Recollections of the FFA of the Left Side of the Hourglass
Peter Haan
Hourglass
周eter Haan
Revisions through 12/2/2003
It was the summer of 1971 a year after the National Guard had seized
Yosemite Valley briefly during the Stoneman Meadow Fourth of July
riots. The Guardsmen stood menacingly at the park entrance with their
deadly rifles for a couple of days, while the innocent paradise behind
them which they thought to guard, gleamed onwards, unknowing and
eternal. For a decade already, the country had been in the grips of
its historic battle for civil rights and the terrible war in Southeast
Asia. These struggles permeated everything. I had been out of
college for about as long---a year--- and had been climbing a
tremendous amount at most every opportunity then wintering in Santa
Cruz for the big surf, my other passion. I had escaped the draft via
an incipient hernia, that to this day still has not emerged in full.
Without knowing my diversion would be so easy, I had prepared a
conscientious objector's position, and had even planned on Canada.
Following my first solo ascent of the Salathe Wall early July of that
year, life's big questions re-appeared all too soon. The El Capitan
solo had been a massive undertaking and experience. I had arrived on
the summit 5-1/2 days later, twenty pounds lighter, briefly unable to
neither recognize my friends Bridwell and Klemens nor understand the
expressions on their faces. And yet I was still powerful and thought
I could go onwards and upwards, forever. I had not seen a human for
what seemed a lifetime; I had nearly left everything behind. Level
ground was also strange after so many days in the realm of the
vertical; reaching the top, I was content to finally stop ascending
and quietly walk away, and what seemed magically, tread softly into
the primeval forest towards my home, an aging VW bus temporarily
parked by Bridwell for us a few miles away at a remote campground
above the rim of the Valley. In the ensuing weeks my strength returned
while I was shedding the bark-like skin and calluses from my
brutalized hands, and the fear that nothing had really changed began
again. So my gaze was lifted once more, to what, I didn't know. It
was also a question of creativity: what could I see in this art that
others had not?
This vertical rock world of Yosemite, for all its natural violence,
sublime drama, and world-class human provincialism, symbolized more
and more, how I actually felt inside. Very little was comfortable and
the beautiful granite shrieks surrounding me had come to symbolize
something more than lifeless random features of the natural world.
On my rest days, lying by the river in the mother sun, I could find
simple joy for a few hours and such days seemed as if this must be how
life should play out, idling upon a river beach with all the time in
the world; in a world that loved me and went on forever. But
within---just below the surface---still worked away a strange young
agony, terrible longing and sense of unbelongingness that had been
subtly mounting for years and would not stop. And I could recognize
this obsessive dilemma in many of my other climbing colleagues. It
was pushing me towards some unknown but exquisite edge, my body some
fine instrument, longing and preparing in its peak years to play its
own ultimate ferocious music upon those Valley walls. And in my
personal life, I was unloved, unpartnered, sleeping alone, really
adrift in society uncherished, a strong young thing in pain,
marginalized.
When at the age of 23, I then made the first free ascent of the left
side of the Hourglass later that Fall, this little-known but gorgeous
aid climb quietly became the first or second unrehearsed 5.11 free
climb in Yosemite and American history. Done 32 years ago, this
dangerous ascent was climbing that has rarely been seen in America but
was nonetheless very expressive of those times. Hopefully this highly
detailed and emotional recollection will capture the spirit of that
strange, bold era and some of the private, termitic moments that
occurred to many of us after the Golden Age of Yosemite Climbing had
subsided, during those nebulous few years leading into what Bridwell
titled in his article from that dawning period, "The Brave New World"
of current modern climbing. Understand that our sport and art had
reached a certain critical mass given the simple equipment and frankly
primitive techniques we had and several of us were making ultimate
efforts, living in deepest commitment, searching, not just slothfully
hiding in a subculture stunned and powerless.
Without knowing it, our efforts had their context, really, in the Beat
movement and the angst of our enormous social and political struggles
of the time; and in those days very very few people, and mostly just
men, were climbing. Hardly any serious climbers had interest in
material things or fame. Many of us lived in our crummy old cars,
campers, and tents year around. It did not matter what we had, but
only what we were doing with our time here on earth and as far from
authority and a laughably banally corrupt modern civilization as
possible, with Yosemite promising to be our spiritual center towards
which to kneel. There it was, practically a heaven on Earth,
originally a long-kept secret of the Indians until the mid-nineteenth
century. In the previous decades, these same beliefs, freshly
thrashed by the experience of the two World Wars, had been the origin
of the Beat movement, spawning a really poignant phase of American
art, music and literature.
This was also the beginning of modern speed climbing and the radical
unroped free-soloing movement that really flourish today. Soloists
had discovered along the way that by transcending equipment---leaving
it all behind and just simply climbing with shoes and a chalk bag,
they climbed at their critical peak and much was revealed to them only
in this way. Imagine the excruciating aesthetics and vistas, from
thousands of feet above, while completely shorn of equipment! It was
long before cams, ingenious wide crack protection, and sticky shoes;
long before climbing comfort and protocol finally became almost
oppressive and perhaps now masking a few of the secrets past eras had
discovered. For decades, progress in the climbing art was not towards
safety (as it later turned out to emphasize so strongly) but into ever
more transcendent flights of self-risk and existential knowledge with
less and less equipment, more and more awareness and inexplicable
power.
After my ascent, and typical of other climbers before me, the
accomplishment and rite of passage were partly why I could finally bow
out of the central camp scene and its infinite loop of harder and
harder climbing. I especially was thinking of Gervasutti and Terray.
So at last I could be released from its interminable social struggles
and the great trouble that being in the vanguard spelled for each of
us. Perhaps thus enlightened, I turned to new thoughts and still
deeper ways of looking at my life, as I grew older. You have asked so
here is my story. Here for the first time in the many seasons that
have intervened, I have finally written about this moment in my youth
and what took place, unknown to the rest of the world that quiet
afternoon in September 1971, in an obscure little spot at the edge of
the forest near Ribbon Falls. This radiant, complex, and astounding
memory has since been with me privately almost every hour and in ways
served for me as an armature for so many situations to come, even
though three decades have transpired, and my powers have subsided and
I have long since disappeared from the central climbing scene.
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In the second year of my climbing and already committed to the sport,
I had found a way to organize and approach life that would be entirely
my own while growing up in Berkeley. Basically a fifteen-year-old
climbing fanatic already disinterested in the social gyrations of that
era, I was taken to the Hourglass, a gorgeous 350-ft tall, uniquely
monolithic flake on the vertical wall of the Ribbons Falls East
Buttress. It was 1964; the huge Valley faces floating ethereally and
mass-less around us truly terra incognita, completely mysterious and
mostly unclimbed. And for me, it was my first real encounter with
advanced climbing, hanging belays in bay trees, bright orange
overhanging cracks, gigantic polished granite walls, and even the
curious, powerful fragrances of these nearly sacred places.
Frank Sacherer had recently freed the imposing right side aid route
but this drew little attention. Les Wilson and Max Heinritz who
really liked obscure nailing adventures, wanted to climb this feature
out in the boondocks still entirely by aid with weird devices we had
invented, called Crackjacks! The effort of course was completely a
personal outing of ours with no relation really to what was actually
developing in American climbing. I remember now nearly forty years
later, walking by the even more dramatic left side route then and
thinking as a fifteen-year-old does, here was where the real climbers
had been. This left side was a notorious A4 aid route of great
difficulty and peril in that the first pitch with the wide cracks and
big roof in those days had to be nailed for many feet with pairs of
bongs back-to-back, crosswise, and slung, an enormous house of cards.
Bob Kamps, the first ascent leader, was a formidable climber and
worked on this pitch forever obviously in a great deal of peril. I
think it might have even gone on for more than one day. Pratt
proclaimed in the late 60's this route was the last remaining
important free climbing problem in Yosemite. Although he was hugely
wrong, the statement places this climb in context. I am not even sure
if it had had a second aid ascent before my party appeared to climb it
free one morning, nine years later. This majestic climb had been
completely ignored for the thousands of other climbs closer in. And
yet I had seen it, and begun to identify with it, all by itself out
there in the woods.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
The three of us arrived at the base of this dramatic feature, after an
hour balancing up the steep talus, past hulking odorous bear caves and
through the many oaks shielding an overwhelming view of an enormous
glistening cliff ahead. We had been skirting the creekbed that runs
from the thunderous and deep 1000-foot portal of Ribbon Falls; hardly
anyone ever goes up here---the other cliffs closer to the road get all
the attention. The feeling of autumn had not quite come, but the
suffocating heat of a Valley summer had just left a few days ago. It
had been a really big year for me, and I was deeply wondering about so
many things. I was even tired of it all, dispirited, with nowhere to
go, and yet paradoxically climbing at my very peak. My powers had
never been greater. Was climbing colorful enough to make a whole
life? Could I just go from here and fill up the rest of my years with
this art? I was no longer certain, but had counted on climbing to mean
everything important; it was beginning to seem that the center did not
hold (Yeats) and all kaleidoscopically gyrated away into where?
And too, the ever-increasing extremism of our climbing had me worried,
as it seemed it could ultimately lead to only one thing,
asymptotically, nihilistically. As we hiked the slopes leading to the
climb, I began to turn inward, collecting myself for what I knew would
be undoubtedly the most serious lead of my life. We hardly spoke at
all. Already I sensed there was some kind of end to this all.
So finally at our rendezvous atop steep brushy pedestals, the immense
left side of this monolithic hourglass-shaped flake hung above,
spiraling and soaring for nearly 400 feet on the Falls' East Buttress,
a much larger, vertical to overhanging wall, the whole awesome
shimmering image finally disappearing out of sight 700 feet above,
everything in sight consisting of the finest granite in Yosemite, not
even one loose pebble all those static feet somehow soaring above. At
our backs was one of the great vistas of Yosemite: the immense face
of El Capitan, the Leaning Tower profile and the Cathedral Rocks and
Spires, all this from a unique angle and elevation.
We could see the leader would start off above a very disturbing
chopper flake stuck in the ground, sharp, tall and upright---such an
chilling artifact! Climbing a 50-ft steep left-facing offwidth
(5.10a/b) to a very old single 1/4" compression bolt on the vertical
main wall awkwardly located behind his back, he would then encounter
the imposing roof. We figured clipping into this bolt correctly would
be a really unique, irritating problem, as the leader has to then spin
around in the opposite direction while tenuously leaving the offwidth
to face and then instantly undercling, the six inch roof crack,
without any starting footholds and one's center of gravity several
feet below the underclinging edge, stuffed under the 4-ft thick roof.
The bolt had been put there near all these wide cracks for Kamps'
desperate aid lead of nearly a decade before. Arranging the spin
successfully, the leader would then strenuously climb this dead
vertical feature to the left---maybe 15 ft to the one and only
foothold. It was a poor slanting polished edge, where nowadays he
would put in modern protection for wide cracks, with the roof
continuing left another eight feet more.
Underclings are climbed not by simply putting your feet right below
your hands and pulling like hell, but by an artful process of complex
shifting rhythmic balance and great fluid power, picking out small
smears---some low, some very high, as there is always a "best place"
on natural rock---on the main wall for the feet, and actually moving
quickly in a very expressive, surprisingly set-and-release sort of way
to avoid the omnipresent issues of a self-imposed and simplistic
energy crisis. Almost always this is the secret to underclings, not
allowing yourself to get locked up by the basic position but using
speed, rhythm, stemming, friction, as ghastly, tenuous and
contradictory as that might seem at the moment, especially if one's
hands have to be far above one's body.
From the one little rest edge that we could see from below, the leader
would resume this underclinging and continue left to turn the corner.
He would convert to relentless liebacking of the edge which at this
point has now become, weirdly, a delicate white fin in a region of the
climb that is smooth as glass from serving as a water course since
time out of mind. Looking up I really worried I would break the
fragile fin off pulling hard on it, so I knew I would have to try to
modify my use of it to prevent disaster on lead by reaching deeply
around it to reduce leverage, spending even more precious energy in an
even weirder climbing posture.
I could not assume anything; it was all new country. Ascending this
feature for about 10 ft, we thought the leader finally might be able
to swing into an overhanging offwidth and stance on top of the fin.
At this point, at least 30 ft of rope would be out from the old single
1/4" bolt located well below and far to the right under the roof.
That bolt is perhaps 40 ft above the chopper flake and the ground a
little further. A fall from just left of the rest edge would mean a
savage pendulum back towards the chopper flake and any higher up, a
cratering free fall to the ground. I thought the worst thing that
could happen to me would be that I would live if a fall occurred.
Such situations did exist to some extent already in Yosemite cracks,
but only rarely and not to this extreme. The incomparable ascent of
the Twilight Zone by Chuck Pratt had established a somewhat similar
peril, with the Zone's chopper flake smiling just below the second
pitch crutch and the twenty-five feet of hard 5.10d overhanging
offwidth above. Many of Chuck's other ascents presented the same
issue: to ascend them you had to be ready to leave everything behind
and wriggle through some spiritual portal of terrible beauty and
rhythm, hopefully emerging cleansed, transported and living.
Again looking up, we saw that from the offwidth stance on top of the
fragile fin, the climbing although more conventional would be still
quite significant, overhanging, and could easily become the cause of a
disastrous fall for a tired or uncareful leader, oblivious on some
level, tricked by its subtleties, trying to gun for the safety of the
belay spot. From below, it was not clear how to protect this section
at all---there was still just this wide wiggly crack. It looked to be
about 5.10c by itself and clearly could catch your knee in its
throbbing variations. It soars upwards at least 40 feet to where it
lessens eventually to the belay stance, a glistening lap-like basin in
the dihedral where I would clearly be able to place the anchors. From
the ground we could see the climbing continues up more gorgeous rock
for two radiant and elegant 5.8 pitches to the top of this very
astounding steep slab and its sharp freestanding summit.
When I began that day, I swarmed up the initial offwidth and executed
the weird rotations by the bolt, aggressively went to the rest edge in
the middle of the undercling, hung out for a brief moment, but then
suffered a violently urgent desire to get the hell out of there! I
was not ready for it. The climbing up to this point was of a
completely different type and the contrast posed a challenge in
itself. Although I knew that the problems would begin very abruptly,
so stoutly, alarms nonetheless screamed in my head. I was hardly
warmed up, flashpumped even. It felt so hideously committing, so
repulsive, so strenuous, so tense, and so very dangerous. Too many
questions, too many feet of very hard rock above. It was a new,
higher level of climbing problem, unconventional, far less structured,
and had little comparison to any of the great test pieces I had
already accomplished. And I was a very careful climber, having only
taken a couple of insignificant leader falls in my eight-year career.
Knowing to organize all my concerns in order to cope and climb through
each of them, I tried to make a mental list. For one, I still worried
about that fin further up breaking off in my hands---we could see it
from the ground and it seemed really extravagant and weak. I was very
doubtful after taking this first feel, that I could last the entire
undercling and then the lieback and still be able to swing into the
offwidth in control, even though the fin had a good top to it. I
tried to remain optimistic and not to picture myself rocketing off the
lieback while I would try to enter the slippery offwidth cleanly and
statically. And too, would the offwidth provide the stance necessary
or deny me, sending me to certain doom? Just getting to the roof had
been significant, and negotiating the bolt clip was a nasty
paradoxical mental puzzle in the midst of big power moves, so perfect
planning had been an absolute necessity to avoid becoming upset,
wasting time and energy. And we worried about this bolt since it was
very old and a scrawny little 1/4" compression unit.
So I scrambled back to the beginning of the roof at the top of the
first offwidth, nauseated, my mind spinning, planning on probably
retreating, my party below watching me in silence, oppressed as well,
but differently. I knew then that my hands would be horribly empty
forever, unless I risked everything, my life. I saw that I would not
be able to solve this riddle of my youth: who was I really and what
was this world? And so now I would be lost. I had come to that
deadliest and most crucial moment in a climber's life and thinking. I
thought I could only answer these big emotional and spiritual
questions in terms of this one climb, so to retreat now was also a
major undertaking---it meant my complete demoralization and the
trivialization of all eight years of my hard climbing and my search
and yearning for true integrity.
My partners were Rick and Mike, about on par with each other as
intermediate climbers. I grew up in a neighborhood in Berkeley where
Mike also lived and we went to the same school. In childhood, Mike
and I had an uneasy acquaintance, compounded by all the knowledge we
had of each other's grimy boyhood struggles. He was a year older, was
nervous and grasping and I think had problems at home. In 1971 he was
still bony, and sharp, and still had trouble concealing his belief
that everyone including me thought too highly of ourselves. I
imagined he planned to be around when at some point, defeated at last,
I finally would realize he was oh-so-right and I was wrong; and
perhaps then he would be able to stand on top of my vanquished body,
his life finally better from another's loss, and his big questions
somehow but speciously answered. Even though in his way he was still
paradoxically a Camp Four buddy or at least we were still somehow
connected. After all he had known me when we were little, but Mike
didn't grasp fully what I had been doing since, and what calls I was
now trying to answer. I think this might well have been the only
climb he and I did although Mike went on to climb in the Valley for
some years afterwards. Rick at least had been a partner and very close
new friend. He was a very kind considerate larger guy for whom
climbing was difficult and was already more of a social phase than a
crazy religion. He became a hotel manager later on. These two men
came along because the puzzle of my life required I be on this major
quest with no real competitors, only friends and hopefully, neutral
parties, and enough bodies to handle my likely emergency. And guys
that could keep our efforts a secret until the experience was
complete.
What a predicament I was in as I strenuously hesitated and stewed back
at the start of the roof! My anguish was rapidly starting to affect
my overall condition. My whole climbing career was in front of me at
that moment. I lashed at myself with this question: was I really going
to do IT or was I going to be just another one of many who climbed in
the Valley for a while, undistinguished, and then forgotten, left to
bumble through the rest of a dim life empty-handed in some big
spiritual way. I had seen many meet this fate already. Mike was on
the ground looking up thinking what I knew he was thinking, I thought.
And back in camp, there would be others who would surely come in my
place one day; they had swarmed over other projects. But fretting
there at the start of the roof, I still deeply believed that I was
really talented and I still believed this climb was my kind of climb,
so I could not give up either, I could not let go, although release
from this horrendous thing beckoned me, was practically required. Now
after nearly a decade of rigorous Valley experience, I clearly
recognized how dangerous this was going to be. But I began to feel I
might reach even further into myself just then and climb deeper than
the danger itself, far deeper than I had ever before, and out of some
kind of ultimate love. I wanted to be on the inside of the art. I
believed this was probably my way in forever, and finally I
acknowledged that perhaps it was the only way in that would come up
for me ever. It seemed already that the meaning of this event would
extend through the rest of my life however I played it.
So, having already climbed part of it back and forth and lingered
away, I conned myself into at least taking another feel, and so swung
up into the undercling once again from the first offwidth with devised
calmness, knowing that I might have squandered too much energy
already. I gained the sloping foothold far more cleverly and easily
this time, really surprised and encouraged by a new intuitive much
bolder approach, and so stayed there briefly in a poor but dramatic
rest position, strangely leaning nearly horizontally to the left on my
one foothold, a right arm and foot loosely up in the roof crack high
above. It was supposed to be just a light-hearted second look with
retreat the likely result again. But quickly, an absolutely blind
determination built in me as I found myself seriously
focusing---almost as if in a bubble of my own, sensing for the first
time a secret tunnel for me up through this terrifying situation and
that I might overcome the hideous nausea of defeat and nothingness I
knew all too well from other climbs. By having familiarized myself
with this segment of the climb, I could see more in it, feel more
recruited and powerful with it and it was becoming easier. And I
continued to hear the call.
Finally, at last centered and willing to leave the ordinary world in
search of the answers and extreme beauty within this place, I
ferociously pulled back up into the undercling, swung around the
corner, delicately liebacked the ivory-smooth fin and wall to the rest
pod, oh so carefully finding I could, yes, slide in. And there I
moaned for a few moments. Hearing me, my party called up through the
quiet, warm alpine air, not quite understanding that for a brief time,
I had left them and this valley and this life, as many had before me,
in obscure spots upon the rocks, lands, and oceans of the world since
time out of mind.
Here I had begun to feel my hands just starting to weaken and open up
as I pivoted into the wild rest spot. The athletic, cardiovascular
aspects of the whole effort were incomprehensibly massive as well.
Nor was it over, as I knew the next 25 feet hung above me, threatening
to take all this away by dashing me on the ground absurdly. Getting
these final feet actually protected still had to take place somehow
from the pod and above, although at first I did not even care, the
situation was so extreme. All protocol had gone by the wayside for
the special needs of this place. I eventually discovered the only
protection possible at this rest was a bong placed endwise. This
piece I hauled up from the ground by pulling slack from my lead rope,
abandoning its protection such as it was for the moment as if I was
unroped, and feeding it down to haul from the rest stance. Leading
something like this with a separate second haul line would have been a
hideous complication I could not accept beforehand. Putting the bong
in was not easy as it was below my waist and the result was quite
questionable, maybe ludicrous. The waterpolished overhanging stance
on the fin kept me crowded to the crack, nearly unable to hammer. Once
I got it in to protect myself, I think I rested for at least an hour,
maybe even more.
I was stripped of nearly all my powers but still my training saw me
through. Eventually clarity returned in rest although my feet stuck in
painful offwidth positions, had been falling asleep. Finally climbing
this last section, I was now clearly, completely unprotected and would
have grounded out, perhaps without even so much as a swing. I was
never more impeccable in my life, essentially unroped 70 feet off the
ground doing 5.11, going even higher. Fortunately I had a long solid
history of unroped solo ascents and speed climbing to support me then
in this culminating effort. The visitation of sparkling images,
moments of total power from those past climbs came to me as I
ecstatically ascended the final hard section to the lap-like polished
basin ending the lead.
Gaining the belay nook, my experience was flooding, ultimate, fervent
religious gratitude. The great change had finally come to me. It was
not just that I was alive. Bestowed upon me, were the immortal gift
of this ascent and the brief visitation of enough power and courage to
make it and live for that moment in such seemingly limitless grace,
clarity and impeccability. I did not feel exalted and huge; I felt
merely to be a pure light-filled conduit to the event, transparent,
humbled, and hardly distinguishable from the rock itself, simple and
cleansed, in a home like only that in a dream. My partners were
floored absolutely, realizing that something both horrific and
transcendent had just taken place. When the bolt was drilled, the
belay arranged and they eventually got going up my line, they couldn't
follow the lead at all but ultimately had to Jumar. Trying to access
the undercling from the offwidth immediately defied them, even though
we used double ropes and belays for their attempts. They despaired and
did not fully comprehend what they had seen, but wanted to find it
too.
When we gained the sharp Hourglass summit in the warm dark, Mike was
the first to reach me. Sitting next to me cloaked in night air, he
quietly told me that until now he had believed that I was not as good
as I thought I was, that there had been a lot of negativity working
between us and he was apologizing for it, that the ascent was
unbelievably hard and brave. I told him I knew this too, and it was
okay, we were all okay, it had been miraculous, and thank you for
being honest and coming along and being with me and we were together
in this and now we have been given the answer and it would be
different from now on. I still felt immaculately void, a plain vessel
washed by a force, huge and beyond me, and my heart lay open but
strong. The world seemed a miraculous and mysterious place and I
found myself now peaceful, a deep and small part of it.
In the blackness, we made a wild rappel into the airy hanging tree and
then another to the ground on the other side, the exact and familiar
spot where I had begun my Yosemite climbing career, nine years before.
We were not prepared to bivy at all, but did anyway for a long hike
down the huge, steep talus and woods in the night without lamps would
be deadly. More significantly I think all three of us felt something
huge had happened to us and to return right away to the "world" would
have been to also abbreviate and then end it, allowing it to become
just another illusion, this treasured state, all those many years ago.
Here was my last major climbing achievement. I left the Valley a day
or so later, got buried in my construction career and never really
returned with the same fervor. Although I did climb many very hard
routes in following years and climbed perhaps better than ever with a
freer heart, and now have even returned to serious modern climbing in
my fifties, I was set free so long ago, to go ahead, have a bigger
life, to start to take in a broader messier world, to try to be
effective in that larger wildly hopeless place that seemed all so
complex, troubled and wrong and to which I had had no sense of
belonging. After all, I had been there, to what I thought was maybe,
the other side or at least had found one big answer within. This was
also the challenge that faced Beat philosophy.
Looking back, I suppose my fulfillment was to have seen that yes in
this world, there was something more inside it all, past mundanity,
which if somehow reached, took one in or took one back rather, as
Blake has said. I believed that embedded in the physical grace of
climbing, was a great natural truth, perhaps not another realm such as
a heaven. This truth was understood in those moments when everything
was impeccably risked, climber approaching a reductive state in which
his "subject" and the rock's "object" became indistinguishable,
intertwined. The rock and climber weaving together, as John Gill,
Castaneda, and Merleau-Ponty have all written. This bond, chiasm and
truth was physically experienced, rather than theorized by mere
cognitive or religious means, and so was only found hidden inside
activities like deep climbing itself and perhaps yielded no other
answers but itself and the simple fact that we are of this earth and
our manner of perceiving is inextricably bound up with it. But such
joy! Just as we know that a painting is a visual experience and
cannot be rendered in or fully experienced by a written description,
so it is with climbing---one must climb, and climb quite hard, to find
and have this deep aesthetic union in the living world, to be
englobed, or intertwined with the mother world, once again, and
perhaps over and over again. This would be our very powerful defense
against the nauseating prospect of complete Nothingness and crucial
isolation that otherwise we each are caught up in and which, raw and
unvarnished, I faced so long ago.
End
Mad Dog
>Recollections of the First Free Ascent of the Left Side of the
>Hourglass
Thanks a ton, Peter. Incredible. RCGH03, to say the least.
Ed Hartouni
close as the scent of a Bay tree.
To me climbing is the all about the "inner game" and you captured that perfectly.
Thanks
Michael A. Riches
>
> Recollections of the First Free Ascent of the Left Side of the
> Hourglass
>
> 周eter Haan
> Revisions through 12/2/2003
>
> It was the summer of 1971 a year after the National Guard had seized
> Yosemite Valley briefly during the Stoneman Meadow Fourth of July
> riots.
<snip>...
> This would be our very powerful defense
> against the nauseating prospect of complete Nothingness and crucial
> isolation that otherwise we each are caught up in and which, raw and
> unvarnished, I faced so long ago.
>
> End
First, let me apologize for not responding sooner. I started this the
day it was posted, but as I started to read, I realized that this wasn't
just "Any" TR... I had to set it aside for that snowy day, cuddled up to
the fire, and all else cleaned off the plate.
It was stated, by whom I can't remember, that we are truly blessed, here
in our little social corner, that we can actually, noobs and all, rub
shoulders with our legends and icons.
At fifty, myself, I can do a fair job, but I am left, like your
accomplices, in total awe of not only the physical but the mental and
emotional aspect of that level of climbing. This was truly a treat, a
glimpse into your soul, and a look at what it really means to be a climber...
Thanks, this one has my vote for best of the decade...
Ratzzz...
Dingus Milktoast
DMT
Chiloe
> Recollections of the First Free Ascent of the Left Side of the
> Hourglass
>
> Yosemite Valley briefly during the Stoneman Meadow Fourth of July
> riots.
When I visited Camp 4 that October, that lead was already a legend,
discussed quitely around campfires with a shaking-of-heads awe. A
transcendental achievement, different in kind from the many other
hard new routes going up in the Valley.
> Following my first solo ascent of the Salathe Wall early July of that
> The waterpolished overhanging stance
> on the fin kept me crowded to the crack, nearly unable to hammer. Once
> I got it in to protect myself, I think I rested for at least an hour,
> maybe even more.
> I still felt immaculately void, a plain vessel
> washed by a force, huge and beyond me, and my heart lay open but
> strong. The world seemed a miraculous and mysterious place and I
> found myself now peaceful, a deep and small part of it.
The write-up is worthy of the climb, and should be in a book
somewhere. You mention Gervasutti and Terray, but the intense
existential self-awareness here reminded me of something else:
David Roberts' first book, Mountain of My Fear.
Jason Liebgott
a better email address, with respect to this defining moment, could not be
coined.
> Recollections of the First Free Ascent of the Left Side of the
> Hourglass
Thanks for this unexpected holiday gift. Between this amazing account and
Heinz Zak/Alex Huber's latest book - I feel I've gotten a few glimpses into
the world of climbing that stands a void away.
The way you describe Pratt's (and your own) understanding that you were
squirming through some other world - amazing. In the often asked, but rarely
truly answered question, why do you climb? This comes as close to answering
it as I've ever read.
Thanks again for a story I will share with all my climbing friends.
Jason
Hardman Knott
Hardman Knott
Julie
I am lost for any other words than "Thank you".
JSH
ilona
Thank you!
Peter Haan
my beloved Gnarling,
Thanks for reading and understanding this effort of mine to recall
this intense experience and to share it with you. It is perhaps the
only love letter sent to you from the Golden Age, and in my own
words.
Right, the writing of Dave Roberts, Terray, Gervasutti and sometimes
Pratt serve to explain what happened to me three decades ago and how
over a period of time somehow a place was then cleared out inside me,
a place where I could always go even though the hope of finding
climbing colorful enough for an entire life had died. Most of our
world climbing literature frankly does not tell us enough and is
facile and evasive; it does not tell us why the climb happened, nor
what it meant AS it was climbed with the people who were there.
Climbing literature usually resorts to a kind of engineering report
zested with the usual tons of peril, enthusiasm and vigor with no
answers, no emotional intelligence. Galen used to remark on how it
was difficult or impossible to even remember with whom one climbed a
particular route some years afterwards. But that was Galen's trait; I
grew up with him. We avoid and have avoided quite a bit in our
literature; there is ever so much more to write about! Let's keep
doing it. Thanks for receiving my deeper story.
The best, PH
Dingus Milktoast
"Peter Haan" <under...@aol.com> wrote
> Most of our
> world climbing literature frankly does not tell us enough and is
> facile and evasive; it does not tell us why the climb happened, nor
> what it meant AS it was climbed with the people who were there.
> Climbing literature usually resorts to a kind of engineering report
> zested with the usual tons of peril, enthusiasm and vigor with no
> answers, no emotional intelligence.
Well old son there is surely more than one way to write a trip report. Thank
god not all of us feel compelled to follow your model. I couldn't even read
climbing literature if that's all there was to it.
DMT
Mad Dog
>Peter Haan wrote
Too dense for ya?
A. Cairns
Peter Haan wrote:
Recollections of the FFA of the Left Side of the Hourglass
> It is perhaps the only love letter sent to you from the Golden Age,
Well put.
Andy Cairns
Ed Hartouni
learned at some time (excuse the gender specificity):
man against nature - the most common mode of the climbing story, think "Anapurna" by Herzog
man against fate - perhaps "Seven Years in Tibet" by Harrer
man against society - "Downward Bound" by Harding
man against man - "Into Thin Air" by Krakauer? or the real story of the French Anapurna expedition
man against himself - "Eiger Dreams" by Krakauer, "Mountain of My Fear" by Roberts, or this great
story told by Peter.
Though the examples above are exaggerated there is great literature written around each of these
plots. I am happy that there is the variety that there is, while personally I enjoy the "man
against himself" plot because that is where I find myself. There is this great short story by
Jim Sinclair "Sometimes You Know - Sometimes You Don't" (written for the Edinburgh Mountaineering
Club Journal in 1957, reprinted in Games Climbers Play) which focuses on a single crux which I
found so engrossing that I didn't realize Sinclair hadn't mentioned what the climb was or where,
it simply didn't matter... it captures the essence of climbing.
I deeply enjoy climbing, I will read about it, look at pictures and video of it, talk about it at
length... good and bad... I am glad that anyone writes anything down. I am especially glad when
someone can describe their experience as well as Peter.
JKVawter
> Recollections of the First Free Ascent of the Left Side of the
> Hourglass
>
> 周eter Haan
> Revisions through 12/2/2003
Although this is a "me too" post, I feel it is important to re-add my
name to the list of Peter's admirers. When he first posted the seed
of this piece in 1999, it impressed me deeply, even in its rough form.
Here is what I wrote. Thanks again Peter.
Peter:
Thank you for posting your account of the Left Side of the Hourglass.
It's a
diamond in the rough. It reminded me of Robbins' very personal account
of the FA of
Tis-sa-ack with Don Peterson, though I must say that some of the more
personal
passages made me squirm, and your arm must hurt from patting yourself
on the back.
Nevertheless, now that I've had a few hours to reflect, I find I can't
stop
thinking about your story. Of the hundreds, or thousands, of climbers
who came to
the Valley for more than a season, only a handful are remembered for
what they
achieved. You are one of them. Roper noted your solo of the Salathe as
a "marvelous
feat." Bridwell called your lead on the Hourglass "a work of genius."
I've always
wondered what made you guys different from the rest of us. I think
your account may
be as revealing about climber's motivations and that period of history
in the
Valley as it is about you.
I used to think that the climbers at the cutting edge in those days
were
nonchalant. Doing a new 5.11 was hard, but all in a day's work. It
wasn't until I
began to read some of Long's accounts of how they got up some of these
things by
the skin of their teeth, that I realized what separated the stars from
the
also-rans wasn't so much talent (though that is certainly necessary)
as it was
drive.
In other words, given more or less equal talent, the climber with the
most drive
was the one most likely to achieve something memorable. I suspect that
drive may
have its roots in the climber's psychic turmoil and the ability to
take that
emotional energy and direct it into climbing.
In Hang Dogs and Wall Rats, John Long noted that many, if not most, of
those who
came to Camp 4 and stayed for more than a few weeks were searchers,
malcontents,
emotionally abused, or at least in some way deeply uncomfortable with
life outside
of climbing. Of course, who isn't a malcontent in their twenties?
Defining yourself
and finding your place in the world is a fundamental challenge of
young adults. So
it's hardly surprising that young climbers found a haven in the Valley
with all the
other seekers.
What strikes me most about your account is the degree to which this
climb was an
expression of a personal quest. You say you were "still" not at peace
after your
solo of the Salathe. You were looking for a way to make your mark on
Yosemite
climbing, to prove your mettle both to other climbers and to yourself.
You chose your
companions because you needed supportive, or at least neutral
witnesses, not
competitors. You described your somewhat uneasy relationship with Mike
in the most
personal terms. At the top of the slab, redeemed by struggle and
success, you
reconciled with Mike and felt at peace with yourself.
The intense demands of the climb itself left you feeling as if you had
been a mere
conduit for the energy and effort required to climb it, in spite of
your decade of
experience at a very high level of skill. After the climb, you at last
felt free to
leave behind the internecine squabbles of the Valley and to get on
with your life.
Together these factors almost define a transcendental experience, and
I think this
is what you were looking for.
The Left Side of the Hourglass wasn't the next great problem. You were
not one of
many who lined up to try to pull the sword from the stone. This was a
climb that
appealed especially to you, I think, because it was *not* coveted by
others, and
yet was one in which you recognized all the marks of a great route:
aesthetic
beauty, continuous difficulty, and poor protection. You knew it would
demand a
supreme effort, and that you would be severely tested. It was the
embodiment of
your quest.
. . . or not. Anyway, great post. Thanks again.
JKVawter
Undercling wrote: