Utahclimbers.com

Holy Shit – I seriously had to look at that picture a couple times before I could convince myself it was really me. That’s awesome! Check out those leg warmers …

Was that Vegas or the Tanks?

Of course you know the gauntlet’s thrown down now (although it’s going to be seriously hard to beat that one).

Hueco Tanks '86 baby. With Francois. Remember picking him up at the INS holding tank in El Paso?

I've been looking through old slides and it's amusing. If you can't find more embarrasing lycra shots of me, you're not trying hard enough...

John, Drew, good thing you guys climbed so good cuz you needed help with your lycra style. No points there.


I was rather proud of these tights. Note that I was really with it and didnt go for the socks thing.

BackClip

That looks like a whillans. Developed supposedly for the brits ascent of the South Face of Annapurna, or so I remember reading in the rags. Dude, that was the killer harness of the late 70's, looks like stormy may have been late if that is a Whillans. The Whillans that ruckman and I wore only had a single strap through the crotch. When Bret and I were doing the Fin Arete, Bret took a winger. I was belaying him and after Bret was hanging there he was screaming in agony. I thought he must have hit his head but after Bret regained his composure he said it was the frickin strap that caught him wrong. Everytime I put the damn thing on after that I remembered that. It did not take us long to get different harnesses....

So to post pics do I need to have them on the internet first? I will try and dig some pics up. Renew the interest so to speak in getting some people to post up. I am back on Night Shift for a while so I gots some time...

Gary, do you still have those tights? They are styling dude and they’re back in fashion, you should wear them next time you’re out climbing… or golfing with Drew.

Yes the harness was indeed a Whillans. It was Karen Madigan’s harness so I’m not really sure why I was wearing it.

The Whillans harness – “once described as designed to safely transport beer-guts to great height”. It sucked for rock climbing, but it was great for glacier-skiing and ice climbing because you could put it on without taking your skis/cramps off. And let’s face it, back then with the shitty screws we used, if you fell ice climbing you were fcked anyway. The last thing you worried about was the strap between your legs.

Now that is STYLIN'

Is there a guaranteed performance increase in my climbing abilities if I wear some fashionable lycra while I climb? Is that the secret I've been looking for all along?

I'm a little curious about Bill Robins. Upon looking through the guidebook, I've noticed that he was extreemly active; however a good percentage of his routes seem like death routes.

I'm all for bold routes. I think you guys did an excellent job in the development of LCC concerning the mix of bold and well protected routes. I like having routes in the canyon like Paranoia Streak that I can aspire to lead someday. It just seems like he crossed that fine line between bold and insane.

colbyw, dont expect too much out of the clothes. my tites were way more stylin than db's and stormies but alas, I couldnt climb at the same technical level. So long as I stayed on 5.8 the chicks were all over it though! Sadly, in those days there were not too many women climbers.

I did not know Bill Robins too well. I met him several times and I am sure that most would say he was a bit eccentric. He was definitely against rapp bolting, that just was not his gig. While I might disagree with the word insane, Bill really did do a lot of scary LCC slabs. I dont know Tony Calderone, but it does seem like there are parallels in terms of runout routes. The dude went for it.

Sadly, Bill joins a list of former Wasatch Climbers who gained some notoriety but are no longer with us. He was killed in Bolivia in 2002. Strange coincidence, I moved to the Tricities of eastern Washington where he lived in 2003, about 1 year after his death, and my girlfriend works for the same research lab at Hanford. While his routes in LCC were quite notorious, he was even more notorious up here. There is a basalt pile called Frenchman's Coulee, where Bill put up a bunch of new routes ground up while many were rapp bolting. The place is full of choss and while fun, some of it is definitely questionable in terms of rock quality.

Here is actually a pretty good article about his antics in Washington and pretty well describes Bill.
http://www.tri-cityherald.com/news/2002/1201/Story1.html

One of my favorite excerpts:
When climbing, he usually wore white painter pants, a long-sleeved, tie-dyed shirt and a cap with a sun cloth hanging in back. He looked like a psychedelic French Foreign Legionnaire.

In Utah, he always wore a white, long sleeved dress shirt. Definitely counter to the Lycra of the day.

Here is a web site about his climbs at Frenchman Coulee.
http://users.owt.com/wrobins/

While I may not have agreed with all of his tactics, you got to hand it to Bill, he stuck to his beliefs and pushed himself on unknown ground.

Here is a shot of him soloing a 5.8 route at the Coulee in his Converse all stars. This route is about 40 feet from where the Swede Goran Kropp died. He was the dude who biked to Everest from Sweden, carrying all of his own sh&& then soloed Everest the year of the last big Everest Tragedy.

His untimely death is truly tragic.

Thanks for posting that article Gary. The article definitely explains him and his character well.

I don't know if you noticed this on his website, but I thought it was pretty funny.

Bill Robins' views of rap bolting:
http://users.owt.com/wrobins/view.html?rappelbolting.jpg

I wish I could directly post the picture in this post, but I have no idea how this stuff works.

Aren't you suppose to save the picture somewhere on this site first before you use the "IMG" tags?

You don't need to post the pic here.

Just right click on the photo (wherever it is), select "properties", then copy the "Address".

Then when you post in here, do the "IMG" thing and paste the address in.

Like this:

or like this

img src=copy image location here

just add a< at the begining and a > at the end

Those tights didnt survive the desert. Also, I just took up golfing and I suck. I think there is a course here that prohibits me drivin their carts.

Another night shift has given me a chance for more lies….

The Wasatch has been home to many great climbers. I got the chance to climb with one of LCC’s most famous pioneers one day. My friend Dean Hannibal called me in the spring of 1984 and asked if I could go climbing with one of his buddies who was coming to town, George Lowe. Dean had promised to go with him and had something else come up so he was trying to round up a partner for George. I am way past any hero stage in my life, with the exception of George. I blew off work so I could climb with him. I picked George up and while he seemed pretty easy going there was an intensity about the guy. Just by being with him you kind of knew that he could not sit still for long. He said he wanted to climb something he had not done before but was pretty new in the 10-11 range. Gordon’s Hangover Direct had recently been free climbed by Steve Hong and the initial beta I had was that it was 5.11R, and the crux was protected with RP’s. I had not ever been on it so I figured it was a good one for George and I (maybe I could put George to the test!).

I am still not sure how I got the sharp end, but my plans to see George in his element backfired. That climb is really not too bad except for a couple moves. I got up there and hesitated for a pretty long time. When I finally pulled the moves off, I was psyched. I remember those moves as being very strange and tenuous, not like an obvious pull down or anything. While the pro was a little thin it did not seem all that bad either. As I belayed George I was impressed with the speed and surety of his moves. He did not hesitate at all on the crux and he just climbed right through the sucker like it was 5.7. Made me kind of feel like sh**. George said, “Good lead, I would not have had the patience and probably would have fallen by just going for it on lead!” I said thanks and knew that he would have hiked it on lead.

The next climb we did was Catalyst , 5.10+. It had an awesome undercling (very sustained) followed by a powerful move over an overhang. In those days I remember being in the undercling dinking with some stoppers for pro. It was very strenuous and with small CAM’s pro would be simple. George’s lead. I was a bit surprised that George struggled with this a bit, but back then I think George was more in shape for Himalayan peaks that strenuous rock climbs. Nevertheless, he got through the undercling after taking a fall and then cruised the 5.10 crack section above. George climbed fast and efficiently, that is the one thing that I learned from him. No wasted movement, throw the piece in and go. Some of those folks on RC.com who analyze everything down to the rats ass, triple up on pro for 5.7 and debate over minutia would learn a lot from George. I guess when you are on the North face of Alberta with a small rack there is not much time to f*** around, just go for it.

Unfortunately for present day LCC climbers this route is no longer there (they fell off one winter). Old Reliable and Catalyst were really awesome routes that offered something lacking in LCC, steep crack climbing in the 10 range. Old Reliable was my first 5.10 on sight (only I fell off 3 times). That was about 25 years ago and this dude who authors guidebooks sandbagged me into it. I won’t mention names but BR called and told me he had followed Merril up it. “It is a good onsight Gary, its like 10a and the moves are all pretty easy!” I am sure that he did not want to sand bag me but if you are a fledgeling 5.10 leader who likes to brake into things easy, and you have very little natural ability and strength, Old Reliable was not a good choice.

What he didn’t tell me was that it had two cruxes and it was a totally go for it climb. The first crux involved getting into a committing lieback with a bolt then making a few hard moves and then the damn flake you are using disappears and you ended up in tenuous terrain. The second crux was an awesome finger crack about 1” through a roof. We did not have cams but I had an SMC Cam lock, I guess the best way to describe it is it is kind of like a manky tricam. I had got it from some dude in the parking lot who was selling gear. I should have replaced his perlon but that costs money. Anyway, that was my key piece. The belayer cant see the leader there so when I went for it and fell, I think there was some slack going cuz it was about a 30 footer. I took one more fall then pulled through the roof. YEAH! Damn, that was a far different climb than LCC slabs. When BR came up he showed me the cam lock. The perlon had torn through the sheath and all the lil white fibers were tryin to escape. Damn.

Nip and Tuck was another climb that used to exist between Catalyst and Old Reliable. In the early 80’s I wanted to know how to aid climb so I tried Nip and Tuck (Old A3+) one day. An example of the camaraderie in those days was that Merril, Bret Chris Pendleton and I were supposed to climb together. Why in gods name anyone would then choose to do an aid route is beyond me, especially a newbie aider. Three guys watchin and one cryin. There was a huge roof on the route and that went pretty well. The upper headwall had some really weird hardware that Les had put in. I yanked a piece of it out and as I fell past the overhang my leg entwined in the rope coming up from the belayer. That gave me about an 18” rope burn spiraling around my leg. Those are damn nasty things to heal.

Sorry you guys don’t have those routes anymore. I think Nip and Tuck may have gone free before the whole thing fell off….

Nice man, keep spinning out those stories. I went up to IME and have tried to talk Merrill into sharing some of his stories but he just shrugs. He will tell me and I will listen, but as far as typing away at a computer... I don't think that is his thing.