The Eastern Trade - 50th Anniversary

The Eastern Trade is a climbing newsletter published by Gunks climber John Stannard starting in October 1971. Through the 1960s the style of hammering hard steel pitons in and out of cracks for protection inflicted irreversible damage. Piton scars will remain FOREVER and are all over the rock we travel on. Among the Western cohort, characters like Royal Robbins, Tom Frost and Doug Robinson pushed heavily towards the use of nuts and natural protection. Out East, John led his own charge by means of The Eastern Trade. In addition to hardware John also tackled issues like overcrowding and preservation and restoration of the land.

To celebrate the golden anniversary of The Eastern Trade we’ve lovingly bootlegged 150 copies of the original newsletter and banded them in gold paper. The affixed sticker is a modified and colorized design of the original newsletter logo. There is a short contextual essay included in the previously unused fold. The QR code links to the complete collection of newsletters which has been hosted on the Rock and Snow website for several years. The originals of these scans were donated to the Mohonk Preserve by John Stannard and currently call the American Alpine Club library home. 

These will be distributed for free through climbing community hubs this October. Rock and Snow in New Paltz currently has them on hand. They will also be dropped at random at trailheads in the Gunks area.

Something Interesting Press is an indie micro-publisher specializing in Shawangunk climbing history, artifacts and ephemera. This exists as an outlet of our personal pandemic project centered around greater Gunks climbing history research. We have several other projects in the works. Our goal is to focus on print projects you can hold in your hands, while also sharing via digital platforms. We’ve created an Instagram account and can be found under the handle something.interesting.press

We’ve spoken to and been in correspondence with several climbers from previous generations and are seeking to connect with more! Please reach out! We’re just climbing history nerds. At this time we are not a business and by no means are we making money on any of this. This project exists for the community and by the community.

The full collection of the Newsletter may be found here:
https://www.rockandsnow.com/219/Archive/

Awesome!!

+1 Awesome

I'm sure there's a lot of the same issues being addressed.  And some you're gonna die.

Definitely downloading later.  Thanks for making this available to everyone.

I love how the consensus grades change over the years. In the first issue of the Eastern Trade in 1971 Stannard lists recent adjustments to the grades of certain routes. Most of the climbs on his list in the 5.6-5.9 range are nowadays considered to be a grade harder. Coex is listed as a 5.10 (no plus, mind you), and described as the benchmark 5.10. Many today would say it is the hardest 5.10 in the Gunks, although some might say Matinee, which gets a 5.10 MINUS on this 1971 list.  And Stannard's own Persistent is at this point the only 5.11 in the Gunks. It is now considered 5.11d.