Soft Kor

Climbing is one of the few disciplines in which you can literally walk (well, climb) in the footsteps of the masters. If you brought your own paintbrush into Spain’s Reina Sofía Museum and started tracing Picasso’s “Guernica,” you’d be arrested. But as climbers, we can pull on the same holds John Bachar used on the Bachar- Yerian or do Sharma’s heroic full-body dyno on Es Pontas—theoretically, anyway.

We can also walk the same lines as the legendary Layton Kor, who put up scores of visionary first ascents in the Utah desert, Eldorado Canyon, the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, Rocky Mountain National Park, Yosemite Valley, and dozens of other crags and alpine faces across the continent during a decade-long frenzy beginning in the late 1950s. Kor has acquired mythological status through his infinite energy and courage, especially on steep, rotten, terrifying terrain.

Fortunately, you don’t have to climb loose, unprotected 5.10 offwidths in the Black Canyon or nail up muddy walls in the Fisher Towers to paint in Kor’s brushstrokes. Here are seven classic, safe-enough moderates, courtesy of the legendary “Hard Kor.”

The Hook
(5.8, two pitches)
Gate Buttress, Little Cottonwood Canyon, Utah

Although relatively small at only two pitches, The Hook brought together two of American climbing’s larger-than-life first ascensionists: Kor and Fred Beckey. Reach this trad climb via Schoolroom (5.6), Schoolroom Direct (5.7), or Bushwhack Crack (5.8)—but make no mistake, you’re here for The Hook, the aesthetic, quintessentially Kor flake that makes up most of the first pitch. When the flake ends, face climb right and then up to the belay—clip the bolt added by other climbers, or skip the clip and climb it with an “R” rating as Kor did. The final pitch ascends a wide 5.5 crack to a shelf, where you can downclimb to a rappel. Savor the green-and-granite views of Little Cottonwood Canyon, sublime in autumn or at sunset.

• Kor Says: “The Hook—I don’t remember it. You should call Fred Beckey. He remembers everything he’s ever climbed.”
• FA: Kor and Fred Beckey, 1961
• Gear: Standard rack
• Approach: Drive 1.25 miles from the neon road-conditions sign at the intersection of Highway 210 and Highway 209 and park. Follow the trail west of the north-side parking pullout through the Gate Boulders. Past the boulders, where the trail forks, take the right fork and head east to the base of the Schoolroom routes.
• Guidebook: Rock Climbing the Wasatch Range, by Stuart and Bret Ruckman ($35, falcon.com)