. And here we were, back there again, just like that. Sentimental old fools. Yes, but for me at least the sentiment was a new thing. I realized how precious my friends were to me, and had been. I think we all had a sense that we four might never be together again. But I don’t think any of us guessed that a death of one of us in the near term would be the defining reason.
I was never that close to Chuck. I don’t know if anyone was. He had a lot of friends, and a lot of admirers, and no enemies. But I did not have a special relationship with Chuck, other than having been on the greatest climbs of my life with him. He was probably closer in spirit to that other artist, Chouinard, and that other maverick, Harding. But he was my friend. At least I can thank God that I had had the opportunity to see Chuck near the end, and to let him know of my abiding friendship and admiration. I paid honor to him in my talk for the Banff Mountain Summit, included in the book, Voices From The Summit. It seems fitting to close this tribute with an excerpt from that article:
“But beyond and above these deeds and talents, Pratt is my hero because of the kind of person he is, because he was, among other things, the very best of climbing companions: jovial, keenly witty, with a sense of humor that has a laser beam focus on the absurdities of the universe and the hands we are dealt to play in the cosmic poker game. I once heard the phrase, ‘Only the pure climb gracefully.’ I know Pratt would wince at being called ‘pure,’ being as much a sinner as the next man. But when it comes to climbing itself, well, that is almost sacred to Chuck Pratt, more than perhaps anyone I have known, has always climbed, first and foremost, and last and finally, for the climbing experience itself, for the rewards that come directly from the dance of man and rock. Climbing, for Chuck, is a life-giving elixir, and he has always wanted to keep it as pure as possible, uncorrupted and unalloyed by gain, fame, or ambition, or any sort of debasement. Chuck has kept his integrity.”
He was a man; he was a climber; he was a guide and teacher; he was an artist; he was a friend. Thanks, Chuck, for being with us, for joy and laughter, for your achievements, for setting an example of how to live with integrity. Thanks, Chuck--but damn, I wish you were still here.
ROYAL ROBBINS
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bvb
Social climber
flagstaff arizona
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May 23, 2009 - 10:35pm PT
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see, that's what i'm talking about. every word in this thread is a gem. i think pratt's writing was so damn good that he inspires all of the unbelievable people who have posted to this thread, many of them my favorite writers for decades, to just keep coming up with more off-the-cuff gold.
god bless chuck pratt, and god bless whoever founded this unique forum that has brought so many legends to life for me.
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F10
Trad climber
e350
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May 23, 2009 - 10:35pm PT
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I about crapped my drawers,
I hit the last page feature and saw the bottom of the last post,
Royal Robbins, I scrolled up to see Ed had posted a writing by Royal.
What an amazing thread, keep it alive
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Patrick Oliver
Boulder climber
Fruita, Colorado
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May 23, 2009 - 10:36pm PT
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Oh my, thanks for that correction. Of curse
I meant Watkins, not Washington Column, but
sometimes I am writing these at three or four
in the morning, when I can't sleep, and I haven't
been able to now for about a month and a half,
so if I say anything coherent at all it will be
a miracle.
Nice stuff above. I had never seen John's article.
Always good things from our Largo. I will find
some time soon to enter both my tribute (which
someone somewhere, one of the mags, asked me to
write, as a kind of eulogy. And I'll post the little
sketch from Swarmandal that Chuck told me several
times he really liked. The Rearicks told me they
thought that little piece was the best sketch of
Chuck they had read. It turned out rather well, since
I was more or less a beginning writer, and completely
by accident did I say some right things. Swaramandal was just
a series of short impressions... But Chuck left
big impressions. I'll have to type that thing in,
because I can't seem to find the old file anywhere.
The piece was published in that British anthology
"The Games Climbers Play," or maybe it was the second
in that series, "Mirrors in the Cliffs."
What I love here is that we are all Chuck's friend,
and through our various voices and spirits he lives
still, lives with us, and in us, and he helps us to
connect and to enjoy the spirit of those times and
the great people we all knew. How blessed we were to
have our Chuck, and our Royal and our Fitschen and Lauria
and Long and Higgins and Hahn and Bates and Gill and
all the names that we all know and with whom we are
somehow spiritually united.
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okie
Trad climber
San Leandro, Ca
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May 23, 2009 - 10:58pm PT
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I'm sorry I never got to meet him, but I did get to meet you, Doug. How is Santa Cruz? I moved away from there and now live in the East Bay. By the way, check out the thread on "ice climbing primer 1968" someone posted your article from the seventies on running talus- super classic! I never run the stuff, but I did smash my knee on it in the palisades! Ha Ha!
Take care, Bob
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Doug Robinson
Trad climber
Santa Cruz
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Topic Author's Reply - May 23, 2009 - 11:30pm PT
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Hi Okie,
Wasn't Royal's piece good? Heartfelt and revealing. He's one of those people like Lauria who is mellowing out beautifully, such a pleasure to be at ease with. Any number of line's I'd underline, pull out to watch them sparkle. But most poignant was his sense of some distance from Chuck -- "We were never bosom buddies." -- and how that was bridged again and again by laughter. I can't wait for his autobiography.
Santa Cruz is OK, probably better than the East Bay. Only three traffic jams a day on Highway 1. I never go in the Ocean so the whole Surf City thing is lost on me. It has movies, some good friends, and my kids live here, sometimes with me, which is an anchor -- grounding. I like the redwoods and the golden grassy hillsides, and Pacific Edge feels welcoming with outdoor-like route setting.
But overall the Eastside is still home. Every time I go over the pass and start down there's an involuntary sigh; surprising because I didn't even know it was in there. I pull over and tear off a sprig of sage to put on the dash. Soon I pull over again to boulder on some volcanic tuff.
It's my life and I'm sticking to it.
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Mighty Hiker
Social climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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May 24, 2009 - 12:21am PT
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Pat: Your tribute to Pratt is in Mirrors in the Cliffs - page 435 of the paperback edition. It says it's an excerpt from Swaramandal. I may be able to scan and post it - it's about two pages.
ps What's a Swaramandal? I once had a copy, mail ordered from remote Boulder Colorado USA. Lost somehow somewhere.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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May 24, 2009 - 01:31am PT
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Pratt
Pat Ament
Tom Higgins and I are at the base of El Cap, set on doing a 400ft. exfoliation crack called The Slack, a Chuck Pratt masterpiece. This will be a vendetta climb, since we have failed on it before.
After two rope lengths, the flaring section of the crack is in sight. Memories of previous vain motions flash back at us.
It can't be that hard, Pratt did it years ago ... on first try, Bridwell hauling me up it my first attempt at it. Oh well, Chuck hauled Robbins.
I lead. Pratt. Plastic Man ... or Poe. I grunt and gasp, swing into a layback ... Kor on the Bastille Crack ... I mantel on a ledge above the crux. Higgins follows. Following this one is just as hard. Having the rope in front of you is tricky. You can grab it. Sometimes coming second is harder than leading. You don't have the adrenalin flowing. You have to match the leader's show, but Tom makes it, and we shake hands, grinning at each other as if we hadn't seen each other for awhile.
"I'm tired of being social director of Camp 4," I hear Pratt say to someone pestering him for information. I see Pratt juggling wine bottles at Church Bowl, the clearing east of the lodge. Royal tells tales of Pratt's bouldering drunk, in the dark, in army boots, nobody able to come close. Descriptions of Pratt: a "tragic figure..." or "...born in the wrong time..." yet no climber is more respected or liked in Yosemite. Inimitable, enigmatic. He is hard to figure out and doesn't want to be figured out. "Actions speak for themselves," he says. We hike in the night in the Valley floor. On climbs such as The Slack, one is able to sense the workings of Pratt's mind.
Divergence of contemporary judgments on him. With those he loves, who see him in repose, he is gentle, affectionate, and obliging. He is devoted. Others, who happen to meet him in moments of excitement, find him irritable, arrogant, self-centered, sombre, rebellious and go as far as to accuse him of lack of principle or conscience.
His sensitiveness to the beauty and purity to be found in nature, his writing, an account of the South Face of Mount Watkins... The View From Deadhorse Point... At times, one gets the feeling that Pratt's imagination has taken him away from this earth and the material world into a lonely, personal flight to meditate on ultimate cause and a last climb.
His silence, for some, throws a sullen cloud over his disposition. But, he is truly modest. A cat inclined to fits of laughter, to party, or to vanish for weeks. A weird and wily storyteller ... "Nothing worse than a hungry bear," he says. He walks wires. He has nightmares. A soul afflicted with a susceptibility to the effects of beer. The attraction toward it, he does not resist. I have memories of delirious shouts in the Yosemite dark ... shouts coming from a short, bald-headed man with a beard.
Fighting to keep his genius clear, to reveal the elements that give the true depth an intensity to the total sheen or dismal glow ...
He is a soul with feverish dreams to which he applies a faculty of shaping plausible fabrics out of impalpable materials, with objectivity and spontaneity.
He takes, in my mind, a prominent place among universally great men.
Our first big climb together: the North Wall of Sentinel Rock, Pratt's eleventh time up the 1,600ft. face, my second. As he begins the overhang, the fourth pitch of the route, I hear him say softly to himself, "Grown men." We finish the sixteenth pitch in a light, blessing rain.
from Swaramandal 1973
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Patrick Oliver
Boulder climber
Fruita, Colorado
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May 24, 2009 - 02:21am PT
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Thank you so much, Ed. I guess it holds up
relatively well after about 37 years since I
wrote it.
The delirious shouts... they happened more
than once. Sometimes he would go into
mad rages.
Other times he was completely cool.
On one occasion, one night, and I was with him,
some little dogs tied outside a big winnebago
were yapping and keeping everyone awake, and
Chuck simply walked over and untied them. They
were happy then and stopped barking. The dogs
didn't even run away. Can you
see that smug little smile on Chuck's face?
Another time, I was sitting at a picnic table
in the middle of day in Camp 4. Chuck strolled by
and sat down with me. He had brought something
he found that was supposed to kill flies. It
was some sort of little block, about half an inch square or
smaller, and it had some kind of insectiside in it,
whereas flies would land on it, suck in, and die.
Well Chuck was eager to try this out and placed it
neatly in the center of the table. We watched and
waited for a fly. At last one buzzed around and
landed on the little block. It took a drink, and
suddenly it rose up on its hind legs, as about to
give a big speech, spun around fast
about fifty times, like a ballerina doing one of those
spins, seemed to "sigh," and dropped over dead. Chuck
looked at me with one of those grim glances, as though
to say "Sick." He was quite impressed, and walked away,
chuckling, as I would say, and off to his camp...
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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May 24, 2009 - 02:26am PT
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what really struck me, Pat, was the universality of the feeling of being on one of his climbs, probably more than once, and eventually getting through the crux with a sense that you did get a glimpse into what he was thinking when he did it...
...but as you also pointed out in the other piece on Twilight Zone, pushing a big cam up makes the climb quiet a bit different, indeed.
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Doug Robinson
Trad climber
Santa Cruz
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Topic Author's Reply - May 24, 2009 - 02:27am PT
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Thank you for hand copying this, Ed, like an act of devotion to the master of wide.
A jewel turning in the hand, it flashes from light to dark and back.
Grown men. He said that often.
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Patrick Oliver
Boulder climber
Fruita, Colorado
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May 24, 2009 - 02:29am PT
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I can't recall if the piece below is the finished
draft or an earlier one of my piece in "Everything
That Matters." Anyway, though it's a bit long it might
be appropriate to include it here.
PRATT AND KOR
The Short and the Tall of It
One day amid an orderly universe, the towering Layton Kor stepped onto rock and moved upward. Almost immediately there was no other method than himself. It's a foreshortened world, and Kor had no idea how far he'd climb or how much rock there was.
It's strange, with Layton seeming always to go from one place to another, and using such force and speed to do so, that memory should affix him now, cause him to freeze, on a move of climbing in some arrested gesture of reaching for a hold. Perhaps it's my desire to make stop for one moment that frenetic, upward movement that made him one of the world's great climbers.
Kor was capital letters, while others around him were a lower-case idea. Sitting on the exulting ledge, he made that ledge seem small. Yet somehow, if you were his partner, you knew where his liver was, smelled his sweat, loved his giant, lonely, lovely fingers. To fit with such ease into the world, at six-foot-seven, made Layton a marvel. Indeed, in the 1960's, he was perhaps Colorado's most wonderful madman. There aren't words to name the beauty of his face, with a somewhat square jaw-line, his long, sleek eyebrows, and penetrating eyes, like those of a young Clint Eastwood or James Dean without the angst.
Relatively devoid of humans at this time, sandstone and its promise of adventure were Kor's to explore. Imagine extremely long legs, knicker pants loose around each knee, a ripped crotch from making too wide a step, an upper body tapering from a thin waist to broad shoulders, arms long and having their own natural swing and daring — in view of the spare few holds that often supported them. Climbing at this time in the world was no dream that appealed to the general public. For Layton, there was nothing of comparable vibrancy and love — every climb an effort to possess an alluring breadth of rock if not to remain permanently a child.
During the early and mid-'60s, as a boy in Boulder, Colorado, I was partner to such joyous fury on various occasions. With Layton's affinity for rock, he became an elemental force himself — like wind, or rain. The storm was sometimes unpredictable or even reckless. In his presence I felt defenseless. Now and then he wandered upward into an area of seemingly unstructured rock, a kind of dream that violated sense, and this was where his gift truly came alive — to work out the sequence, find a line, create a solution, do it quickly. To this day I see vividly his troubled expression. He communicated fear, passing through a section by some unknown levitation, then from a safer place above gazed down with a shudder followed by a mischievous chuckle. He could coerce anyone up into those dangers with him, needing a partner as he frequently did. He never was a climbing instructor, though. Had Kor taught, I imagine he would have said little about balance or technique. He would have put his students on rock. To be understood, rock has to be climbed.
It wasn't Layton, to be too careful or too responsible. On occasion he simply fell, luckless, stopping, as the rope came tight. His long body was brought to a hanging halt like a jack-knifed truck. A story would fit into the long instant of his sailing past me one afternoon on the Bastille Crack, a fall he took from above me that I'm grateful to have miraculously held. Both of us were preserved, to climb again, and he continued with the same hurry, even in winter with snow lying like white sable on Eldorado Canyon ledges. In my memory my fingers are frozen in a borrowed pair of Layton's bricklayer gloves. Or sun beats down, with no water to drink.
He suddenly could neutralize your terror with the most inane of puns: "Sandstone is very rotten, and you should never take it for granite." His smile alone made you laugh. You could anticipate one of his amusing insights, or see into his mind. I recall, coming from above, a rushed, "I've got you on belay, but don't fall, my anchors aren't very good."
On another climb, the Wisdom, after he led over a huge overhang, he got in a couple of anchors and, while hanging in slings, belayed me up. The thin pitons he'd placed behind flakes and that held his weight under that overhang scared me nearly to death. I was too frightened to look back and retrieve a few them as I shifted my weight from one piton to the next. With both of us together, above the exposed lip of that overhang, he said somewhat frantically, "These anchors are shifting. I've got to get out of here." He traversed away, to get his weight off the anchors and find safety somewhere — anywhere. About ten feet to my right, hanging from uncertain holds, he moaned, "My arms are giving out. We're both going to die." I remember dangling there, saying nothing. He took on a stern demeanor and fought his way impressively up the rock. Burned into my memory as he made those moves were the reds, purples, and yellows of Eldorado rock, the cold air and snow-covered canyon. It had snowed the day before, and we'd chosen this climb because it was too steep to have any snow. The sun started to come through a cloud, as though the world were being transformed from winter gloom to a celestial spring.
Layton's shrieks and frightened comments were no laughing matter at the time but served as wonderful lore later among friends.
So many are like clones of so many others. Kor stood out as entirely different than anyone. He was separate from society — his own energy, his own look, and his own diet. He ate lots of carrots and celery — somewhat off-and-on vegetarian. Rumor was that he suffered from a lung condition. A bricklayer by trade, his huge hands always seemed to have on them a trace of dried, gray-white mortar. I watched him lay brick one day. He did it with the same efficiency and determination as in climbing. It was a good profession for him, as any single job earned enough money for the next climbing weekend. There were plenty of days off. He might have been out of money one night in 1967 when he siphoned gas with a friend. Shuffling down an alley with a gas can and hose, Layton was cornered by the police. My father, handing me the small police report, didn't seek my privileged interpretation. Both my dad and my mother were fond of my tall friend. Years later, as Layton settled down greatly, it would seem a certain essence had been lost.
Kor was the subject of his own story, gesturing, laughing. His eyes widened with nervous excitement, as he conversed or while clinging to a climb and at the same time seeming to encircle it vastly. I remember each tambourine-jangle morning I followed him, from the shadowy, vertical wall of X-M, in Eldorado, to Tiger's Tooth, a ferocious crack in Estes Park, to the icy rain of Overhang Dihedral on Longs Peak, or giant roof of Exhibit A in Eldorado, and to a day I skipped school to follow him up Rogue's Arete, a wall above Boulder’s Bear Canyon where he led vertical rock brilliantly.
A man liked by women during the 1960's, Kor rarely was without female friends. Probably he was very lonely at the soul of himself. A pervasive intensity about him, he sometimes intentionally oppressed me with his silence, or his gaze, seeing at certain instances my own inner troubles.
No one could guess what powered Kor, fast always, mildly fanatical, but also graceful and well mannered in his climbing, mostly. Some unique kind of cosmic miracle commands each man, and often a certain mentor is responsible in part for one's success. Kor's climbing, though, could not be taught. Rock couldn't entirely hold the spirit it had conjured up. The speed at which he moved was exceptional. Many of his techniques, however, were make-do: a knee awkwardly on a ledge, a quick reach, risking a fall, to get past a tiring section. He had no pride in the way it looked.
While I don't like to compare climbers, in my imagination I often place Kor alongside another great personality, Chuck Pratt. Certainly they climbed together quite a number of times, but they create an intriguing contrast of temperaments and styles.
The only other climber with the mystique to rival Royal Robbins during Yosemite's golden age, the 1960’s, Pratt was the short, stocky genius of Yosemite's smooth, off-width cracks. Though bald at an early age, Pratt’s bearded face was clear and striking. His eyebrows seemed to lift slightly, as though he were about to smile. In much of life there was cynical amusement for him. Though Chuck didn’t look directly at people very often, when he did focus on you his eyes penetrated to secrets even you didn’t know.
While Kor seemed to move upward at times as though in an agitated hunt for his own originating mystery, for Pratt the mystery occurred as he emerged himself in an atmosphere of artistry and agreement between himself and rock. The climbing of Chuck Pratt had something to do with the reality of a place and the metaphysics of grace. A difficult Yosemite crack always seemed to succumb, its dark reaches illumined by Chuck's disparagement of the world and rare, astute mind.
As a young climber in northern California, in the late 1950's and early 1960's, Pratt adapted immediately to the art of climbing, a natural. A detailed history might reveal the individuals who inspired him or were, in some sense, his teachers. As I suppose, he picked up certain points here or there, a seed and season at a time. I believe all by himself he came to his gift and to the quiet that followed a storm or the light that drifted down to him from the grandeur of Yosemite's walls. There may have been a particular friend or mentor who helped him, yet soon enough he was alone, going on without further mediation, his ability obvious. I'd stake my life on the fact that climbing came with him to this life.
These same things I believe to be true about Kor. A gift is always the inadequate word to explain something beyond more usual patterns of human development. If it were possible to trace every step of Chuck's life, in an attempt to comprehend how his extraordinary genius came to be through the years, and analyze his upbringing, and know to what we might attribute his mastery, the results would be insufficient. There would be more to him: something of which no information serves as a convincing explanation.
Perhaps for both men, climbing was a stylizing of identity. Each in some sense simply inhabited his life, answering to his solitary story. Both dropped out of mainstream society, Kor leaving high school, and Pratt, a promising college student, leaving to climb. Both suffered from an inability to cope with forces that compelled them to conform.
Kor rarely held anything back, quickly following landmarks of hand and footholds, to be at the center of a moment, his six-foot-seven body bursting upward into sunlight that seemed shaken a little or loosened by his presence. Pratt, like a snake, acceded to the shape-subtleties of a difficult crack. He saw from his mind and heart. Kor rode that crack like a bucking bronco or slithered up it, in a race, like a kid up a pole. Layton’s thoughts at any other time than climbing seemed to be carried away, toward some kingdom of thought, or woman still in mind, or climb, a clustering of past and future possibilities too difficult for him to bring to order. He seemed to ascend toward the elusive answer, as though it were clouds and air. I followed him many times, acting out my tale of concern. The sooner I was given my share of the leading, the more control I felt I had. Some of these are seasonal memories, yellow and red in fall and rich green in spring.
Kor often selected climbs solely for their line, an act of getting from here to there. The sinister beauty of certain cracks was the appeal for Pratt, as he contemplated what qualities and techniques might be drawn from his being by serious necessity. Chuck often chose the most preposterous, difficult, and unprotected climbs, a single tiny mistake away from a death fall, and he climbed them with watchful docility, stopping casually to speak to an ant, mutter "Grown men," or calmly admire the rock's decoration and simple, geometrical form.
Kor had a terrible possessiveness toward experience, seeking it out. On the obsessive-compulsive side, he was easily irritated with friends too slow. His complaint most often took the form of an increased intensity, and he climbed faster, or the facial grimaces became more pronounced. There were stories of this or that person suddenly being pulled up, by brute force, without warning, in mid-move, while taking the time to solve an appealing free move. Or Kor might yell down rudely, "Climb the rope."
Kor went through partners like a chain smoker goes through cigarettes. Those various partners might be likened to a group resentful of one another, as in a kind of battle for apostolic succession. Dozens were ready to go even to their doom to get into the magic of Layton's dangerous, assured success. Their sense of the myth of which they might be involved in part propelled their dwarfish enthusiasm. For me a climb with Layton was an impassioned freeing of spirit, though not necessarily one of wisdom.
Pratt had no such Pied Piper effect, no group of young he perpetually recruited. He held himself distant, emotionally restrained. One senses his coolness of spirit in his fine writings. They point inward to the unspeakable, for example in an article where he describes a quality of comradeship with Warren Harding and Yvon Chouinard on the South Face of Mt. Watkins, in Yosemite. He tells of an eagle that stayed near the wall the several days of that thirsty ascent. A reader gets a view of Pratt's deep appreciation for Yosemite and his friends, as he depicts heat, moon, and granite and reminisces about Valley climbing history.
Chuck didn't always give much visible or verbal evidence that he was warm. I felt his warmth, though. I longed for his company. He was more of a loner than Kor, with a particular revulsion to the tourist masses. He never exploited his fame and would go to the end of his life, as do many great artists, a stick of firewood short of utterly poor. Strange, the little things we remember about people. If there happened to be a bottle of Worcestershire sauce around, Pratt quickly swigged a capful. I watched him juggle wine bottles a sunny day, in the later 1960's, at Church Bowl, in Yosemite. Another day, he easily balanced, like a veteran tight-wire walker, on the slack chain I strung between two trees in Yosemite's Camp 4. A little shorter, and he might have slightly resembled a circus midget. Drunk one night, he took to the Camp 4 boulders in army boots and pioneered a steep, smooth, lichen-covered slab on Columbia Boulder. In my best bouldering shape, it was no laughing matter to repeat this route. Quite high off the ground, I found the route anything but easy, in broad sunlight, in a clear, rational state of awareness. I could imagine a relaxed, uninhibited state might assist one in being tranquil and weightless, and perhaps fearless, qualities that might translate into mysterious power for an already brilliant talent. Most boulderers dismissed as nearly impossible Pratt’s famous mantel problems around Camp 4, badly sloping and smooth. I never personally witnessed anyone other than Royal succeed at all of these. Royal’s mantel ability was aided by flexibility. He could dislocate his shoulders and touch his elbows together near his face. I took great pride, with my gymnastic pressing ability, in repeating these mantels. It remained, however, that Pratt hadn't trained in any formal way.
Whereas Pratt knew every element of his perfection, Kor was like a new butcher experimenting with a side of beef. These were different kinds of temperament. Pratt's view was to a life importantly lived, whereas Kor's life was urgent. Bodying forth, Layton pulled the rock down past him. Moves came and went, almost without cognition, whereas Chuck was aware, seeing the little place to put his fingers or set the edge of a boot.
Both were marvelous pioneers, each able to take off in his own direction, Kor perhaps more of a pioneer than Chuck. Not quite so driven, Pratt had a secret grip on the situation. Kor didn't always benefit from such control and double-stepped away quickly toward each new, wild thing. Pratt strolled toward the next challenge — everything in its place. I see Kor moving assiduously toward his fate and Pratt serenely in the middle of his. Chuck used no protection on his unimaginable, calm first ascent of Twilight Zone, a preposterous off-width crack up a vertical, gloomy, Yosemite wall. That climb was a premise taken to its metaphysical limit.
When Layton and Chuck climbed with each other, Pratt was perhaps more impressed with Kor than the other way around — even if Chuck was in certain ways, such as off-width climbing, the master. Pratt, quiet, extremely insightful, and very funny at times when verbosing under the influence of a slight bit of beer, had no more ability than the rest of us to intrude into the form and actions of the indomitable Kor. I imagine the two together on a ledge, ravens quothing.
I wouldn't call Pratt introspective, so much as a man sentient in a private way. I never enjoyed climbing with anyone more. A day in Yosemite in 1968 on the North Wall of Sentinel, he and I found the right spirit of friendship, saying mostly nothing at all but knowing and trusting a connection of feeling that unites comrades on rock.
My first reaction isn't necessarily regard for supremely strong and powerful climbers. There has to be something more, a classic spirit hovering behind the form, individuals with beauty and conscience, as opposed to the chrome attitude and plaintive sigh of the muscle-bound, self-loving athlete. Neither Kor nor Pratt had any such self-love. Yet they were, on rock, visual phenomena, artists of ascent — Kor madcap and Pratt pure mastermind. Neither arrived at any summit in a great ecstasy of recognition. The climb was alive in them, though, and would remain so after its many vanishings.
We knew the gumball, harried Tarzan behind Layton's handsome, impish, straight face. On almost any climb, he ascended with a kind of violence — as though to race to life's brink, or to sanity's edge, and look over. He then raced to the next desert rim. He risked his life and everyone’s at times in ways so humorous and compelling that no one could help but love him, that child in such an imposing frame.
I see Layton fall through the air because he raced up the rock too fast to realize he'd moved into unclimbable territory. On the other hand, he could be methodical. His winter ascent of the Diamond, with Wayne Goss, was a brave, mountaineering achievement. They worked their way up that frigid granite with precision. A definite maturity characterized his ascent of the Salathé Wall of El Capitan, with Galen Rowell. Layton seemed to hold rotten sandstone together as he climbed past it.
Pratt and Kor differ, as I've noted, but in ways were alike. Both had integrity. The person Layton Kor enters, and the rest of the surroundings diminish. Surfaces of stone grow more distinct at the presence of Chuck Pratt. The climbing of these two continues to speak, from decades away. Maybe it was a great emptiness, within, that each felt the need to fill. They did so in part by climbing. Kor and the rock would settle their differences by force. Pratt made his existential way by a gift of inner strength.
I could recapitulate the well-told stories, Pratt's "ultra dangerous" lead of the Pratt Chimney, in June, 1959, on Middle Cathedral Rock, or Kor's bold foray up into the 1000-foot, unprotected, northwest face of Chief's Head in 1961, or…. The danger would be to drift toward hero worship. The two were heroes, but I didn't worship them. They had plenty of the despair, waste, unknown motives, lapses, delirium, imperfect sympathies, sweat, and heartbeat of humans. They both could be difficult. Both were prodigals to society, not extremely receptive to the ideas of others, and at best becoming themselves only apart from people in general.
I've saved letters Layton sent me from Yosemite and a note he once left on my car window in Eldorado, addressing me by middle name, "Oliver, will see you later today and work on the walls tomorrow." His words sparked excitement in my soul.
I see Layton hunched over the steering wheel of his blue Ford, or arching forward in his walk, eyes widening, face stretching down tight. I see him during that LSD year of 1967 from which a number of the strongest of us failed to come away unscathed. I see him shedding tears at the foot of the Eiger, upon discovering John Harlin's body. Layton painted pictures, a pastime with which he began to experiment, if I recall, in 1967. I have images of him fishing in the Black Canyon and becoming a Jehovah's Witness. He married, raised a family, divorced, re-married, with an occasional modest return to climbing. Stories had him sea diving and fishing in the Phillippines.
Yosemite and Pratt. Their roots seem to me entwined. I never would have imagined they ever would part. When the hoards of climbers began to infiltrate the Valley in the 1970's, it was clear the age of mystery was gone. Pratt quietly removed himself forever, but I always hoped he continued to live in Yosemite somewhat in his heart. I envisioned him among pines. In time, he settled for a job guiding in the Tetons. His loneliness and drinking were problems at times, and though he never would be fired his responsibilities became limited. Many felt the depth of his soul, all the same. Friends loved him in corners of the Jenny Lake bar or when they visited him at his small cabin, or stood with him in a meadow, or together ambled a ridge.
Likely by now you'll feel you know Kor better than Pratt. In real life it would be the same, Kor so hung out there to see, as he was, and Pratt more in shadow. Both appeared to be wounded in some way. I speak of a wound that existed throughout their lives, and that they'd never understand. Yet they kept their torments in reasonable subjection. I speak about two people in their prime, in the 1960's. Pratt stepped through the door of infinity, not long after the turn of the century. In his last years, living in his small cabin in the Tetons, guiding, wintering in the low-cost environment of Thailand, he remained a solitary person, or perhaps alcoholic ascetic, if such might describe the paradox of his tragedy and genius.
I've lost touch with Layton, though my friend Royal sent me an address in northern California. I sent a letter, but it was returned. He’d already moved on to another unknown place to live. I have the two climbers with me and speak to them, silently, often.
Always they had the saving laughter to break up a moment's philosophic argument. Such laughter echoes bittersweet through the rocks of memory, as though life had been a lovely Shakespeare play, and those two were incredibly believable in their roles as important characters in the plot. Wind spilling into pines holds for me the voices of those two great, gifted souls. A bright sun holds Kor's nervous, hypnotic depth. I see him in every brick wall, in every shattered heap of sandstone, sense his company in any magic-lantern adventure up rock. A wall of granite, with a crack slicing up through it, reminds me of how Pratt turned climbing into art. Both loved listening to music. Kor enjoyed Dylan's "Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands." A favorite of Pratt's was Judy Collins' rendition of "Who Knows Where The Time Goes?" Indeed.
Had I the power I would have made them young again, so that other new generations might discover and love them. Had I been some great mystic, I would have attempted to heal their wounds. I was little more than a sort of talented, fumbling friend. ð
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Patrick Oliver
Boulder climber
Fruita, Colorado
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May 24, 2009 - 02:44am PT
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Sorry for another long one. This was a one-draft
thing I put together. It's kind of rough, but it
served the purpose of gathering some info. I think
the mag editor cut it to about one 20th its size. For
anyone interested,
Chuck Pratt
In certain philosophies, the development of the soul is thought to begin with art. Or the process of humanization of the soul completes itself in art, as opposed to religion. The mystical soul of Chuck Pratt seemed to take bodily form in the amazing, vertical and overhanging cracks of Yosemite. Those masterpieces of climbing that bear his name, such as Twilight Zone, Chingando, Pratt's Chimney, the Salathe Wall, and Lost Arrow Chimney… were the embodiment of a man. I speak of a time that is lost forever, the 1960's, when Pratt and Robbins spirited about in the cool of the Sierra forests and ventured up onto the walls of granite. The power of those individuals, especially Royal and Chuck, was perhaps what most made those times what they were. Even in all their transitoriness, those years linger in the memories and hearts of climbers who were there.
Chuck Pratt died recently, at the age of 61, a devastating reminder to his friends of how short life is and how precious life and friendship are. His death, we are told, occurred in Thailand, just after he arrived there for his annual winter stay. Chuck had a somewhat simple plan for his life: guide for Exum during the spring and summer, save up a little money, and then spend the winter in relatively inexpensive Thailand in a small hut along the north Meykong River. "That's all I need," he said to me in a conversation in late October of 2000 just prior to leaving for Thailand. I had phoned him at his mother's home in Walnut Creek, California. He was there to sell the house, since his mother had passed away. His father had died earlier. He mused about the process of selling a house, showing it, the proceeds from the sale then having to go through probate, etc. He told me he was developing an interest in photography. When I said I would love to see some of his work, he replied slowly, "Well these are not masterpieces. I'm more of a tourist." I needed to ask him a few questions about a book I was working on, and he reminisced with me. I had received a number of postcards from him during the last ten years but had not spoken with him for a while. It was great to hear his soft, wry voice, and the sound of it lingered in my thoughts for days after. Chuck had been one of my true heroes, one of the greatest inspirations for me in rock climbing. He was an inspiration to people all around the world.
No one, other than perhaps Royal Robbins, Layton Kor, or John Gill, made as much of mark on the American climbing scene. A young talent from the Bay Area and leading light of the University of California hiking club, Chuck climbed several of Yosemite's best routes in 1958 and 1959. An early free lead of Phantom Pinnacle, for example, and a difficult crack pitch midway up the north face of Middle Cathedral Rock were two of his first demonstrations of talent. He climbed the Crack of Dawn in 1959 with Robbins and Tom Frost. He made the first ascent of the North Face of Middle Cathedral Rock in 1959 with Steve Roper and Bob Kamps. A certain difficult crack on that route was given the name the Pratt Chimney. Royal later would write of this pitch, in the October 1959 Mugelnoos, "Chuck's lead of this chimney is certainly one of the most remarkable leads in the history of American mountain climbing…."
Also in 1959 (July), Chuck participated in the first ascent of the East Face of Washington Column, grade V, 5.9, A3, with Warren Harding and Glen Denny. This impressive big wall involved the infamous Harding Slot, an exposed, overhanging, flared chimney. The same year, with Joe Fitschen, Chuck led Worst Error, a strenuous chimney-crack system on Yosemite's Elephant Rock. It was at this time Chuck, Royal, and Tom Frost did the 5.9 Crack of Dawn. In May, June, and July of 1960, respectively, Chuck participated in three first ascents: Mt. Broderick's South Face, grade IV, 5.8, A3, with Bob Kamps and Joe Fitschen, Lower Cathedral Rock's North Face, V, 5.9, A3, with Robbins and Fitschen, and Higher Cathedral Rock's North Face, V, 5.9, A4, with Yvon Chouinard and Kamps. Then in September, 1960, from the 7th to the 13th, he joined company with Robbins, Fitschen, and Frost for the second ascent (and first continuous ascent) of the Nose of El Capitan. Only a month later, Chuck and Yvon put up the Chouinard-Pratt Route on Middle Cathedral Rock, a grade V, 5.8, A3.
In 1961, from September 18 to the 24th, Pratt, Robbins, and Frost made the first ascent of the virgin southwest face of El Capitan, an elegant and thrilling line they named the Salathe Wall -- the name being a dedication to John Salathe, the great pioneer of Yosemite rock climbing. Friends greeted the climbers at the top and crowned them with flower-wreaths. In the setting sun, the climbers tossed champagne glasses over the edge.
On October 13, 1961, Chuck led a very formidable, steep, and fearful crack system on Elephant Rock, the Crack of Doom. This was thought to be the first climb of a 5.10 grade in Yosemite until climbers later realized that Royal Robbins' shorter but slightly more intense East Chimney of Rixon's Pinnacle, led by Royal in 1960, was actually 5.10 and had been under-rated at 5.9.
In a 1986 Climbing Art interview, Mort Hempel, Pratt's partner on the Crack of Doom, described the first ascent of the Crack of Doom:
"Chuck Pratt had started this new route which came to be known as the Crack of Doom, and he solicited my help. Chuck and I climbed the first two pitches one day and came down. We went back a couple or three days later and finished the climb. I remember the chimneys. They were awe-inspiring. On the second pitch, you chimney outward, overhanging your belayer. That was spectacular. On the fourth pitch of the climb, I tried to push the 5.10 move, and I just couldn't do it. I came back down and sat on the ledge and said, 'O.K., Chuck, it's your turn,' because he was the better climber.
"I had climbed with Chuck on a number of occasions during that period, and here was the first time I'd ever heard him say, 'Watch me, man, I think I'm going to come off.' It was pretty impressive. Finally he did make it over the crux of the climb. When it came my turn to follow, I was so spent I told Chuck just to haul me over the hard part. I remember, just before exiting that slot at the top of the crux, Chuck had a horizontal piton and an angle piton driven in side-by-side (stacked) for protection -- which I think was more psychological than anything else. It was a climb I will never forget.
"I think the reason Chuck and I got along so great was that he had a certain form of creative insanity. He was a self-educated man, a pretty wise individual. And yet he was very earthy. I mean I could talk to Chuck, and we had some very good times. I do not forget Chuck Pratt. He was, more or less, my best friend at that time. When Chuck was climbing in Yosemite, it was the pinnacle of his own expression. His whole life was wrapped up in climbing, and he was pushing frontiers that had never been pushed in the entire world. His skill is greatly known.
"Chuck's philosophy of climbing was not that of the daredevil -- the I'm going to do it or die kind of situation. It was artistry. It is my feeling that Chuck has gone largely unsung. A lot of people climbing now don't know who Chuck Pratt is, partly because Chuck keeps to himself these days and did so to some degree in the 1960's. He was really a forerunner in pressing new limits in Yosemite Valley. His technique was incredible. There weren't any manuals out then to teach you how to do cross-pressure, or heel-and-toe. Chuck put a lot of thought, a lot of care, into his own specific style of climbing. His technique in jamcracks was flawless.
"I personally had a very difficult time with jamcracks. Chuck was really a master at that. The techniques he perfected for himself gave impetus to people in later years to push their own limits with techniques which started, basically, with Chuck Pratt."
In 1964, Pratt participated in several of the most important ascents in Yosemite. These included:
Ribbon Fall, East Portal, V, 5.9, A4 (June 1964), with Allen Steck, John Evans, and Dick Long; Mt. Watkins, South Face, VI, 5.8, A4 (July 1964), with Yvon Chouinard and Warren Harding; Midterm, 5.10 (August 1964), with Tom Frost; the second ascent of the West Buttress of El Capitan, VI, 5.9, A4, with Robbins; the impressive Crack of Despair, III, 5.10, with Frank Sacherer and Tom Gerughty; Lost Arrow Chimney, free ascent, V, 5.10, with Frank Sacherer; and in October of 1964, the North America Wall of El Capitan, VI, 5.8, A5, with Robbins, Frost, and Chouinard.
An article Chuck wrote about Mt. Watkins set a standard for quality writing. Chuck was a superb writer, although he did not often allow people the pleasure of his writing gifts. Notable in his writing is the way he focuses on the fine characteristics of his friends, "I thought of my incomparable friend Chouinard, and of our unique friendship, a friendship now shared with Warren, for we were united by a bond far stronger and more lasting than any we could find in the world below." In that article, Pratt reveals Harding's courage in sacrificing his share of water in the scorching sun of that climb…. In a later piece of writing for Layton Kor's biography, Chuck would speak directly to Layton, "I still feel that in sheer overall ability to step off the ground and climb to the top of a rock wall, you had no equal."
The Lost Arrow Chimney, done also in 1964, and all free, with Frank Sacherer, was perhaps the first free ascent of a major, Yosemite big wall. The climbing was sustained, with 5.10, and involved eleven pitches. Both Chuck and Frank were small enough in physical stature to finish by squeezing through the Harding Hole, a famous, claustrophobic passageway that gained access to the final spire.
The North America Wall of El Capitan, a bold ascent of over two thousand feet of vertical and overhanging rock was the culminating point of the golden age of big wall climbing. Pratt led the exposed overhang above the Black Dihedral, an aid pitch Royal described as "the most spectacular lead in American climbing."
Chuck led the Left Side of the Slack, at the base of El Capitan, with Royal Robbins, in May 1965. This very difficult (5.10+) off-width was another example of Chuck's extreme talent. The hardest move caught Royal unprepared, and he was forced to pull on a carabiner. Royal always was the first to acknowledge his friend's incredible ability.
In June of 1965, Pratt led Chingando, 5.10, a formidable vertical crack. In July, with Tom Gerughty, he put up the East Corner of Higher Cathedral Spire, III, 5.10. In August, he climbed the Entrance Exam, 5.9, with Chris Fredericks, Larry Marshik, and Jim Bridwell. He climbed the Cleft, 5.9, with Chris Fredericks. But the route that would forever establish him as the genius of off-width cracks was the Twilight Zone, led by Chuck in September of 1965. He modestly rated this virtually unprotected lead 5.10. It would be an understatement to say that Chuck Pratt was ahead of his time. The best climbers today, with their "Big Bros" (large metal chocks to protect wide cracks) and huge “Friends,” hardly would consider doing the Twilight Zone in Chuck's pure, unprotected style -- a style that characterized many of Chuck’s leads.
The Twilight Zone in particular may be the greatest free climbing achievement of the 1960’s, perhaps second only to Gill’s Thimble route in the Needles. Led without protection, without chalk, in a pair of old, crumply Cortinas, the Twilight Zone evokes a sense of Pratt’s gift, how he stopped at the crux far up the unprotected sheer crack, with several blades of rock rising like guillotines out of the ledge below, and how he held on while he had Chris Fredericks rappel off, go down to the car, and prusik back up with a big piton, and then how Chuck was able to let go with one hand at this difficult place to haul the piton up…. He found it didn’t fit, and then he calmly, quietly asked Fredericks and Herbert if they would mind if he went ahead and led upward. The astonishing statement was made as though they would be the ones to suffer should he fall.
To Pratt, the appropriate response to climbing was to keep quiet about it—especially in terms of speaking about his accomplishments. He had no agenda, no desire to become known.
Distant and solitary, that genius of crack climbing never was for sale to the media and was happy without recognition. Chuck seemed to guard his soul and keep it to himself, and he did climbs of such difficulty that it would be difficult for anyone to go there now to know him. In view of when the Crack of Doom and Twilight Zone, as examples, were done, in 1961 and 1965, it would be impossible to go there at all. How could one duplicate the sheer difficulty in relationship to those early years of Yosemite rock climbing? The standards of the 1960's, were in fact as high as any before or after, if viewed in context. Those were times characterized by talent. All the individual stars of the Valley were blessed with ability and vision. And while Royal stands out in most of our minds as the guiding light and remains an astonishing example of integrity, Pratt is certainly the secret hero of many of us.
Pratt continued to climb hard routes through the end of the 1960's, such as his July 1966 free ascent of Penny-Nickel Arete, III, 5.10, with Dean Caldwell. Chuck led Britain's Don Whillans up the Crack of Despair, in 1966, and Whillans was very impressed with Chuck's ability. Whillans visited me in Boulder shortly after and raved about how Chuck was the best. In August 1967, Chuck made a first ascent of the Mummy's Revenge, III, 5.9, with Tom Kimbrough, and in April and May 1968 made ascents of North Dome's Southwest Face, 5.9, with Bev Clark, and Flatus, 5.9, with Bob Bauman. In July of 1969, Chuck did a major wall first ascent, the Gobi Wall, on Sentinel, rated V, 5.8, A4, with Ken Boche.
In and around these years of climbing in Yosemite, Chuck visited other places to climb. Early in the 1960's, he came to Boulder, Colorado, and nearly free climbed without protection the first pitch of Country Club Crack. Had he made that difficult, crux start, it might have been the first undisputed 5.11, apart from John Gill's route on the Thimble in the Needles. Legend has it Chuck was past the crux and reaching with his right arm to feel up above the second bulge for the tiny key finger-tip hold that most people taller than he are able to reach. A fall meant a drop onto a dangerous flake of rock fifteen or twenty feet directly below, so he downclimbed! Although one small hold has broken off over the years, that pitch is now rated solid 5.11!
During the later 1960's, Chuck enjoyed the red spires of the southwest desert and climbed there with Steve Roper, Bob Kamps, TM Herbert, and others, including ascents of Spider Rock, Cleopatra's Needle, Shiprock, and Venus' Needle…. Chuck's brilliant article, the View From Deadhorse Point, in the 1970 issue of Ascent, chronicles his adventures in the austere and, in those days, relatively isolated desert. I recall a particular beautiful line from that article, "Retracing our steps out of the canyon we feel the temporary depression which accompanies an exhilarating experience that belongs to the past."
I must speak briefly on a personal level. The climbs Chuck and I did together, the Steck-Salathe on Sentinel, for example, and any number of those off-widths of his, remain among my most sacred memories. It was like painting with Rembrandt. I recall him leading up through the Wilson Overhang on Sentinel and saying softly, almost to himself, "Grown men." We finished that climb in bright sun, with rain falling from a cloudless sky.
When he led the long, vertical hand crack on Reed's Pinnacle, he used no protection at all except a small sling around a chockstone almost at the top of the pitch. At one point about 70 feet straight above me, with the rope hanging freely down toward me, he stopped, made a fist with his right hand, while holding onto the crack with his left. He bonked a red ant, watched it fall, and said softly, "You shouldn't be allowed to climb that well."
As a boulderer, it was a special test for me, in my gymnastic prime, to repeat Chuck’s famous mantels on the boulders around Yosemite's Camp 4. I had hollow-back pressing strength from gymnastics. Pratt never trained, to my knowledge. He simply had a gift and gathered whatever he had in the way of strength through actual climbing and contact with the rock. There remains one scary boulder problem, high up on the lichen-covered slab of the southwest side of Columbia Boulder. Pratt soloed the first ascent of it one night in his army boots after a few beers. In daylight, with good friction shoes, and in best shape, I repeated that route. The lichen covering made it especially treacherous. In doing that climb, I again was amazed by this friend.
When we think of Pratt’s austerity, his great ability, and mind, we hesitate to offer too much commentary. The spirit that I believe Chuck's friends came to equate with him is of less talk and more modesty, mingled with a little cynicism. He had has joy, and he had his bitterness, and he seemed to know who he was. I am certain he was aware of the super-real spheres, those disorienting and scary cracks and places his ability led him and that they were his, in relative isolation. I believe he was aware of his artfulness and technique and enjoyed them. They were a part of his own conception of himself. One day when he was following me up the third pitch, the 5.10 off-width, of Reed Pinnacle Direct, and moving more smoothly and solidly than I had led the pitch, he commented about the crack, "It lends itself to technique." In those words, said in the spirit of a true poet, I could sense the very beauty of the rock and the secret joy and rewards of technique. I have never forgotten those words.
The harder the climb, the more technique that flowed from Chuck. I think he appreciated, or was aware of, how a remarkable piece of climbing brought out his abilities. It also could be said that the harder pitches were more worthy of his natural gift and technique. The difficult cracks lent themselves to his technique.
Chuck was a loner. I have suspected at times that he perhaps had a type of social fear with which he struggled most of his life. Or perhaps he simply was deeply shy. That is only speculation. He certainly guarded his privacy. He could be edgy at times. "I'm tired of being social director of Camp 4," I heard him say to someone pestering him for information. He has been identified as alcoholic, and certainly he drank his share. I recall one night hearing shouts in the Yosemite dark, coming from this short, bald-headed man with a beard.
Born in 1939 and raised by Mormon parents, Chuck is said to be a distant descendant of a famous Mormon, Parley P. Pratt. Yet Chuck did not take to religion. He did not take to mainstream society. Said to be a promising talent in physics, he dropped out of school -- the academic world -- and was more self-educated. Once when I visited his apartment in Berkeley, I was amazed at his collection of books and his collection of records and music. He obviously loved beautiful things, which included strangely the somewhat vagabond life of a climber, living in Yosemite from spring through fall. He had an especially deep sensitivity to the beauty of nature. He was too much of a free spirit to follow a more conventional path, which of course caused him to struggle to make a living at times. He worked at various odd jobs, on automobiles, as a mechanic part time, or he guided. He served a couple years in the army.
He and Chouinard were arrested once for riding freight trains. This occurred, as I recall, somewhere in the south, perhaps Arizona or New Mexico. They were dressed in striped clothing and each day (for several days) were driven out to an open range where they were left to catch horses. The driver would depart, and they would make a feeble effort or two to approach a horse, which would simply run away, and so the two friends sat there together all day. They never caught a single horse during that week, and at the end of each day when the driver returned to get them no questions were asked.
In Yosemite, Chuck was well acquainted with the bears that roamed Camp 4 at night, and he knew them by name. I remember the name of one: El Cid. Each of the bears had a personality Chuck had come to identify. "Nothing worse than a hungry bear," I heard him say once.
There was something childlike about Chuck. He always had a good sense of humor and for play. When I first brought my wire walking antics to Yosemite, in the form of the slack chain, Chuck liked the new diversion. I was the best at walking the chain, but one day Chuck stood up on it in perfect balance and juggled three wine bottles.
Eventually as things became too hectic in Yosemite, with too many climbers, and nothing left of the quiet sanctuary of Yosemite's golden 1960's, he began to refer to the Valley as "the Gulch." In that statement, one could feel his sense of loss. I recall that period of time, when he more or less said goodbye to the Valley, when he bugged out, so to speak.
At last he found a means to live, and a rather acceptable environment, in Wyoming's Tetons as an Exum guide. He found the perfect hiding place in a small cabin in Lupine Meadow and there guided during the summers for 29 years. I am not qualified to speak about his relationships with his friends, clients, and fellow guides in the Tetons other than that he touched them greatly and they him.
I received a rare letter from him from the Tetons, telling me that he liked my autobiography…. Earlier, Chuck had personally told me he liked my book Swaramandal and my chapter entitled Pratt. There is a sketch I did of Pratt, in my autobiography, with him sitting at the top of Sentinel and rain falling through a clear, sunlit sky.
I will keep thinking about Chuck. As though it was yesterday, I recall when Royal first introduced me to Chuck in the cafeteria of Yosemite Lodge in September of 1964. He shook my hand warmly, although I detected a small push toward me with has hand as though to suggest that I not move too close or enter his "space." He didn't exactly let people into his life, or even let the world in. Or should I say he was not "worldly." He was a tough character. Yet I recall how generous he was to me in Yosemite every time I time I went there, that ascent of Sentinel, for example, and the various off-widths we did together, and how he was more than willing to rate my 1967 free ascent of Center Slack 5.11, never begrudging me that little triumph because I was young and immature or because I was from Colorado.
In my last conversation with him, just before he left for Thailand, he seemed more relaxed than ever about speaking on the subject of his Yosemite climbs. He told me all about his ascent of the Lost Arrow Chimney with Sacherer. He talked about the Twilight Zone, etc., and he was very happy to have me publish his Mount Watkins article in a new anthology. He told me to meet him in May in the Tetons, and he would show me around. I very much looked forward to that.
Now he has bugged out of the world altogether. There was only one Chuck Pratt. If I may borrow a phrase from Yeats, Chuck Pratt will remain, for those of us who had the privilege of knowing him, a “marble triton among the streams.”
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Don Lauria
Trad climber
Bishop, CA
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May 24, 2009 - 02:47am PT
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Doug,
I've always been mellow.
When Allan Bard died and all those friends showed up in Bishop for his memorial, I was approached by someone - I can't remember who - he said he really regretted Allan's passing. He said, "Allan would have made such grand old man."
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MH2
climber
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May 24, 2009 - 04:35am PT
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I too sense phoniness in small yappy dogs.
As for being a human chockstone, not so much, but it is good to finally get an idea of where the attribution came from.
The Pratt legend has spread wide and it is good to see such an able crew wrestle it into better focus.
Since our lives may be mostly behind us, we can write without losing too much.
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jstan
climber
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May 24, 2009 - 11:23am PT
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I encountered Chuck only that one time when Joe Kelsey and I were being snowed off a climb in mid summer. Chuck had hot soup for us when we got down. So I have nothing to add.
Sometimes I think we have it all wrong. We imagine we are like those itinerant bodies of matter from the Kuiper belt far out in the solar system. Our trajectory at least seems fixed within ourselves and is unaffected. But you read all that has been written about Chuck by people, each of whom is clearly more able than most to claim they have issued from themselves, and what do you see? They all were very much affected by Chuck.
Here is the question suggesting nature is mischievous. While we all might wish in some ways we were a little more like Chuck, is it possible Chuck was not at all convinced he wanted to be Chuck? And that was precisely what made him so appealing?
Is not our friend telling us, yet, answers are unimportant? That not having questions is quite a different matter?
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oldguy
climber
Bronx, NY
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May 24, 2009 - 02:20pm PT
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A little more. In 1960 I spent ten nights on bivouac ledges with Chuck, yet, as reflected in many of the posts, there was always some part of him that remained beyond reach. He was unusually sensitive to the absurdities of life, and usually, but not always, they would buoy his spirits, brighten his day. If not, the rage that some have alluded to.
After one night of spirited drinking at his apartment in Berkeley, he decided he wanted to ride his unicyle. We tried to dissuade him, but he hauled the thing out of his closet and headed downstairs. A street light hung over an intersection, and he chose that spotlight for his ride. But he couldn't get on. He would make the initial move and then crash to the pavement. We tried to get him to give up, but he wouldn't, convinced that on the next try he would have his old mastery back. Not that night. But this story is not a metaphor. Chuck learned juggling, unicyle riding, tight and slack rope walking because he thought of running away and joining the circus before he found out about climbing.
Younger climbers may need to know that in the fifties and a good part of the sixties, every lead was onsite. You simply climbed the route or you went down. You might fall, but it wasn't like the hangdogging that came later, just a momentary lapse of attention or will. Pratt rarely fell, and to my knowledge never more than ten feet. Usually a fall was the result of a pin coming out while on aid.
Tales of Chuck stacking wood at his cabin also reminded me that at one point he had rescued a gas stove that, after a few repairs, he intended to use instead of his Coleman that was ageless. The gas stove sat near his doorway for years and was still there, unfixed, unused, taking up space the last time I visited, while he brewed up on the Coleman.
Yes, there was a Beauregard. The bears, by the way, were fairly recent visitors to the campgrounds since the old garbage pit behind Camp Curry had been closed down.
Royal led the Gong Flake on Lower Cathedral. The first pitch involved traversing behind it. I went second and found to my horror that chockstones were shifting and sand was raining down from above. I whispered to Royal that this thing was loose, and he said, "I know, but don't tell Pratt." Royal then led two pitches up the side of the thing. It came off some time in the seventies, I believe, as did Psyche Flake on Half Dome.
By the by, I have written a book about all this and more that awaits a publisher. The more is part memoir of the guys in the Yosemite Climbing Club, part Tahquitz and initial desert climbs (Powell, Gallwas, and Wilson [and Dolt]), and part what it was like growing up in the fifties.
Finally, pace Roger, I really didn't take sides in the early war, but skulked around the wine cellar hoping for a chance to make a move on Helen (sometimes known as Janie Dean).
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