New and Experienced Climbers over 50 #33

John Gill,

 The man in the photo is Paul Gleason he would have been an very early mentor to John Long and some other kids that I think wound calling themselves the stonemasters or something like that.

I did not know Paul, but I was lucky enough to climb with his brother Phil in Leavenworth Washington once.

He is famous for a photo sequence in Galen Rowell's Vertical World of Yosemite depicting him battling his way up the ghastly squeeze "10.96" in Yosemite facing what is now thought of as the wrong way, and then peeling out of it on protection that would probably make us all poop in our pants at the thought of it.

10.96 was unclimbed at the time, and as you know pioneers do not always get it right the first time.

Ward Smith wrote:

Lori, try ten minutes a day.  It is all about consistency.  I have always been inflexible, and I doubt that I will ever get to a full split, but I am much more flexible now than I was as a kid.

Dam dude! Most young males can't come anywhere close to that. I've been working hard on my flexibility for more than a year now and have made some progress but it's slow. Flexibility is still the biggest limiting factor for my climbing. 

fossil wrote:

Lori,

Now don't go "getting your britches in a lather", but consider...

You have a rock climbing area in your backyard and you want to get good at stemming, skip the gym and start here...

https://www.mountainproject.com/route/105722359/touch-and-go

do laps on it till it starts feeling easy then go here...

https://www.mountainproject.com/route/105725122/coarse-and-buggy

repeat process

report back with results

ps I'm not a josh local but I'm sure Bob and Brandt could think of some others, way more fun than working out in the gym.

fossil, you’re trying to throw me off my game, but I’m not listening.  

You must’ve missed the part where I wrote that over the summer I totally went to seed. Come to think of it, I started to become… “fossilized”.   It’s a lesson you might take.

So now I have settled into going to the gym twice a week at least and doing Pilates once a week – – and that still leaves plenty of time to play outside.

The purpose of the gym is twofold:

1. To gain overall strength and fitness head to toe, leaving no body part out.
2. Specific physical therapy for joints that have become chronically inflamed and painful.

from last September when I first stepped back onto the rock, I could see where this was headed. Strength training is going to have to accompanyrock climbing or it’s just going to be one injury after another.

Besides, Kris’ wife, Barb recommended it and I want to be just like Barb.  

So now maybe you should put up or shut up. Exactly who is this fossil and what do you climb and do you have pictures? Where do you hail from? No resting on laurels , we need a proper introduction.    

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I’m just leaving this here because it really means something to me. I wonder if others here can relate. Clip from an interview with Timothée Chalamet. It’s interesting to look back over a long lifespan – – we worked hard, raised kids, have grandkids – – some of us, focused on a job and didn't abandon it.  Through all that time there was never a moment or any energy to devote to something so purely selfish as climbing.  Maybe age 65 was a little late to pursue something so demanding.  But…

“I felt like I had this little nugget that I had to protect, of potential or something.”

I knew I was keeping a part of myself hidden and safe for the day that I could water it, and it would bloom. 

Lori Milas wrote:

The purpose of the gym is twofold:

1. To gain overall strength and fitness head to toe, leaving no body part out.
2. Specific physical therapy for joints that have become chronically inflamed and painful.

Very true, you also have access to instruction. Especially with Pilates.

Li Hu wrote:

Very true, you also have access to instruction. Especially with Pilates.

I took my Pilates class today. It was brutal. Now we’re getting down to business.   The instructor who has had many years of training herself stays very close in a one-on-one situation. She makes adjustments of a half an inch here or there, coaches on theory and mindset.

I was thinking of the many ways this can help with climbing.  For one, the precision required in faceclimbing, being able to place a toe or a finger exactly on a spot. I could  see that ability flowing from Pilates training.

Lori Milas wrote:

I took my Pilates class today. It was brutal. Now we’re getting down to business.   The instructor who has had many years of training herself stays very close in a one-on-one situation. She makes adjustments of a half an inch here or there, coaches on theory and mindset.

I was thinking of the many ways this can help with climbing.  For one, the precision required in faceclimbing, being able to place a toe or a finger exactly on a spot. I could  see that ability flowing from Pilates training.

If you get a chance to try Gyrotonics, I thought that was even more closely related to climbing.

Kind of obscure though.

fossil wrote:

John Gill,

 The man in the photo is Paul Gleason he would have b. een an very early mentor to John Long and some other kids that I think wound calling themselves the stonemasters or something like that.

I didn't recognize Paul from the photo. He visited me in Colorado years ago, before Long and Bachar, and became a mentor for Long. I lost track of Paul some time ago and didn't know he died young (57). Here is a tribute to him from my alma mater, Colorado State University.

The Gleason Brothers, Keith Leaman, and Pat Merrill were all very active in the late 60s on the SoCal climbing scene. Showing the way for us local 70s climbers, the tribe was so small bitd.

RIP and Respect Paul Gleason

Kris, I hope you repost your earlier post. I couldn’t be more thrilled to have these two new things I can do for my body.  I don’t know why I’m so excited to incorporate the five barbell exercises, but I just intuitively feel they will be right for me. Tony gives me the stink eye about the weights. But I understand that these have to be carefully taught and carefully executed.  Here’s a little background on my Pilates instructor.

I am convinced that Mr. Pilates had some kind of kinky sex fetish. If I had some of that equipment in my house, God knows what all we would be doing with it.   And some of it seems downright dangerous. Today I was pulling back on a bar with a coiled wire that, had I let go, would have taken my instructor’s head off.  So there’s that to keep it interesting.

After all that we drove over to look at two of my favorite rocks. Tony tried to look interested, but has absolutely no idea. I think these routes are jaw dropping. On top of that I was looking at an adjacent formation to the right and wondering if it could possibly be climbed. That’s a pretty deep and gnarly crack in there.

Here’s the Houser route I think I climbed. I think I used the word “climbed” loosely and I would love to have a do over. I’m pretty sure I climbed it with a lot of “positive belaying”.  That Old Soft Shoe 10d

Mark E Dixon wrote:

If you get a chance to try Gyrotonics, I thought that was even more closely related to climbing.

Kind of obscure though.

I’ve heard many good things regarding Gyrotonics.

My friend taught Pilates for a decade or more and is currently teaching Gyrotonics in London.

Lori Milas wrote:

Kris, I hope you repost your earlier post. I couldn’t be more thrilled to have these two new things I can do for my body.  I don’t know why I’m so excited to incorporate the five barbell exercises, but I just intuitively feel they will be right for me. Tony gives me the stink eye about the weights. But I understand that these have to be carefully taught and carefully executed.  Here’s a little background on my Pilates instructor.

I am convinced that Mr. Pilates had some kind of kinky sex fetish. If I had some of that equipment in my house, God knows what all we would be doing with it.   And some of it seems downright dangerous. Today I was pulling back on a bar with a coiled wire that, had I let go, would have taken my instructor’s head off.  So there’s that to keep it interesting.

I hit enter by mistake with a lot more to write, so I deleted. Here it is: 

It sounds like you have a good teacher. Pilates is all about mind-body connection, and that state of flow that is so beneficial to climbing is a big part of the practice. I'm thrilled for you that you are into it. I attribute the fact that I get around pretty well today, without a lot of aches and pains, to the three years I really threw myself at Pilates, and the less intense but regular practice I maintain today.

It paid off in a big way yesterday. I fell backwards off the tailgate of my truck. The truck is a Silverado 3500HD 1 ton, so that's close to a 4 foot drop backwards onto concrete. I was at a lumberyard, we'd just loaded some doors in the bed. I was facing forwards, standing on the tailgate, with less room than I was aware of, so that one small step back sent me. I responded entirely by instinct. Has your teacher done "Rolling Like a Ball" on the mat with you? That's an exercise I do several times a week in it's variations.  And that's what I did yesterday. As my heels hit the deck I was falling backwards. I absorbed a lot of the impact squatting onto my tailbone, pulling my head to my knees, tucking my pelvis, rounding my back, and rolling all the way over landing on my elbows and knees. One knee hit kind of hard It and hurts a bit today, but had I fallen all stiff and wooden the back of my head would have whipped into the concrete and the fall could have been fatal. I guess at 71 I still have a little agility left, but I'll do my best to avoid any more stunts like that. I feel very lucky. The employee at the yard just stood there looking at me like I was crazy. I will say that I haven't pulled that hard with my adductors, hip flexors, abs, obliques, etc., (pretty much everything from between my knees to the bottom of my rib cage) in a very long time and as a result I'm pretty sore throughout today.

My experience with teacher training was in the Balanced Body University program at https://www.coreconditioningpt.com/ in Studio City, LA. Ths was in 2007/8. After training I worked there for about a year until I had a grand mal in the middle of the gym there between clients (that kind of changed my priorities for a few years but I'm good now). Our class started out as about 11, with only two men. The other man was Robert Fulbright, a 7th degree black belt, who was world Karate Champion in 1988 and a member (Captain, I think) of the US Taekwondo team in the 1992 Olympics. I was by far the oldest member of the group. The class shrank quickly when people found out how hard the work was. We did four hour sessions, three times a week, divided up between exercising and practice teaching. After some sessions I'd be so physically worked, in such an even way, that I'd wake up the next morning lying there feeling like I was on a cloud.

Gyrotonics is good too, but not many places use it. If you think Pilates equipment is expensive...

Regarding Gratz equipment. That's what I own. That said, a lot of places that are physical therapy oriented use Balanced Body equipment. Generally, their stuff is smoother in operation and works well at light workloads. Better for PT. Gratz is all about the work. 

Damn, Kris. Glad you know how to fall and weren't hurt worse. There's nothing quite as bad as taking a step... and what you expected to be there isn't.

Brad Young wrote:

Damn, Kris. Glad you know how to fall and weren't hurt worse. There's nothing quite as bad as taking a step... and what you expected to be there isn't.

Thanks Brad. I'm lucky that the landing zone was free of obstacles. A few cans of paint would have ruined my day. 

Paul Gleason was one of my mentors from SoCal. He would show me around Rubidoux as we clawed up the boulders in Robbins boots and EBs. I would eventually explore the granite out by Amboy on his recommendation.

We had shared a career in wildland firefighting. A year before I started on the Dalton Hotshots, Paul had left on not the best of terms. He was a driven crew "pusher", a term for squad leader back in those days. He earned great respect from the guys in the trenches. One day, a boss caught him smoking something other than tobacco behind the barracks. Paul quickly relocated to AZ for a few years. Eventually he would run the Zigzag Hotshots (no pun intended) in Oregon. Later in his profession, he made a name for himself in teaching fire courses out of Ft Collins. By coincidence I had worked on that same forest while going to school at CSU, though many years earlier.

As Mr. Gill will agree, Ft Collins is not a bad place to land as a climber. I'm sure Paul had a good time there. So many of us took note of John's problems up at Horsetooth, denoted by the small white arrows. It was here that I was corrupted by Gene Drake and Jim Orey and began pushing it.

I am so grateful for the likes of Paul Gleason and John Gill for showing us the way. My continued thanks go out to the 'Over 50 Crew' for keeping me psyched in this fabulous sport.    

Hi John!  It’s been awhile but I followed in your footsteps at the RDD smokejumper base.  I didn’t know Paul Gleason was a climber.  To me me he was famous for coming up with LCES.  I think after the Dude Fire?  (I worked on the Payson Hotshots before jumping).  

Kris, so glad you survived that fall. Kind of strange that just a few hours earlier I was learning rolling like a ball. So my question is if I lift weights like Barb and do Pilates like you when will I be climbing like you? I’m ready for all this training to take hold. 

I know someone here does not like Timothée Chalamet but I’m blown away by this kid. In fact, I have a bad crush. What I think is that he’s not just brought back a music that was so important but an era that we have lost.

Kristian Solem wrote:

Thanks Brad. I'm lucky that the landing zone was free of obstacles. A few cans of paint would have ruined my day. 

Glad it turned out well… 

I’ve been too preoccupied acting like a young newbie at a new job to pay attention to this thread  

Ageism at my old company and in general, pretty bad.

Lori Milas wrote:

After all that we drove over to look at two of my favorite rocks. Tony tried to look interested, but has absolutely no idea. I think these routes are jaw dropping. On top of that I was looking at an adjacent formation to the right and wondering if it could possibly be climbed. That’s a pretty deep and gnarly crack in there.

Lori, I'm surprised you do not carry a guidebook with you whenever you are in the Park. There are several routes on that formation ranging from 5.10d to 5.12a, including the 10d that starts up that crack and heads up and right on the face.

A humorous postcard by Walter Hahn dated 1904, predicting how popular the sport of climbing would be in 1910. The spire is Barbarine, ascended  by the first great American rock climber, Oliver Perry-Smith, and his companion, Rudolph Fehrmann. There were over two hundred small climbing clubs in Saxony at this time, fierce rivals for first ascents. Perry-Smith belonged to Schwarzer Kamin, still popular today. I once spoke with his son, Cosby.

Here are badges for a few more clubs . . . 

Randy wrote:

Lori, I'm surprised you do not carry a guidebook with you whenever you are in the Park. There are several routes on that formation ranging from 5.10d to 5.12a, including the 10d that starts up that crack and heads up and right on the face.

Thanks Randy. I try to keep your guidebook with me but yesterday we were in Tony’s car just driving through. And I have to admit I like to ask.  The feedback on routes is so great.

—-

I had a wonderful day out with Bob on Hidden Slab. Finally broke the 5.10 barrier (again) on Private Eye. We got to talk about approach shoes and rubber and hard bearing down crimping while a couple of ravens hung out nearby.