New and Experienced climbers over 50 #23

There was lots of swearing!  This was before we met Dave when it was two guys trying to learn to climb and not kill ourselves by following the Robbins books and the Chouinard catalog on clean climbing.

Jan Mc wrote:

There was lots of swearing!  This was before we met Dave when it was two guys trying to learn to climb and not kill ourselves by following the Robbins books and the Chouinard catalog on clean climbing.

I’m guessing there are more stories here! Can you fill in some more missing parts?  So you and Mike were friends and started hanging out in Josh… just the two of you? Were there other friends here, too?  Kinda hard to imagine climbing in Joshua Tree without guidebooks and routes already well established and lots of beta.  I mean Two Scoops Please doesn’t even look like a route… I had to go searching to find it.  Did you just wander by and say hey let’s climb that!?

So when did Dave show up and was he already a good climber?  Why is his name on the FA?  Did he come alone or with friends? How old were you all?  Did grades matter on these routes—were you looking for “hard” or just fun?  

Bachar and his crew were already here?   

Looking at snow photos makes me cold!!!The #1 reason to live in Southern California is the weather. The #2 reason is the weather….Got out last Sunday- it was cold as Fu%k at 8 am 30f… but the good old sun was out and we were treated to perfect desert weather. Clear, sunny with zero wind. All the PT is paying off, been going so long I’m now a lifer at Vargo- I show up and get cracking. If not maintaining perfect form and doing every rep- the staff let’s me know. It’s all starting to pay off!

Edit: MP only lets me stick photos at the top- ????? Go figure.

I hope everyone is doing well.

And Lori- I needed to take a rest day on Monday- it’s all part of the climbing game when you’re a climber over 50.

30!   

It's headed for 5, or maybe 0 here, Thursdayish. That means subzero for my friends at higher elevations. Or possibly not, if we get an inversion going.

Glad the pt is going good, Guy! I'm hoping to get in something vaguely resembling fit, but I'll settle for mostly operable most days.

The snow we had isn't going anywhere. I open the door so she can look out at it, every morning, but Catcat is most displeased. Apparently she's a Southern California cat at heart. You can see her thinking about going out. She'll lift her front paws like she's tippytoeing, while glaring at it out the open door, then it's "nope!". I usually get glared at too, like it's my fault.

Best, Helen

Lori, I've come to the conclusion that everybody was already everywhere long ago. Like you, I sometimes wonder about an entirely alternate universe where I stumbled into this as a teenager! Worked great for Lynn Hill, right???? Except I'd now have 5 or 6 grown kids from potentially 15 or 20 fathers. Oops.

Lori Milas wrote:

I’m guessing there are more stories here! Can you fill in some more missing parts?  So you and Mike were friends and started hanging out in Josh… just the two of you? Were there other friends here, too?  Kinda hard to imagine climbing in Joshua Tree without guidebooks and routes already well established and lots of beta.  I mean Two Scoops Please doesn’t even look like a route… I had to go searching to find it.  Did you just wander by and say hey let’s climb that!?

So when did Dave show up and was he already a good climber?  Why is his name on the FA?  Did he come alone or with friends? How old were you all?  Did grades matter on these routes—were you looking for “hard” or just fun?  

Bachar and his crew were already here?   

I'm sure there is a book's worth--likely several of them, of such stories. Randy has a good summary, but the 'fun' is in the details of those stories---a few of which have been 'hinted at' on here.

Pretty much all climbing areas, especially those with some history, have their share of stories, but a place like J.T.--with it's location, size, spread out nature, style of climbing, and 'cast of characters', I'm sure has more than it's 'share' of 'interesting' ones. The original (Wolfe) guidebook  featured some good ones from the earlier years of exploration by one of the groups of activists from that period.

Lori Milas wrote:

Bachar and his crew were already here?   

Heck Lori- It was simultaneously many different “crews” mostly defined by where they came from. Riverside, Stoney, Orange county, LA… we would show up Friday evening, party and climb, party more, climb more then go home Sunday. We had a guide- written by John Wolf(sp) and others. “The desert rats” they called themselves and the “guide” was tiny. And used the “F” system- unique to Josh I believe- the hardest root was F9. They were the “old farts “ to us youngsters. Jan was almost a “old fart” - him, Waugh and Dave didn’t party like the rest of us-they actually went out looking for hard climbs - Bachar and crew would drive out with Me because he was still in HS and didn’t have a car just a Kawasaki 175 motor bike. We would detour down to Torrance to fetch him at his parents house and we (me) suffered much abuse from Ma Bachar for corrupting her perfect son.  Back in the day……… 

Lori, Mike and I lived across the street from each other.  We have a friend that got sent away for the summer to Outward Bound to keep him out of trouble.  When he got home he took us rappelling at Stoney Point.  While there we saw people bouldering and started trying some things.  Someone suggested we might be good at it but should get some climbing shoes.  We did that and proceeded to quickly go up the grades while bouldering.  We would wander around Stoney following the crew a problem or so behind them.  When we started doing their problems we were invited in.  I think we had been bouldering and top roping at Stoney for about 3 months when we went to Josh for the first time to take lessons from the RCS group.  We couldn't find where the group was camped so we went climbing on our own.  I think we topped out at around 5.9 that weekend and finally found the group at the end of Sunday.  They were still learning to belay and rappel so we were happy that we missed them. That was November 1973.

In spring we started going to Josh all the time.  We had a rope and a bunch of gear and would walk around placing gear from the ground and then clip in and bounce up and down on it to see what would hold.  That is how we learned to place gear and we started climbing routes right away.  We had the Wolfe guide and my first lead was Damn Jam and then The Flue in Hidden Valley campground.  We were climbing 10a in about a month.  Since we were from Stoney we already knew Bachar and a bunch of the other guys and would hang with them on weekends.

Since I was about the only climber at Josh that didn't get stoned (during that period) I quickly found Dave to hang with in the evenings because he was a good Mormon and didn't partake either.  Then we started climbing together and Dave taught us how to place bolts and we started putting routes up together.  I quickly replaced Dave's old partner, a kind of whiney little brit, and we never looked back.  Eventually Herb Laeger joined our group and then Kris Solem a couple years later while Mike and some others either quit climbing or moved or just switched crowds.  Finally Dave quit climbing so I climbed mostly with Herb and put routes up around the southern Sierra for a few years - mostly to get away from the mobile harassment unit (MHU) in Josh.  Kris eventually lured me back to Josh where we put up some stellar routes together and fell into the Dave Mayville, Paul Borne group and just had a blast for many years.

Meanwhile, back East, we also just had the two small Robbins books, and the Chouinard catalog. Later I got a copy of Freedom of the Hills. It's hard to convey to modern climbers how little information there was available. The Chouinard catalog had an article about the overuse of chalk, but for a while we just did not know what the chalk was used for. Guidebooks for the Gunks, with the Blue Dick being the most recent, were sold out. A good friend finally found the last five in existence at REI in Seattle, and generously sold me mine at cost. 

I'm still astounded we found our first Gunks climb, Red Pillar, and the route, just based on a verbal description.

——-

I’m kicked back here at the doctors office reading through these stories and they make me smile. You guys have saved the best for number 23! Does anyone anywhere have even a single picture of Dave Houser? If not could you try to describe him for me?

You know I resist the idea that shit happens because we’re older. My theory is that it’s just a law of averages over time, the longer you’re alive the more you’re likely to encounter an illness or an accident. Lousy as I have been feeling I still maintain I’m no weaker than I was before, in fact I was really surprised to feel just as strong on the rock this week as I was six months ago. I didn’t expect to be so terribly sick afterwards for days but that is apparently the way this works for now.

The hard thing about what I’ve been going through is to not have a definite diagnosis – – this weekend another quest lab result came back showing  the fucking parasites that I have had since August and before are back again. Apparently they have weakened my system enough that I am not fighting off the Epstein Barr  very well. Today my doctor said I think we need to do one thing at a time—Let’s focus on those parasites. That sounds like wisdom to me. I wish Guy’s grandmother was around to offer up some Schnapps  but in the meantime we’re going with that very strong herbal formula and a pretty comprehensive dietary plan. All I can do is try.

 Pretty interesting to think of the various crews in Joshua tree and other places – – I know Jeremy and some of the other younguns are the newest crew here but so are we. I won’t make it in to any history book but Helen and me could be the new forward thinkers of the decade. I feel a part of this place even if I’m a mediocre climber.

keep the stories coming East and West coast!  

Lori, you are part of Joshua Tree--what grade you climb there is irrelevant.

Guy Keesee wrote:

Heck Lori- It was simultaneously many different “crews” mostly defined by where they came from. Riverside, Stoney, Orange county, LA… we would show up Friday evening, party and climb, party more, climb more then go home Sunday. We had a guide- written by John Wolf(sp) and others. “The desert rats” they called themselves and the “guide” was tiny. And used the “F” system- unique to Josh I believe- the hardest root was F9. They were the “old farts “ to us youngsters. Jan was almost a “old fart” - him, Waugh and Dave didn’t party like the rest of us-they actually went out looking for hard climbs - Bachar and crew would drive out with Me because he was still in HS and didn’t have a car just a Kawasaki 175 motor bike. We would detour down to Torrance to fetch him at his parents house and we (me) suffered much abuse from Ma Bachar for corrupting her perfect son.  Back in the day……… 

Whoa! This kind of ruins the whole story! So Bachar was younger or the same age as you? I mean where did he fit into this whole scenario because I sort of thought he was a bit of a loner and just knocking it out of the ballpark with his climbing. I mean when he was free soloing leave it to Beaver or routes on intersection rock were are you guys all doing the same thing? Somehow I thought he was a completely different generation of climbers.

Was is there much competition? You know that I fell in love with almost every route that had Dave Hauser‘s name on it because I thought they were beautiful lines but only a couple were harder than a 5.10. So he wouldn’t have been hanging out with Bachar or swinging from Leave It to Beaver, right? 

The thing is this is so much history and it’s great to hear but when you’re right they’re doing it without a history book or a manual that must’ve been really something. That park is so huge and I haven’t found The half of it.

Jan Mc wrote:

Since I was about the only climber at Josh that didn't get stoned (during that period) I quickly found Dave to hang with in the evenings because he was a good Mormon and didn't partake either.  Then we started climbing together and Dave taught us how to place bolts and we started putting routes up together. 

Lori Milas wrote:

Whoa! This kind of ruins the whole story! So Bachar was younger or the same age as you? I mean where did he fit into this whole scenario because I sort of thought he was a bit of a loner and just knocking it out of the ballpark with his climbing. I mean when he was free soloing leave it to Beaver or routes on intersection rock were are you guys all doing the same thing? Somehow I thought he was a completely different generation of climbers.

Was is there much competition? You know that I fell in love with almost every route that had Dave Hauser‘s name on it because I thought they were beautiful lines but only a couple were harder than a 5.10. So he wouldn’t have been hanging out with Bachar or swinging from Leave It to Beaver, right? 

The thing is this is so much history and it’s great to hear but when you’re right they’re doing it without a history book or a manual that must’ve been really something. That park is so huge and I haven’t found The half of it.

Lori it’s sort of complicated, I never wrote anything down about the climbing back then- something I regret today. Dave Evans maintained a journal, so did Bob Kamps, the true spiritual father of the Stoney Point crew.
So exact dates and who is involved gets fuzzy. I think JB was in his first or second year at UCLA- Math Major, just like his parents wanted. He had spent a summer in the Valley. He decided to “go climbing full time” in about 74/75 time frame. He asked if I could help him move out to Josh. He wasn’t talking about renting a place- he moved into HVCG- it was free of charge and had no time limit. Was 50% vacant on weekends. Contrast to now -always packed, the LEOs know your plate number and if they see your face a few times you get on the radar. John started soloing because he was all alone out there all week. Almost zero traveling climbers back then. John started small and a bunch of us would follow him around on Saturday morning- with our eyes- while he did classic HVCG climbs to entertain us while we were eating breakfast. A super 8 film exists of him doing these, Bulwinkle has it saved for a future project. So JB hung out, worked out and got very strong. It was about this time when He and Largo decided to go on a pilgrimage to go see John Gill. A man who was doing the worlds hardest Boulder Problems at the time. He was a legendary figure to us. (John you were The Man!!!) That Spring I drove John to Camp 4 where he moved in. Those were indeed fun times!

So I’m curious about what went on back east. We knew about the Vulgarians vs the “appies” - very straight, organized climbing establishment. I’m sure I would have fit in with the Vulgarians.

We also knew about the Colorado climbers (Boulder) vs the California climbers, a rivalry going back to the beginning of time.

Later all. 

The Vulgarian v Appie 'thing' was about 15 years before your days in JT--though I'm sure you would have fit right in with the Vulgarian crew (who were still around--some still are today--but much more mellow, in the '70s). There actually is a book about the shenanigans in NY and New England---Yankee Rock and Ice by Guy and Laura Waterman. Not everyone's taste in writing style but a good read nonetheless. Of course these are (mostly) the PG rated stories--Rgold and others can undoubtedly tell some more interesting ones. Maybe I could even come up with a few. "The east' is a big area and there are definitely interesting tales from the mid-Atlantic and deeper South as well, but that is a different cast (or several different casts) of characters.

October through May is our great weather season here in SoCal.  Today it was sunny and felt like 70 in the city. We went for a visit to the Getty Center (we go to a butcher in LA and always do some museum on the same day.).  You could go there and never go into a Gallery and have a wonderful time.  The architecture and the views and the garden are fabulous.  So many nooks and perspectives to discover.  But of course, as climbers, we are always evaluating edifices for climbing potential.  The stone block buildings would certainly go free, and take tiny gear - no soloing required!

C Miller wrote:

A firend of mine was leading EBGB's in the early 80's and took a leader fall. The aluminum DPH hanger broke, and he took a long one. Broke his leg!

Guy Keesee wrote:

"He and Largo decided to go on a pilgrimage to go see John Gill. A man who was doing the worlds hardest Boulder Problems at the time. He was a legendary figure to us. (John you were The Man!!!) 

When Bachar and Largo went to see John Gill, Long wrote a story about it, called Pumping Sandstone. Their goal was to repeat all of Gill's famous boulder problems, but they were sorely defeated. My favorite line in John's story is "Gill began to display that unmistakeable smirk which reminded me of an old film I'd seen of Mohamed Ali watching amateurs box." 

In 2007, John Gill graciously wrote: "I have fond recollections of JL and John Bachar coming down to Pueblo for some sandstoning in the 1970s that led to this article. I was pleased they displayed the dynamic style that I was partial to, soaring up many of the local problems with a graceful gymnastic exuberance. Superb athletes, both of them - fun to watch."

I climbed quite a few times with Bachar, and a lot with Largo. We were regular climbing partners from 1980-1985. Long and I did some memorable climbs together in Idyllwild, like the first free ascent of Stairway To Heaven (5.12a) on Tahquitz. Both Bachar and Long worked sporadically for my Vertical Adventures Climbing School as instructors/guides in the 1980's and into the 90's. 

Bachar's technique was flawless. His footwork was ultra-precise, something I've always tried to emulate. I've seen a lot of the world's best climbers, but I haven't seen anyone with better footwork than Bachar, or anyone as good at dynamic moves on boulders as Largo in his prime.

Bachar's ethics were very stringent (no rap bolting!) so when Scott Cosgrove showed up at Joshua Tree and started to rap bolt 5.13 sport routes, there was a conflict. In the late 80's both Bachar and Cosgrove were working for me as guides, and Bachar had removed the bolts from one of Scott's routes. Let's just say that there was a bit of awkwardness when they were both guiding on the same day and meeting clients at the same parking lot. (But no fisticuffs!) Later they became good friends again.

Alan Rubin wrote:

Lori, you are part of Joshua Tree--what grade you climb there is irrelevant.

Very well said!  
if that’s not part of a community, it’s not a community 

Alan Rubin wrote:

The Vulgarian v Appie 'thing' was about 15 years before your days in JT--though I'm sure you would have fit right in with the Vulgarian crew (who were still around--some still are today--but much more mellow, in the '70s). There actually is a book about the shenanigans in NY and New England---Yankee Rock and Ice by Guy and Laura Waterman. Not everyone's taste in writing style but a good read nonetheless. Of course these are (mostly) the PG rated stories--Rgold and others can undoubtedly tell some more interesting ones. Maybe I could even come up with a few. "The east' is a big area and there are definitely interesting tales from the mid-Atlantic and deeper South as well, but that is a different cast (or several different casts) of characters.

I started climbing at the Gunks in 1973. My partner/mentor was a French Canadian guy named Jean Guibord. When we saw that Vulgarian crew we turned tail and ran. Y'all were a scary bunch, especially to a couple of cute young boys   . After a while I got to do some climbing with Dick Williams, Chick Holtkamp, and Bob Yoho. That Yoho guy is still scary...  .

Ooooh, old DPH bolt hangers.  Thanks for posting those up.  I still have one of the bolts that Too Strong pulled off EBGBs when he rebolted it.  Dave was a materials engineer who worked for Bechtel at the San Onofre nuclear power plant monitoring the build of the last reactor built there.  He was convinced that 6061 T6 aluminum was strong enough for hangers, and he was right until people started falling on them over and over.  We certainly left a bunch of them around the park.  I would bet there aren't many, or any left.

Bachar and Largo and Shockley and Ricky and Tobin and Guy and Mike and Nick and Mariah and Dave and Bullwinkle and Jessica, etc. all hung out together every weekend in Josh.  We would be the vast majority of the people camping in Hidden Valley.  We kind of spread from 17 to 25 in age and all climbed together all the time.  Lots of us climbed together at Stoney on the week days.  It wasn't long before the sheep buggerers showed up and the Upland boys and quite a few others.  And then there were the Rubidoux boys like Kevin Powell and Henny and Muirs, etc. and Mike and Mari. And 'yes' it was extremely competitive.  It was just that Bachar was better than the rest of us for the most part although at the same time others put up harder routes.  It was a pretty glorious time to be a climber in JT and we spread out and to some degree took over climbing in most of the state.  At some point the Colorado boys and then the Euros started showing up.  I remember Skip Guerin climbed 5.12 routes in Josh barefoot. That was about the time I left Josh for a few years to go climb mostly in the Sierra with Herb instead so others would have better stories about that period.