Batso’s flagrant romantic liaisons are part and parcel of his legend. There may have even been a marriage back there somewhere, he says, but he’s not really sure. He did once co-author a book with a beautiful climber named Beryl Knaut (nicknamed “Beasto”), a longtime paramour who was said to be nearly his equal as a fun-hog. (His more-famous 1975 book, the hilariously irreverent Downward Bound: A Mad Guide to Rock Climbing, is an acknowledged mountaineering classic.) But as a lifelong nomad, following construction jobs up and down the length of California, as well as booming out to Alaska and Vietnam, he was never what you’d call domestic material.

“Never had a bad relationship, though, and I’ve always split amicably,” he claims. “But there always did seem to be a nice lady who needed to have her tent filled out.”

 Harding insists he’s not reclusive, but I can tell you it took some little sleuthing job to track him down to this fabled outpost in the Sierra foothills. I placed a lot of phone calls to his contemporaries like Rowell and Royal Robbins before I was lucky enough to get a telegram across his path. “What can I say?” he laughed when he finally called me from a pay phone. “I tend to disappear sometimes.” He was working on a construction crew building a prison near Copperopolis, he said, and I should come on up, we’d have some fun. We planned on meeting after he got off work, but it was raining like stink when I got here this morning, so he had the day off. We’ve been sitting here in this nearly-deserted resort motel bar since around 10 a.m., pounding back the malefic house plonk and watching the racing whitecaps out there on Tulloch Reservoir. And, yes, by God, we are having fun.