Larry Day stuff from KY Wilderness #3

[Ascentionist]

Here's a few random quotes that I thought were really...informative. Gives you an idea how climbing has changed since the '70s.

"LAYBACK LARRY
Seeing the lists of classics is a funny reminder of the huge holes in my climbing technique in my BMW (before moving west) period. Knowing little about jamming, and nothing about the wonders of tape, I face climbed the splitter crack section of Africa off to the right. The offwidth section of Dicey at Best went very nicely as a layback. In fact my first instinct was to layback most everything, resorting to other less strenuous techniques only when my trusty laybacking skills failed me.

ICE CLIMBING
How old were you in '77? There was some pretty big ice in the RRG back then and on the KY River palisades too. Problem was the tools were way primitive. Chouinard was marketing his piolet, ice hammer and climaxe as state of the art ice tools when they were none of the sort. They weren't bad as alpine tools but for vertical ice they sucked. Still, Henry Barber and co. climbed some insanely difficult routes in Norway with them (I'm still amazed). Anyway we had some awesome winters back then and we scratched our way up some of the frozen falls in the Gorge, mostly on top rope.
I moved west in Feb. of '77 and some of my old partners did some pretty impressive stuff down on the Kentucky River around '78 or '79. In the '80s I really got into vertical ice and did a bunch of the desperates in Colorado including big free hanging icecicles with difficult rock leading up to them. Still, sometimes I would lie in bed at night wondering how often the big waterfall up by Foxfire freezes from bottom to top. Once every fifty years? Every hundred? Or maybe as often as every ten or fifteen years? The only thing I'm sure of is that it must form from time to time. It's really high and would surely be one of the tallest free standing columns in the East. What do you think? Anyone else ever fantasize about this one?

CLIMBING FASHION
Shoes? That would be Vietnam War surplus jungle boots, purchased in downtown Lexington at the Army surplus store. I wore them to class, to work, out dancing, and on the rocks. 501 Levis, and a cotton shirt (with a wool sweater over it in the winter) completed the outfit. For the first few years I wore a Joe Brown climbing helmet. Once I felt like I truly understood the risks I began to wear the helmet selectively.

ON GEAR THEY USED
We had hexes,stoppers and full length 1" tubular slings (knotted).
We protected wide cracks, more or less, with Chouinard tube chocks, though I can't remember if we had any with us on the FA. I don't believe there were any sewn slings on the market and we had no knowledge of quick draws. While most of my friends climbed in big clunky hiking boots, I was pretty much "state-of-the-art" in Vietnam era jungle boots. Being a poor college student/hippie climber I wore this one pair of boots to school, to work (import auto mechanic) and out dancing on the weekends. They had an extremely wide welt and were totally mushy, but once the tread wore off the friction was reasonable. Needless to say edging was not part of my repertoir. I laybacked most all cracks other than offwidths and smeared footholds under the ball of my foot.

VINTAGE GEAR
Bought my first rack from the Kelty mail order catalog. Wore a harness tied from 3" flat webbing until I bought a "real" harness from Greg Lowe when Lowe was a tiny little outfit operating out Louisville, CO. Good thing I wore a helmet at first, 'cause this harness flipped me upside down every time I took a leader fall. Mom sewed my 60/40 parka from a Frostline kit. I sewed my own padded gear sling, and Bill Eidson sewed his own runners. Tom and Ellen Seibert even sewed their down bags and tent from a Frostline kit. Real do it yourselfers, Tom and Ellen built their own fiberglass kayaks, laying up the fiberglass and resin over hand carved styrofoam molds, then dissolving the styrofoam away with gasoline. I bought my first rope at the Gendarme in WV, then replaced my Vietnam surplus jungle boots with EBs purchased at Steve Komito's in Estes Park on my second climbing trip out west. A few people made cleaning tools out of shelf brackets and by the late '70s some of the smarter nut cases I was climbing with in California were building their own Friends from scratch because they could do them for way cheaper than the $22 each they were going for at the mountain shops!

ON SANDBAGGING
In climbers parlance to sandbag is to intentionally mislead another by deliberately understating either the difficulty or the danger of a recommended route. One would presumably engage in such "entertainment" so that the sandbagger might enjoy the misery and possible misfortune of the sandbagee, while at the same time the sandbagger acquires a reputation as one hard mother.
In actual practice the art of sandbagging ranges from the harmless (the local who cruises a hideously difficult boulder problem with exaggerated ease for the benefit of visiting climbers "Here's a nice warm up problem") to the despicable (friends of mine were once sicked on a new route in Yosemite "Oh man it's a classic, you gotta do it" only to discover too late that the crux was a completely unprotected 5.11 slab that was 60 meters belay to belay and hundreds of feet off the deck. When the rope ran out, Randy was still 30 feet below the next station. With no intermediate anchors, his partner unclipped from the belay and they simulclimbed until they reached the next anchor. It was a damned miracle they didn't die.) In a classic instance of Karma at work, the perpetrator of this sick joke "took the big ride" himself a couple of years later.
So, as far as sandbagging in the Gorge goes, I plead not guilty. It's true we were using Seneca as a general standard. Most of us had never climbed in the Gunks but we understood that the ratings there were pretty stiff. We weren't trying to be falsely modest either, but with a rating scale that only had four grades above 5.7 we figured we'd better not rate the stuff we were doing too highly. It wasn't until we started travelling west that we realized some of the Seneca grades were stiff to the point of being laughable. We used to set around and speculate as too the reasons for this. I have a few good theories, but won't go into that now. So in general I'd say that the ratings of classic routes in the Gorge were pretty consistent with other eastern routes of the same era (if not quite as wacky as some of the more obscure Seneca routes).
So while I must confess that I do enjoy the sandbagger reputation, it really ain't so.
I give my vote for the best grading system ever devised to the one developed by the late great Alan Bard, who recognized only three grades:
Easy
Hard
Too hard for Bard

ON CLEAN CLIMBING AND PROGRESS
Generally, I'd say there was very little climbing going on in the Gorge during the heyday of the pin in the 50's and 60's. Most of the early climbers in the Gorge were also cavers and were pretty comfortable with the notion of slithering up relatively easy wide cracks with little or no pro. As cavers they were also experienced bolters, thus the odd bolt here and there on some of the earliest routes.
When I started climbing in the early 70's we were under the influence of two conflicting currents. One was the heroics of Yosemite's big wall era, the other was the clean climbing ethic as espoused by Robbins, Chouinard and others. Back then the "old school" was using pins and bolts, while we of the radical "new school" adopted nuts, slings, and such as the only acceptable means of protection. This new ethic swept through the ranks of local climbers very quickly, sparing the cracks of the RRG from pin scars almost completely. Being one of the most outspoken proponents of the "leave no trace" ethic, I was at the same time almost tortured by what I saw in the Gorge. Everywhere I looked I saw big overhanging audacious routes of almost unbelievable beauty. I knew the Gorge was chock full of my kind of climbs ( I've often joked that 5.11 bucket routes were my specialty), and I just knew that I could do them, but there was no one to do them with! At the time I was finding it impossible to recruit partners for a serious go at most of the routes I wanted. Even given a willing partner, we'd have been on our own as far as protection goes. The bolts that were currently being used on granite, 1/4" rawls for pro and 3/4" rawls for belays would have been entirely inadequate. In Colorado Springs they were drilling holes and pounding in angles. This seemed more than a little bit crude as well as technically questionable in the wet environment of the Gorge. In Dresden Germany, and in Czechoslovakia they were using huge eye bolts that were placed way far apart, producing extremely bold overhanging pocket routes. This seemed rather sporting to me and was more the approach I favored. I sometimes wonder if I had I remained in the area long enough to meet Greg Smith might the history of RRG sport climbing have taken a somewhat different path. All this was kind of theoretical for me anyway as my personal bottom line was that I wasn't much interested in drilling holes while there were unclimbed cracks everywhere. Eventually the frustration of what seemed like never ending rain combined with the allure of the West lead me away from the RRG."

-Larry Day (from www.kywilderness.com)

[merrick]

that is so cool. a view into another world. i wonder if cimbing will change that much again in the next 25 years...somehow I doubt it.

[ynot]

Too hard for Bard. Hehe Can I use that?

[lordjim_2001]

ON SANDBAGGING

... It wasn't until we started travelling west that we realized some of the Seneca grades were stiff to the point of being laughable. We used to set around and speculate as too the reasons for this. I have a few good theories, but won't go into that now. So in general I'd say that the ratings of classic routes in the Gorge were pretty consistent with other eastern routes of the same era ...

You got me curious on why you think why the Seneca grades are stiff. If you have the time to type it out I know I'd like to hear your theories.

Matt

[L K Day]

I guess the first question is are they stiff? At 5.11 and above, probably not, as these routes were put up in relatively recent times after climbers became very well travelled. But at the lower grades things seemed to be tough to say the least. Though it's been a long time since I've climbed at Seneca I remember one climb in particular (Prune was it's name I believe) that was rated 5.5 and felt more like solid 5.8. When I asked Markwell about it all he would say was "Nobody knows where Prune is". So maybe I was just lost, or maybe not, it sure looked like the line in the guide book photo. But as for my theories... One is the Island Syndrome - Cut off from the rest of the world you simply have nothing to compare with, and thus cautiously establish your own standards. At least equally likely I think is the Modesty Syndrome - " Man, that was so hard I nearly puked, but I bet it's not even close to what they're doing Out West. What do you think, 5.8?"

[J-Rock]

5.7

[L K Day]

You got it.

[Alan Evil]

So Calypso III being rated 5.2 isn't a case of sandbagging? Seems to me that a 5.2 means there is no point on the climb you can't stand on both feet with no hands like that line to the right of Cflat/Bsharp. Consensus puts CIII at 5.5 which seems to be more on.

Heh heh, this may be the first time ever on this site the difference between low rated routes has been discussed. We get plenty of 5.12a v. 5.12b but 5.5 v 5.6 is ignored.