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Gunks pioneer Hans Kraus book

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kenr · · Unknown Hometown · Joined Oct 2010 · Points: 16,608

I was lucky to spot this book at Rock & Snow -
JFK's Secret Doctor by Susan E.B. Schwartz (Skyhorse 2012)

biography of Hans Kraus, written by a climber. The book is excellent for his remarkable medical career and overall life story, but also has lots of interesting details about him and his partners climbing in the Gunks.

Just a few of the stories ...

  • High Exposure was the notorious bold lead of Hans Kraus -- with no advance knowledge of of the final pitch, and it turned out much less opportunity to protect (with pitons) than we get nowadays with cams and stoppers.
Usually Fritz Wiessner would soon lead any new route by Kraus, but he waited two years before daring to lead High E.

  • which Gunks route he fell off over 50 ft up while free soloing.
  • why Kraus broke with the AMC about climber certification (which ties to "the Vulgarian controversy") -- not what you'd guess.
  • Bonnie Prudden - more about her (own fascinating life) than I've found anywhere else.

I've already bought a second copy and gave it to a friend. My own was covered with marginal notes.

Got a story about Kraus that might not be in the book?

Ken
rgold · · Poughkeepsie, NY · Joined Feb 2008 · Points: 526

I can't contribute any stories really. I knew Kraus and was treated by him twice, very successfully, for back spasms. His office was on Park Avenue and his fees were astronomical. But he treated me and other climbers for free. I did my best to send him some very nice (and expensive for me) climbing-related holiday gifts, which he graciously sent thank-you notes for.

Suburban Roadside · · Abovetraffic on Hudson · Joined Apr 2014 · Points: 2,419

Yes, But I hesitate to write any thing here.Too many times, my 'style of writing' has been attacked.
He was holding the rope for my first slip at SkyTop.

Mark E Dixon · · Possunt, nec posse videntur · Joined Nov 2007 · Points: 974

Any idea how "JFK's Secret Doctor" differs from "Into the Unknown: The Remarkable Life of Hans Kraus" also written by S Schwartz and published in 2005?

Does the new book better explain Marcus' fall? It makes no sense as described in ITU.
Marcus leads the last pitch of the climb so they don't need to restack the rope, but when Marcus falls, the end of the rope runs through Kraus' hands? So he wasn't tied in? Seems like some purposeful obfuscating.

Mark E Dixon · · Possunt, nec posse videntur · Joined Nov 2007 · Points: 974
Michael Schneider wrote:Yes, But I hesitate to write any thing here.Too many times, my 'style of writing' has been attacked. He was holding the rope for my first slip at SkyTop.
I'd be interested, especially if you throw in a couple of paragraphs and line breaks. :-)
kenr · · Unknown Hometown · Joined Oct 2010 · Points: 16,608
Mark E Dixon wrote:Any idea how "JFK's Secret Doctor" differs from "Into the Unknown: The Remarkable Life of Hans Kraus" also written by S Schwartz and published in 2005? Does the new book better explain Marcus' fall?
Thanks for that response -- I didn't know there was a previous edition.

Sounds like the account of Markus' fall stayed pretty much the same -- hard to figure out what happened. I guess it happened about 60 years before Hans told his memory of it to the author. With the ropes and belay methods they had back then, and both climbers were (approximately?) teenagers -- who can say?

The other puzzle for me is that Hans says that it was the watershed event of his life. Yet I did not notice much difference in his character or lifestyle before and after.

Ken
rogerbenton · · Unknown Hometown · Joined Sep 2011 · Points: 210

I have a few more pages left but have to say it's an enjoyable read.

As for the Markus accident, while it doesn't go into details, there is a large emphasis on the emotional toll on Kraus. Personally I got the sense that the incident was one of the main reasons for his unselfish nature in general and especially when it came to his medical practice and philosophy.

I'd be very interested to read or learn more about the K+W exercises. Anyone heard of them?
Rgold, do you remember what they were?

kenr · · Unknown Hometown · Joined Oct 2010 · Points: 16,608
rogerbenton wrote:I'd be very interested to read or learn more about the K+W exercises.
Keep reading: One description of them is at the back of the book.

A web link is:
bonnieprudden.com/files/kra…

That website address reminds that one of the things I liked about the Hans Kraus book was learning more about Bonnie Prudden.

Ken
rogerbenton · · Unknown Hometown · Joined Sep 2011 · Points: 210
kenr wrote: Keep reading: One description of them is at the back of the book. A web link is: bonnieprudden.com/files/kra… That website address reminds that one of the things I liked about the Hans Kraus book was learning more about Bonnie Prudden. Ken
Finished the book today. The K-W test movements are described but not the K-W exercises.
Looks like there are some of them in the link you posted; thanks for that.
Here are three more, (apparently there are 21 in total) courtesy of Kraus protege Dr. Norman Marcus:
normanmarcuspaininstitute.c…
kenr · · Unknown Hometown · Joined Oct 2010 · Points: 16,608
Mark E Dixon wrote:Does the new book better explain Marcus' fall?
My best try at an explanation:
The death took place in 1921 when almost nobody had a clue about methods or equipment for belaying a leader.
Both Hans and Markus were tied into the rope. Markus was leading and fell. Hans (lacking sound technique or equipment) could not hold the fall, and suffered rope burn on his fingers.
Markus fell to 90-100 feet below Hans and the fall stopped. Hans down-climbed to Markus and found him dead. Hans down-climbed to the bottom of the mountain and reported it to the village.

The report in the book says that Markus fell down the mountain. That's the misleading part. All the rest makes sense. Maybe Hans had to climb down the whole mountain, but Markus did not fall down the whole mountain. In two other climbing stories in the book, the author makes a big deal about the supposed difficulty of down-climbing. Likely she was not using a tape recorder when Hans told the story, got confused in her notes between length of the down-climb and length of the fall). Never got around to asking Hans for clarication later. Or maybe Hans himself was confused in remembering the details 60 years later.

I see no "obfuscation": Hans fully admits that he failed to hold the fall.

Justification for this interpretation:
  • Clearly they were both tied into the rope, because that was the whole reason Markus was put into the role of leading - (because they were on a small ledge and did not want to re-stack the rope, or they did not want to both untie and switch ends, so that Hans could have led consecutive pitches).
  • If the rope had broken, of course Hans would have remembered that and reported his "good luck".
  • ( If Hans had not been tied into the rope, seems unlikely that he would have failed to report his "good luck" in having untied before Markus fell.
  • Hans reports that 90-100 feet of rope ran through his hands. If the rope had broken, or he had not been tied into it (so he lost the whole rope), then
How could he have known that? . . . (was he visually measuring it as it slid through his fingers?)
Simpler explanation is that he knew because he found Markus' body 90-100 feet below him.
  • Many routes on mountains in Austria which people dared to climb in 1921 have lots of ledges and non-steep slopes which would catch a falling body. Pretty unlikely that two teenagers in 1921 would have chosen to climb a sustained near-vertical wall. More likely most of their route was class 3-4 with a short class 5 section.
Nick Goldsmith · · Pomfret VT · Joined Aug 2009 · Points: 440

One of the explanations athat occured to me is the possibility that neither of them knew the proper way of the era to belay? It seems like they were mostly self taught? i do not remember reading about any climbing lessons? maybe Hans untied but did not want to restack the rope and marcus was still tied in?? maybe Marcus ledged out before he hit the end of the rope?

rgold · · Poughkeepsie, NY · Joined Feb 2008 · Points: 526

Most modern climbers have no clue what the activity was like a century ago.

I know nothing about the specifics of the accident, but it is worth remembering that the concept of belaying the leader probably didn't exist in 1921, except possibly in amazingly advanced locales like the Elbsandsteingebirge. Even there, hemp ropes wouldn't hold a long leader fall, and protection methods were primitive if they existed at all, so the in general leader soloed the pitch trailing the rope, which could then be used to both protect and help the second.

This meant it was quite likely that the second just stood there and paid out the rope without wrapping it around the body in any way to improve braking friction. Moreover, I'm pretty sure it wasn't common to have either the leader or second even anchored for belaying, which means a leader fall would generally pull the second off too unless the leader hit a ledge and stopped before the second was pulled off.







See John Gill's website at johngill.net/ for a host of historic climbing images. I took the latter two images from there.

Add to this the fact that Hans was an enthusiastic teenager at the time of the accident and probably didn't have even such knowledge of ropework as existed at the time. The fact that he couldn't hold a leader fall would be a given even if he had been experienced and was certainly nothing he or anyone would think had to be "obfuscated."

Even in the sixties, with nylon ropes and chromemolly pitons, the leader not falling was still the mainstream idea. As an enthusiastic teenager, what I aspired to, based on the information I had, was

Nick Goldsmith · · Pomfret VT · Joined Aug 2009 · Points: 440

RG. that sums up perfectly what i was trying to say.

Nick Goldsmith · · Pomfret VT · Joined Aug 2009 · Points: 440

I have seen a few belay anchors still attached to boulders in the talus @ cannon....

M Sprague · · New England · Joined Nov 2006 · Points: 5,090
Nick Goldsmith wrote:I have seen a few belay anchors still attached to boulders in the talus @ cannon....
Rumney too! One of them I had placed (40' piece of cliff fell off) I got to reuse it, lol.

Rich, thanks for the link to Gill's website. I love all the historical photos.
Nick Goldsmith · · Pomfret VT · Joined Aug 2009 · Points: 440

Rich. the last photo you posted is absolutly Iconic. I know I have seen it many times over the years and decades i have been climbing. do you know the Who, what ,when and where of that shot?

rgold · · Poughkeepsie, NY · Joined Feb 2008 · Points: 526
Nick Goldsmith wrote:Rich. the last photo you posted is absolutley Iconic. I know I have seen it many times over the years and decades I have been climbing. Do you know the Who, what, when and where of that shot?
I really did "grow up" as a climber with that photo, and ones like it which suggested that (1) the leader had to be perfectly attired at all times and (2) must never let the pure lines of a dangling rope be interrupted by the unesthetic intrusions of protection points.

I got the shot from the internet of course, but it comes from the book Neige et Roc, translated for some reason as "On Snow and Rock," by Gaston Rébuffat.



The shot I posted is of Rébuffat; I don't know where it is taken---some crag above the Mer de Glace I'd assume. The book is full of wonderful pictures, some of them just as phoney and staged as the one I posted, but still glorious in their evocation of an ideal mostly beyond human reach.

I was looking for another shot from that book (I can't seem to locate my copy) of Rébuffat and a partner aid-climbing. The partner is in a hanging belay and is just feeding out the ropes hand-over-hand.

There is also an account by Rébuffat in Étoiles et Tempêtes, "Starlight and Storm," in which he describes holding a factor-2 fall by Édouard Frendo by first hand-over-handing in the rope as Frendo fell and then at the last instant, looking around and dropping it behind a flake so as to catch the fall. Sure, right.
Nick Goldsmith · · Pomfret VT · Joined Aug 2009 · Points: 440

The first shot has always looked like he was soloing 5.11 in mtn boots trailing a tag line?

Mark E Dixon · · Possunt, nec posse videntur · Joined Nov 2007 · Points: 974

The book is about a climber, written by a climber and describes a climbing accident which was a pivotal event in the subject's life. When critical details are inconsistent, it makes me think that there's more to the story.

Perhaps it's random- a non-climbing copy editor thought the story was better without the clarifying details. Or perhaps the passage of time made Kraus' memories inconsistent.

I like to imagine the following scenario-

Marcus wanted to lead at least once, and seized on the difficulty of restacking the rope to take the lead. Kraus had misgivings about his friend's abilities and went so far as to untie to facilitate swapping ends. Despite this Marcus led anyway, fell, and Kraus made a heroic effort to save his friend. Kraus then blamed himself of failing to stop his friend from leading the pitch, not so much for failing in a hopeless effort to catch a fatal fall. All wild speculation at this point.

Regardless, I don't really care for the book and if anyone wants to cover the cost of shipping, it's yours as soon as I read the last couple of chapters.

Bradclymber · · Unknown Hometown · Joined Sep 2011 · Points: 0

Just a reply to the original part of the post. That is an awesome book for sure.

kenr · · Unknown Hometown · Joined Oct 2010 · Points: 16,608

Yes I bought a second copy and gave it to a friend -- He read through it quickly.

Then yesterday I started reading a book about how to do trigger-point massage, and discovered that the narrative of this Susan Schwartz book is rather significant for practitioners understanding key researchers for their field.

Now with the contributions in this thread by rgold, I have whole new perspective on how climbing was done almost a hundred years ago. How seriously some parties took "The leader must not fall". Tbe only worthwhile thing to do with the rope to re-stack it so at least it would not disrupt the leader on some move.

Picturing Markus tying into the rope when Hans finished leading a pitch, climbing up and arriving at the belay, then untying before Hans led the next pitch. There's no mention of carring pitons, so I guess the most they got for a belay anchor was wrapping the rope around a rock horn. More often the leader just finding a secure(?) place to sit. Or maybe stand in some braced position -- keep the rope tight on the followerer, hope they don't fall and possibly take the leader down. I'll guess that was the situation on the ledge for Hans while Markus was climbing the previous pitch.

Ken

Guideline #1: Don't be a jerk.

Northeastern States
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