Colorful Climbers

I was climbing in taquitz a few weeks ago and i met one of the most "colorful" climbers ever. I was leading the last pitch of the climb we were on when i hear my partner talking to someone. This was very strange considering that there were no other climbers on the hill at the time. My partner was completely out of sight so naturally i yell down to him "Robert who the F**k are you talking to?" To my surprise a strange voice yells back "he is talking to himself man." As strange as it was i decided to pay no attention to the strange voice and continue climbing. As i was topping out i see an older guy solo past me at break neck speed. When i got to the top he introduced himself, and immediately pulled out his pipe and loaded it with weed. To be polite i payed little attention and begin to belay my partner. I look back at the old guy and he is using a magnifying glass to spark his bowl. It was quite a sight, he called it a solar bowl. When my partner got to the top we talked with the old guy for a while, the only way i could describe him is hippiesque. He said he had been climbing since seventy three and ropes were just too much trouble. He ended our conversation abruptly by saying "he fellas it was nice meeting you but i am kinda on a schedule." and he took off at a mild jog and left just as abruptly as he came.

Climbers are colorful people and i am sure that many of you have a bunch of great stories so lets hear them.

I got one...

So there i was at the base of Silver Spoon in Garden of the Gods, Co belaying my Army roommate and climbing partner, Hoyte. We had been into climbing all of maybe 3 or 4 weeks and this was about our 3rd or 4th trip to the Garden. I was just finishing up suggesting he may have backclipped on the 3rd or so piton (he didn't) when this crusty old relic of a guy slithers out of nowhere right up behind me and scares the piss out of me with the raspiest, drowning pirate gargle of a Smeagol voice you can imagine... the voice said "You wanna do cocaine?". All in one anything-but-fluid motion, i locked the atc, spun around, lost my footing, splattered my shoulder blades and head into the rock and shot a look of what must have been sheer, uncut terror to my new company.

Now how do i describe this guy without seeming too harsh? Okay, try to imagine if a white guy was raised from birth by an Aboriginal tribe but never allowed in the shade... ever. Okay, we'll go from there.

Nothing short of a good eight seconds went by without anything more than breathing taking place between the two of us ... he broke the silence with his quick follow up, "...well?". At this point, my facial expression must have changed to something along the lines of "How do i run like hell and not bail on my leader while doing so?" because it was about that time that he extended a taped and well-weathered index finger at the end of a slowly-raising left arm indicating a direction that i should direct my stare to. Again the voice broke the silence; this time with slightly more deliberation "co ... caine!".

Over my years of climbing, I've grown accustomed to and have developed an appreciation for the thoughtfulness that goes into the naming of climbing routes. Route naming is almost as refined an art as many other aspects of climbing. However, this enlightenment had not taken place in my life at the time of this story. So there i was... epiphany coming over me... a corner of my mouth now turning upward slightly to indicate comprehensiveness... and what i thought to be an echoing voice inside my head suddenly struck me as the sound of the third or fourth attempt of Hoyte to regain my attention... "SLACK, JACKASS!".

The old man, chuckled and while turning to walk over to his climb, he said "i'll be over there getting ready whenever you're done here". It was like he **knew** i was too young and obtuse to say no.

To skip ahead slightly, it was after several cumulative minutes of hang dogging and following the birth of many new and exciting explicatives that i "ascended" (for lack of a better term) the SOB of a climb called (creatively enough) Cocaine. Once at the top of the climb, the old man gave me several pointers and tips that i am now eternally grateful for (such as "the rope isn't meant for climbing, i don't care how stuck you are"). At the base, he taught me the inside out knot (known also as a beer knot), how to quickly spool rope over head and backpack it, and many other things - many of which were way over our heads but we stared and listened like kids to a grandfather telling ghost stories.

Good fun and one of my more vivid memories as you can see. We never saw that old man again but i hope he's well and still climbing.

Daryl

This should be a fun thread.

I've been on Tahquitz many times and had solo climbers just cruise on by, perhaps it was the same dude but I never got to see the solar bowl up top. (nice name for a route by the way)

Daryl, your story is humorous. It's funny how easily words or statements can be misinterpreted.

~S

Daryl - It sounds like you met Fred Aschert . A really good guy who knew the Garden so well he could supply running beta move by move on almost every Garden route. Truly a fine man.

On a chilly, damp fall day, as I was walking along the base of the Trapps cliff in the Gunks, I saw a very old man getting ready to follow the first pitch of a climb called Beginner's Delight. He looked to be at least 80 years old, stooped and wrinkled. He was moving slowly with a bit of hesitation as old people are want to do. To be friendly, I went up to him, smiled and said, "Going to do Beginner's?"

He scowled at me and said, "What?" I repeated my question, a little louder. He again said, "What?" This time with perhaps a trace of irritation in his voice. Figuring he was somewhat deaf, I shouted my question a third time. He replied, this time clearly irritated, "Can't hear you. Ears all stopped up." I took the hint and retreated a few feet, figuring it was going to be pretty interesting to see how his leader was going to communicate with him from 80 feet up the cliff.

I was wrong. A minute or two later, the leader called down in a normal voice, "On belay, Fred." To which the old man responded, "Climbing." He stepped up, put his hands on the rock and began. Still old, but now moving smoothly, without hesitation, up to the first belay.

My partner, who had been watching my attempt to chat the old guy up, now came over and said, "That's Fred Becky who just blew you off."

Fred was an icon when I started climbing in the 60s (I am an "old guy" too) and I consider it an honor to have been blown off by him.

Many thanks, Susan.

Kevin McLaughlin wrote:Daryl - It sounds like you met Fred Aschert

You know... this is amazing because i think of him all the time because he was such a big influence on me though i only knew him for an hour or two... and that was 16 years ago! And funny that you made that comment b/c one detail i actually removed from my story during the proof read was that without a visual on where i was, he was able to point out moves and holds the entire way up. "Ok, you should be looking into an flaring split.. look off to your left and up for a micro..." He was one of a kind for sure. Thanks a ton for the info. Is he still climbing?

If you were getting move by move beta you indeed were with the one and only Mr. Aschert . Many a climber has been shown the way -from the ground by Fred . As for still around.....? Bob D'antonio knows Freds ' son Richard well and might know something.

met harvey carter at turkey rocks a few years back. he told me that he didn't use cams because he thought they were cheating. however, he did spend a good amount of time staring at my #4 camalot and finally said, 'boy, the things i could have done if i had one of those back in the day..." he was a really cool guy, and it was great meeting him.

I've run into Scarpelli more times than I care to think about. He's hardly an old man (mid 50s) but he's certainly a colorful one.

The beta he shouts though, it ain't useful. Takeda captured it pretty good in that article in Alpinist a while back.

The best I ever heard from him though was "If you've got any kind of skill as a crack climber, you won't grab that jug," referring to the edge/jug thing at the lip of the second roof on Friday the 13th, up at Vedauwoo. I don't recall who he was waiting for, but it was just him and Rowdy Joe (his dog) there in the Nautilus parking lot.

I've seen him up there quite a few times since then.

I met Jimmy Dunn around Moab over 10 years ago. He is an unusual fellow but very friendly and rather kooky. One memorable day we were climbing at Wall St, we would struggle up a few routes and then Jimmy would do a couple one-handed. It seems a project of his was to do as many routes as possible one-handed. He also had an amazing collection of rocks in his van and he kept pulling out some and showing us.

Eric Bjornstad was also there at the base with a notebook. He wasn't climbing but was pumping us for info after every climb. He'd ask us for the list of gear, and then go over to Jimmy and say "right hand or left hand"? Yes, they were keeping careful track of which hand(s) Jimmy had done each route one-handed! It was a very fun time with these unusual characters. Amazing we got any actual climbing done.

Jimmy used to own a construction company and he had all these T-shirts printed up with the motto: "... building the problems of tomorrow today".

While climbing in Josh a few years ago, I ran into Fred Becky. As he was preparing to climb I went over to meet him. I walked up and said, "Hi, are you Fred Becky?" Without a pause, he replied, "Do I owe you money?"

I remember working as a window washer for Clean Dan, we'd meet early at Café Depresso Coma on the hill and there were times when Dan would rest his head and fall asleep. It usually took quite a bit of effort to wake him up, after finishing my coffee, so we could get to work. More often than not he'd mumble, "don't worry your on the clock" and go back to sleep.

While not necessarily what I would call a character, Pete Bishop in Austin is a pretty cool guy. He's got the build of a Marine sargent with grey hair and a soft spoken voice. The guy is meticulous with his beta and is able to accurately describe exactly what you need to do, whether you asked or not. One day I found out he was one of the studio sound guys for one of Parliament Funkadlic's albums. You'd never guess that a guy working at IBM had something like that up his sleeve.

Now who is a character is Dave Phillips. I had a fun night hanging with a friend over at Dave's little place by the lake. He was doing construction on a guy's house, so he was allowed to sleep in a camper van on the property. This is smack dab in the middle of nice, pricey, finished real estate. And there's Dave in a VW camper that used to belong to Jeff Jackson, full sized refrigerator plugged in next to it for the beer, and a fire pit to cook in. His kids came by with the ex wife to spend the night in the camp. We pitched tents behind it and climbed some bolted routes he made right off the cliff out back. Damn, that was a hoot.

I have one of Becky's old cams. Son of a bitch sure beat it up before I got a hold of it. Must have been climbing or something.

Back in the late 70's I had driven up to Taylor Canyon, Gunnison to do some bouldering instead of homework. It was spring time and kind of a cold day, just real light snow flurries. I bouldered around the base for a while and then solo'd up a nice 5.6 dihedral, ironically called Solo. This put me up into an area where there are a lot of ledges and a ton of short 5.7 and 5.8 cracks and faces about 100 feet off the deck. I was cruising up a pretty solid 5.7 jam crack and looked over and there was this wiry guy in an anorak face climbing next to me on something that was probably 5.9 or 5.10. We continued to climb together for about the next hour, side by side, smiling at each other and then stopped at the top as the wind kicked up and it got a little colder. He introduced himself as Lou Dawson, and of course I was more than a little impressed, having read numerous accounts of his derring do's in Climbing magazine. We shook hands and I told him that ironically, his brother Craig and I were in a barber shop quartet together at Western State College. Not much said, never saw him again.