Who the hell is Jim Beyer?

I've been trying to research this absolute enigma of a climber for a while, specifically what he's done in Yosemite. I read on the "Controlled Burn" route guide that he messed up WOEML and Hockey Night in Canada. Other accounts range from him being a down to earth, seasoned badass with multiple hard routes to his name in the desert, to him being an incompetent madman with poor ethics and overly contrived routes. Anyone want to set the record straight?

Greg Child did a great profile on Beyer in one of his books.  

Asa Cianchettewrote:

I've been trying to research this absolute enigma of a climber for a while, specifically what he's done in Yosemite. I read on the "Controlled Burn" route guide that he messed up WOEML and Hockey Night in Canada. Other accounts range from him being a down to earth, seasoned badass with multiple hard routes to his name in the desert, to him being an incompetent madman with poor ethics and overly contrived routes. Anyone want to set the record straight?

Have you tried the search function? There was just a lengthy thread about Jim a little while back. 

Michael Rushwrote:

Have you tried the search function? There was just a lengthy thread about Jim a little while back. 

I did, I think the one you're talking about is "anybody repeat Jim Beyer’s routes?". That was helpful, but at this point I'm more interested in him as a person rather than his routes and their non-existent repeats.

Jake907wrote:

Greg Child did a great profile on Beyer in one of his books.  

Duly noted, thanks!

Go right to the source.  Just PM him from here.  He’s answered me before. 

Isaiah aka Zay Foulks wrote:

I doubt anyone on Mountainproject will set the record straight on Beyer.

Based on your post, you likely know more about him than 99 percent of users here.

Mark Smith/Richard Jensons' write up about the second ascent of Intifada was pretty damning.

"A6 death route" actually turned out to be like A3 and they found holes that had clearly been filled deliberately with sand, all over the place.

This was in the AAJ correct?

Asa Cianchettewrote:

Duly noted, thanks!

The High Lonesome by John long has a full chapter that talks about Jim. I highly recommend the book. 

I've climbed with him, he is a bit of a loner and overall just a character. Less of a talker and more of a do-er you could say. 

He wore a beard before beards were trendy!

Jim Beyer is busy! -- SuperTopo

Required reading for anyone interested in Jim Beyer. Lots of stories from both sides of the spectrum. He's put up absolute classics in the Tetons -- Caveat Emptor in Death Canyon, Beyer East Face on the Grand just to name a few. His free climbs seem to be the best of anyone out there, but the horror stories on his aid routes, especially the ones put up by himself, seem to be aplenty. 

You can find him and another contemporary of his still disagreeing on MP comments. From one of Jim's new routes at Blacktail Butte. I make sure to call my friends stupid sport climbers when they botch cruxes now. "Go left 2 feet then up, you stupid sport climber" This is the new shit 5.8 - George vs. Jim

George Bracksieck

While I appreciate the development of this and adjacent routes, I would like to provide a public service by telling it like it is. The New Shit is just that: poorly bolted, poorly protected, sandbagged. The dark chert nodules, however, make the climbing possible and interesting. I stick-clipped the second bolt because the first is useful only for a possible aid point to help reach hook placements on the nodules during a ground-up first ascent. After struggling to and past that second bolt, I continued past two more and reached the rubble-strewn ledge below the exit routes. I continued up the poorly protected 5.8 Exit Crack to reach an anchor.

I wonder if anyone has ever witnessed Mr Beyer establishing any of his hundreds or thousands of ground-up routes. I wonder what shenanigans may take place. I’m guessing that he hangs from a hook or gear when too steep to stand and drill. Perhaps he uses aid to ascend, which wouldn’t be bad as long as he would leave the rest of us honestly protected routes to climb. In his posted route list he says that he hand-drilled for all of his bolts at Upper Blacktail and that those routes appear to be “sport climbs” when in fact those are ground-ups. I think the difference is obvious between the routes with strange bolt placements allowing for ground falls and routes more intelligently protected.

Jim Beyer
The bolts on this route are well placed well spaced and quality stainless steel. There is one detail that I should have mentioned. On this climb, you don't just climb straight up the bolt line like a stupid sport climber. If you do it's .10. Instead, you clip a bolt, traverse left 3', go up 4', then step right 3' to the next bolt. This is .8 and avoids the .10. Routes are rated for the easiest way up. All my recent routes are complex mazes and I don't usually write detailed beta but in this case a normal .8 sport climber might not expect such a situation and blunder into .10. I might have made the same blunder when I was a .8 climber. Most climbers would call this a well protected route . I think George is whining because he flailed so much on this route and blames the route. Glad I got the name right.

^ Informative post.

Full Supertopo link:

http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.php?topic_id=2403537&tn=0&mr=0

I think he is an overall net negative to the climbing world but damn some of his write ups are pretty damn funny.  I remember one in Alpinist years ago talking about living down by the Colorado River training for some impossible climb that had me rolling.  I don't think he meant it to be funny, his obvious self promotion and insecurity bleed out so much in his chest pounding writing that you have to laugh.  

A V wrote:

Obligatory link to a legendary article written by climbing’s Hunter S. Thompson: publications.americanalpine…

"It was good, a simple life filled with the simple joy of achieving simple goals. But that was long ago, and this simpleton somehow morphed over the years into a sword-swinging psycho."

That was a good read

By day six Beyer was near the top, having climbed a dozen ice-coated free and aid pitches. But three days later he hadn't moved, trapped in his bivy sack as a snowstorm raged around him. On the ninth day he pressed on in frigid weather. Beyer's resolve and equipment were now wearing thin. His ropes were frozen cables, his ice hammer had snapped at the head, food was dwindling and the weather, by the tenth evening, was again deteriorating. The whole time Beyer climbed, a Japanese expedition on nearby Ultar deemed the weather so bad they didn't move out of base camp.

'Every hour or two," says Beyer, I’d stop and shout into the storm, 'Do I really want to go on?'" Each time he decided he did, he'd swallow a caffeine pill and continue.

Sixty feet from the top he found himself stemming free up a rime-coated dihedral, his boots skating. Suddenly the snow blobs forming his footholds collapsed, and he was hurtling through the air.

Self-belay falls tend to be long and often messy, and Beyer could ill afford such folly. His mental programming kicked into gear. He rotated and lunged for his last piece of pro and caught it with both hands. Had this catch been in a baseball game, Beyer would be in the Hall of Fame, but where he was, his only reward was survival. Grappling with the corner again, he thrashed up and over the summit rim to find himself in darkness and storm, without headlamp or bivouac gear. He was not, however, on top. but on a rubble-strewn slope below a thorny crown of possible summits.

The situation was deflating. "My adrenaline rush had long gone," says Beyer. "The survivor in me said, 'No more. " He turned around.

Bitter thoughts wracked Beyer on the descent. He felt he no longer cared about summits. He hated mountains. But by the time he reached the meadows and McInerny two days later, he realized that, although he hadn't stood on the highest pile of rubble on top, there was an element of success to his climb: he had completed a wall that had thwarted four expeditions, and he and his partner were going home alive.

By 1991 Beyer figured he was ready to climb the hardest big-wall route in the world. Using money from a spec house he built in Boulder, he organized an expedition to Trango Tower (also called Nameless Tower; 20,463 feet) in Pakistan and, since he was in the land of the 8000-meter peaks, Gasherbrum II (26,360 feet). Two solo "training routes," in 1989 and 1990 in Colorado's Black Canyon of the Gunnison - Like a Psycho on the Painted Wall and Black Planet on North Chasm View Wall, both boltless and rated VI A4d-had put him in good stead.

Perhaps Bib-O-li-Motin had left a residue of fear in him. Shortly before departing for Pakistan, Beyer visited Yosemite to seek a partner for Tango Tower. John Middendorf was keen. Though Middendorf had seen Beyer around for years and knew he was a master big-wall climber, they'd never climbed together. "Jim was always an outsider to the cliques of Yosemite," says Middendorf, who suggested they climb a wall to get acquainted. "But I couldn't get him up on a wall. It was as if he was scared of committing to climb with another person." Beyer and Middendorf’s Pakistan plan never got off the ground. Perhaps in the solitary constellation of Beyer's universe, the idea of climbing with a partner had become more disquieting than soloing.

Beyer arrived alone in Islamabad a few weeks after the defeat of Saddam Hussein's army. Many climbers had canceled their trips to Islamic Pakistan, but not Beyer. He called his expedition the "1991 Karakoram Shakefest." He wanted an experience beyond any of his other climbs. This he got, but not in the way he planned.

His problems arose in Islamabad. Says Beyer, "A paperwork mixup between my expedition and some other group had led my young liaison officer {LO) to believe three women were on my team. His first question to me was, “Where are the ladies?' When I explained there was only me, his fantasy of a vacation in a base camp of women was shattered."

To fathom Beyer's further fiascoes, one must understand that Pakistan's mountaineering rules in 1991 required expeditions to have at least four members. Through negotiations with the Ministry of Tourism, Beyer solved this glitch by hiring three Pakistani high-altitude porters to be bis partners. It wasn't an ideal situation, and was costly, but it got Beyer moving to the mountains. The problem was, though paid and contracted to do so, this trio refused to carry loads. During the approach along the Baltoro, these paid members and Beyer' s other porters held daily sit-down strikes, demanding better equipment and more pay.

But Beyer’s main conflicts arose from the bad chemistry between him and his LO, whom Beyer paints as a rigid martinet who protested at every opportunity. "Jim, you'll take 101 risks on this climb, but l will not take a single risk," said the LO at the start of the trip. "Every rule must be followed exactly." Things went downhill from there, says Beyer, beginning when the LO, while examining the expedition clothing provided by Beyer, found he was getting used long-johns and other hand-me-downs from Beyer's wardrobe. The combination of the LO's intractability and Beyer's distrust of authority figures and naivete on how to interact with bis Pakistani hosts created an explosive situation

Perhaps Beyer had preprogrammed himself for the showdown that followed on the Dunge Glacier. On the final day of the approach, trouble began within sight of the granite bulwark of Trango Tower. Beyer attempted to pay off and send back one of his three paid members. This plan - intended to save him money and endorsed by the Ministry of Tourism, says Beyer - precipitated an argument when the member refused to leave. He wanted to stay to earn more money. Backed up by the LO, the others quit in sympathy, leaving Beyer with six regular porters to shuttle his ten loads to the peak. Beyer left the four bickering on the talus fields and set off, happy to be rid of them. An hour later, sweating under a heavy load, Beyer heard the LO behind him hailing the group to stop.

Awaiting the LO's arrival, Beyer instructed the porters to remove their loads and pile them in a heap. "No man approach me," he ordered and positioned them ten feet away.

"The expedition is over,'' declared the LO. "We return to Skardu. Porters, pick up your loads and follow me."

"Don't touch the loads. Everyone stand back," Beyer countered.

The LO cited a technical point: because three members had quit, Beyer was no longer the team of four stipulated by the rules. Also illegal was the fact that the team had split into two groups. Such details are commonly overlooked by LOs, who usually do their utmost to help an expedition climb its peak. But in this case expedition justice became perverted.

A war of words ensued. Beyer made it clear he was staying. Essentially, he was in the right - the rules state that the expedition leader is the ultimate leader of the trip, and if he disagrees with an LO's decision he must state the nature of the disagreement in writing but need not follow the LO' s orders.

Meanwhile a witness appeared out of the rubble: a Spanish climber heading up to jumar his ropes on Great Trango Tower. "He seemed torn between his climb and this crazy spectacle," says Beyer. "l said, 'Hey, man, wait a few minutes and you’ll see the biggest fistfight of all time.” I knew I couldn't fight off ten guys, but a witness might be useful."

Despite the offer of a ringside seat, the Spaniard left. With a cry of "Porters, follow me," the LO charged at Beyer, who pushed the enraged soldier onto his back. Successive charges - unaided by the flabbergasted Balti porters - ended identically.

- - - Some pages are omitted from this book preview. - - -

 

ask MP and ye shall receive...thanks for the awesome info!

Holy crap! Epic excerpts, Kevin!

Stupid Sport Climber is gonna be a good route name soon.

Beyer wins again!

Climbing needs sword swinging psychos. I always thought Jensen’s obsession over Beyer was psychotic too. Crazies attract. Long live Jim Beyer!

The Kardashians are more interesting. 

Someone climb the stuff at hells bells outside Page in N AZ that he put up this summer and report back please. why are we talking about him like he’s not here? mountainproject.com/area/12…

Asa Cianchettewrote:

ask MP and ye shall receive...thanks for the awesome info!

For posterity so we can tell our grandkids it happened once.