The first commercial guide to Tucson climbing was not published until 1985. Before that you had to go into the Summit Hut, ask for the "notebook", sit down and copy stuff to your own paper. You could not borrow the notebook or take pictures, and it could not leave the store. But about 1981, through a friend of a friend, I managed to get one of a few copies made when someone did sneak it out. Man did I value that copy ! So much information for so little work.

Later on Dave Baker printed me a copy of his personal guide to the Stronghold, and I got Bob Murray's "Bouldering Beyond Campbell". I tucked it all into a notebook that I still have. This page shows the Windy Point East routes from 1980.

Wow! What a piece of Tucson climbing history!

So are those check marks the routes you still need to red point???

I wonder how the people that bitch about Squeezing the Lemmon would do using this topo?

Cool piece of history from a different time indeed.

Yeah, I'm stilling awaiting that red-point on "Just For Grins".

I'll post some more pages from the old guide now and then. Two things that really stick out: no sport routes (of course) and no star ratings. I mean... hey...it's rock... and you can climb it. It must be great. And that's exactly how I felt in 1980 too. I suppose I'm a little pickier now.