Q: What was your hairiest rappel?
A: With Charlie Fowler I climbed the Left Wall of Cenotaph Corner in 1984. It rained most of the day, and the rock was wet and slimy. Everything was more difficult than normal. At the top, we rappelled down the actual corner. I went first. The wet rope became heavy and gnarled down near the bottom. I could do nothing to untangle it. I was very skilled at solving such problems, but this one was very bad. I was near the end of the two ropes. And while I couldn’t find any type of perch on the slippery rock to stabilize myself so as to work at the knotted mess, it was such a knot that it could also easily pop loose suddenly, in which case I might well have gone right off the end of the rope and a few hundred feet down the gritstone massif. It felt like a miracle when I figured it out at last, at the point my hands were almost too exhausted to hold onto the rope a minute longer.
Q: How big of a storm have you weathered?
A: I’ve been on a flatcar in a snowstorm, coming home from Yosemite, and that was a fierce blizzard and bitterly cold. I’ve been stormed off Longs many times. I should have made the first ascent of half a dozen routes on the Diamond, but for some wicked storm coming strong and hard and freezing our hands and not leaving, as does the normal afternoon storm. Dalke and I, at age 14 and 15, were caught in a bad, sudden snowstorm right at the top of the Yellow Spur, in Eldorado. Snowflakes the size of baseballs were hitting us in the face, and wind blew the ropes straight up above us when we tried to throw them down the wall to rappel. I’ve never endured anything like the storms mountaineers suffer in the Himalayas.
Q: That trad gear – does it hold falls?
A: Yes trad gear holds falls and probably better than some of the fixed bolts that erode after a time. I have always trusted my natural gear, though I rarely fell. I have caught many people who did fall on such gear, though. If placed correctly it is perfect for what it’s supposed to do.
Q: What is the oldest pair of rock shoes you have sitting in the back of your closet? Why do you keep them?
A: At times as a starving artist, you do what you must. In a moment of absolute poverty one day I sold all my climbing shoes to some store that recycles sports equipment. The gods must have been watching, because the next day or so Luisa Iovane and Heinz Mariacher sent me from Italy a pair of their new Sportiva prototypes. I guess I had paid enough dues in life, had karma sufficient, that I was worthy of a pair of climbing shoes.
Q: Ever climb with rock shoes and socks?
A: No, I have always worn clothes also.
Q: Hexes or cams?
A: My friend Tom Frost designed hexes when he was the designer for Chouinard, so they have to involve some kind of brilliant conception. Cams work well too, but I prefer hexes to the smaller cams. Hexes are very aesthetic. Of course I love any type of “Friend,” if that fits into the category of cam. Friends are wonderful. I once knew a fellow named Cam, and I liked him.
Q: Best climbing book you’ve ever read?
A: I suppose “Starlight and Storm,” by Rebuffat, suffices as one of the highest examples of fine, enduring writing.
Q: Best quote from another climber?
A: In the mid 1960s I received a letter from Layton Kor, from Yosemite. At the end of his somewhat frenzied report of various climbs and scary runouts, and death cracks, etc., he offered the fatherly advice, “Be sure to use lots of protective pitons. Climbers lead a hard and lonely life, and it only takes one fall to end everything.”
