My Holy Trinity of Climbing Instruction Books

A REALLY old photo I took,  probably  from the late 70's. 

While recently sorting through some books in my library, I pulled three off the shelf that and I consider my Holy Trinity of Climbing Instruction Books; Basic Rockcraft (1971) and Advanced Rockcraft ( 1973) by Royal Robbins and Walt Wheelock’s Ropes, Knots and Slings for Climbers (1961).  Yes, I am that old!

I caught the climbing bug the summer of 1974, when I was 16, after being introduced to ropes, slings, carabiners and brake bars while rappelling sixty feet off a water tower, and overhearing the people who taught me how to rappel talking about their climbing adventures at Seneca Rocks, WV.  Soon after that first rappel, I somehow managed to acquire these three books, and along with some Goldline Rope, nylon webbing which I tied into diaper slings, carabiners and break bars, taught myself and some friends how to climb and rappel.

Basic Rockcraft and Advanced Rockcraft taught me theory as well as ethics.  While Robbins wrote about pitoncraft as well as nutcraft in Basic Rockcraft, I have never placed a piton. I came to climbing after the advent of the clean climbing movement, and Basic Rockcraft and Advanced Rockcraft gave me all the theory I needed to learn about placing clean protection.  The practice I gained from following other clean climbers and eventually leading.  Ropes Knots and Slings for Climbers rounded out my early climbing education, filling in any gaps not covered by Robbins.

My copies of these three classics are not originals.  I wore those out years ago and eventually replaced them.  Nearly forty years later, I have read many other climbing instruction books, but these three still stand out as holy writ, sacred works of climbing.  As I flipped through their pages, looking at the photos, diagrams and drawings, I was reminded of younger days when I dreamed of Yosemite and Everest, climbing heaven.

I learned how to lead scaling the walls of Seneca Rocks, WV, and have since climbed in New York’s Shawangunks and West Virginia’s New River Gorge as well as other smaller cliffs and crags.  I even free rappelled off West Virginia’s New River Bridge, through over 700 feet of thin air.

I never made it to Yosemite or Everest, although I still dream . . . someday. I never put up a new route.  But I have enjoyed rock.  I have loved rock.  I have worshiped rock, thanks to this Holy Trinity of Climbing Instruction Books.  Flipping through their pages, I could almost feel the rock under my hands and feet, feel the sun warming me and rock, feel the wind rustling trees and hair, smell the nearby pine trees, and the rock and lichens just inches from my nose.

About the June 2011 Header

Yep! That is yours truly, in the deep, deep past, the fall of 1976 to be exact. The photo is from my first climbing trip to Seneca Rocks, WV. OK, I know my gear and apparel were not the best, especially the construction style hard hat, but I was a poor freshman in college. CAMS had not yet invented. Goldline was still available as a climbing rope. Ah, those were the days.

About the October 2010 Header Photo

Looking back, I do not know how this scene, featuring Seneca Rocks, WV, has not appeared at the top of my blog before now. Sure, I featured part of Seneca as the March 2010 Header Photo, but that part of Seneca, a formation known as the Gendarme, no longer exists.

I first climbed at Seneca in the fall of 1976 and climbed there rather steadily the next three and half years. I have climbed off and on at Seneca ever since, but not often enough or as often as I would like or would have liked.

Unlike West Virginia’s New River George or New York’s Gunks, Seneca offers a true summit, the south summit. Once a climber attains it, the only way down is to rappel. Comprised of the same rock as the Gunks, whereas the Gunks lie horizontal to its bedding plane, offering long horizontal cracks, Seneca lies perpendicular its bedding plane, offering long vertical cracks, some a hundred feet long.

Because Seneca lies perpendicular to its bedding plane and rises from the surrounding area like a knife blade, it offers two main climbing faces, the eastern face which gets the morning light and the western face, pictured here, which receives the afternoon and evening light. The depression in the center is the Gunsight notch, where the Gendarme used to stand.

About the February 2010 Header Photo

It seems that I have been spending a lot more time around the ocean than I have in the mountains. Thus my “summit” photo stock is slim to nil while I have an overabundance of new and recent “shore” photos waiting to be featured. So for this month I have reched far back into the archives and selected a scanned image from what was probably a Kodak Instamatic color print. That is why it is so grainy.

That’s me on top of the Gendarme, a twenty-five foot pinnacle that used to stand guard in the Gunsight notch of Seneca Rocks, West Virginia. It was a classic Seneca climb until it came crashing to the ground in the late 1980’s.

The Gendarme was only a 5.4 climb, but the protection was a couple of old rusty pitons along the short pitch and two or three bolts on top. The first move involved stepping off solid rock over what seemed like a hundred feet of thin air in order to gain the face. While the route was easy to lead, with good holds, the climber still looked down between their legs and saw nothing but a hundred feet of air between them and the rock ledge below until the small summit was gained.

The photo was taken with my camera by my climbing partner at the time, Paul Estler, on the occasion of my first ascent (I would climb it a few more times over the next few years), March 6, 1977. Those were the days!

The Sights of the Falklands and the Sounds of Germany in Brooklyn, NY

On July 17, 2007, Marcus Demuth finished paddling a sea kayak around Ireland. On January 26, 2009, he successfully completed a circumnavigation of the Falkland Islands by kayak. In the wet and rainy early evening of Saturday, April 11, 2009 he successfully peddled his bike (photo top right) from his home in Brooklyn to the Sebago Canoe Club on Brooklyn’s Paerdegat Basin to talk about and present a slide show about his recent circumnavigation of the Falklands.

Saturday evening was my first opportunity to meet Marcus. A native of Germany who recently moved to New York City, his German accent betrays his soft spoken, polite, mild manner which can disarm any stranger but hints of the deep reserve of inner and physical strength that has been more than once tested on the open sea.

The Sebago Canoe Club is not the most high tech sort of place to present an expedition travelogue. The laptop with attached projector seemed just a little out of place next to the double 55-gallon drum wood stove with a fire burning inside to take the chill off the air. The white plastic tablecloth tacked to the wall as a make-shift projection screen seemed more appropriate. One or more of the four nautical charts of the Falklands that Marcus had taped to the wall with blue painter’s masking tape would occasionally fall down during his presentation. The plastic table-cloth screen also started to fall but was quickly re-tacked. Concessions consisting of tortilla chips, cheese, crackers, wine and local brews were free.

I thought the most startling visual aid was a map of the Falklands detailing mine fields left over from the Falkland’s War fought in 1982 between Argentina and the United Kingdom. (photo bottom right, not a photo of the war but a photo of the map). The slides, consisting mostly of scenes featuring penguins, treeless landscapes and vast ocean reminded me of scenes from the Outer Hebrides of Scotland, except there are no penguins in Scotland.

Marcus began his presentation with a short quiz. How far is it from Brooklyn to the Falklands? How many islands comprise the Falkland archipelago? How many people live in the Falklands? How many tourists visit the Falklands annually? The answers: Approximately 10,000 miles, 750 islands, 2,500 residents, and 500 tourists. After his presentation, which lasted about two hours, I was convinced that Marcus had met and befriended every one of those 2,500 Falklanders and probably knew them by name.

Seventeen people and two dogs attended the presentation, including some good folk visiting Sebago for the first time. Of the sixteen other people in attendance (not counting myself and Marcus) I had paddled with six of them.

The folksy, laid back presentation and slide show of an expedition reminded me of a similar experience more than thirty years ago. It was a seasonable summer evening. Several climbers were sitting in the dead-end road outside The Gendarme climbing shop at Seneca Rocks, West Virginia. After a day of climbing under the hot sun about two dozen climbers were drinking ice cold beer and watching an open-air slide show about an expedition to the Himalayas. It was an enjoyable evening spent with likeminded folk who shared a passion for climbing. Similarly, Saturday night’ s gathering at the Sebago clubhouse was an enjoyable evening spent with likeminded folk who share a passion for sea kayaking. These two experiences, one a summit slideshow and the other a shore slideshow are now inexorably wed in my memory as well as in this blog post.

Meet My New Friends (Sort Of)

It seems that I have been blogging a lot more about shores than summits. With the advent of spring, however, my thoughts are turning more and more to climbing in the Gunks as well as paddling on Jamaica Bay with the Sebago Canoe Club. Hoping to soon do some climbing, I recently purchased some Black Diamond Camelots, mechanical spring-load camming devices which come in a variety of sizes to fit a variety of crack widths. They remind me of “Friends”.

The first spring-load camming devices used for rock climbing were known as “Friends”. They were invented by Yosemite climber Ray Jardine in the late 1970s and intended to protect the valley’s smooth-sided cracks.

I started top roping at local crags in West Virginia and western Pennsylvania in the fall of 1974 and started leading at Seneca Rocks, WV in the fall of 1976. This was well after the start of the clean climbing movement. While using my partner's rack I led using primarily hexes and stoppers. I have never carried a rock hammer nor driven a piton though I have clipped into old ones for questionable pro.

Once I got bitten by the leading bug I purchased my own rack, filling it out in 1978 with Chouinard (the predecessor to Black Diamond) stoppers and hexes and a few other odds and ends. "Friends" had not yet hit the market so there was not a single one on my rack and I was leading on the vertical cracks of Seneca without them.

By the time “Friends” were invented and on the market I already had a full rack and could not justify the cost of adding what I considered unessential gear to my rack. I also thought their “mechanical” design detracted from the more pure passive pro. Hexes and stoppers seemed non-mechanical evolutionary developments from slung machine nuts and chock stones and thus more natural. “Friends” seemed too artificial and contrived, so from an ethical as well as financial standpoint I continued to climb, as occasional as it was, without any “Friends”.

Living with the decision not to add “Friends” to my rack, I continued to climb on and off at Seneca and the New River Gorge using only hexes and stoppers. In the summer of 2007 I moved to New York City and in the fall of 2008 started climbing in the Gunks. While leading 5.4 through 5.6 pitches in the Gunks I would still place only stoppers and hexes for pro but my young occasional climbing partner Bill used cams. After following and cleaning his leads I began to see how cams could provide a safety advantage and speed placing pro in the horizontal cracks of the Gunks, horizontal cracks where stoppers and hexes might not work.

I recently broke down and acquired some cams. A new generation of “Friends” is marketed by Wild Country but I opted for Black Diamond Camalots. I am partial to Black Diamond, the successor to Chouinard. When I acquired my first rack thirty years ago most of the hexes and stoppers were Chouinard and I had recently replaced them with Black Diamonds. I considered other cams but decided on Black Diamond Camalots and recently purchased three for my rack. Eventually I will probably be purchasing more.

Considering that a set of eleven Black Diamond stoppers can be purchased for around $85 but a single Camalot costs around $65, economics is still an issue. On the other hand, a Camalot can fit a wider range of cracks than any single stopper.

As the days grow longer and the weather warms, I hope to take my new Camalots (new “Friends” sort of) to the Gunks, lead a few pitches, and come home with old Camalots (old “Friends” sort of). It has taken me thirty years to make the acquaintance of these new “Friends” but hopefully we will become old "Friends" much more quickly.

On a side not, I am presently up to 99 “Friends” on face book and anxiously wonder who will be my 100th friends. To echo Mr. Rogers, “Won’t you be my friend?”