One of the nice things about working on the Pinns guide was the people I worked with. Steve and I made a great friendship even better. I had great fun with Clint delving into Pinnacles minutiae. I don't particularly miss the tramping into endless brush with fellow fanatics like Jeff and Dennis, but this is more because of the brush and certainly not because of the personalities. And I met new people, lots of them, who have been involved in climbing there.
Two of those people are Jack and Bob. Climbed several days with Bob looking for some of their older stuff, and I still am climbing with him (going out in two weekends). Got hold of Jack later in the process, but then we seemed to make up for it at light speed. At one point, Jack, looking through old notes and records, sent me over 40 emails in one week.
Bob recently sent me the following story about the two of them. I urged him to post it here, but he deferred and said I could post it in his stead:
"A recent conversation with Tom Higgins made me think anew about Pinnacles climbing over the last thirty odd years or so. The occasion was the Rockpile Rendezvous, part of the Park's Centennial celebration. Half a dozen folks, some climbers and some not, sat with Tom in the shade on the last bridge before the Caves. It was a warm June day but very pleasant in the shade. Various people told stories. There was a great deal of quiet laughter.
Conversation eventually drifted to climbing at Pinnacles. Tom spoke admiringly of the ground up, bolt from stance ethic that is prevalent in the Pinnacles climbing scene. He threw out a question: how did this traditional and demanding ethic come about?
How indeed? How was consensus reached on an issue fraught with so much conflict in so many places? How did an ideal become accepted practice? For me, the answer to this question begins with Jack Holmgren.
Quite a few years back Jack got word of my interest in climbing via a mutual friend and called me up. A meeting was arranged and we duly met on an August afternoon in the West Side parking lot.
I know, I know, it was 105 in the shade. How could we think about climbing? Well, hectic jobs (Jack's an attorney and I'm a school teacher) and the responsibilities of fatherhood dictated when we could climb far more than the thermometer. We both had to climb, so we braved the heat. Then, because of our lives' shared responsibilities and rhythms, Jack and I discovered Pinnacles beauties few others have experienced. We found that even when the climate's mood was most vicious, certain times and certain places yielded both comfort and adventure.
I forgot what we climbed first (something moderate, no doubt) but we soon ended up on the Balconies. Shake and Bake, Roper's old Regular Route, Conduit to the Cosmos and, of course, Lava Falls provided us with an introduction to each other. By the by, that overhang before the last bolt on the first pitch of Lava puckers me right up. Jack dances through it every time. On the other hand, the thin moves on the second pitch just before the angle eases make him think a bit. I've got eight inches or so more reach than he does so those moves don't bother me. We worked well together.
Jack and I agreed that fatherhood has a steep and never-ending learning curve. His adopted daughter and my two sons presented us with fascinating, frustrating and often amusing challenges. Sharing news on approach hikes and in the car led to deeper musings on the craft of parenthood. We both took our duties seriously and tried to do our best. I remember a twenty mile hike along the Coast Ridge we once made in an attempt to rescue Rita, some of her stranded schoolmates and the idiot NOLS leaders who'd gotten them stuck. Army helicopters beat us to them by about an hour and plucked them out of Madrone camp, but we did not count it a wasted effort. Jack was a devoted dad.
Our emerging climbing pattern allowed us to mitigate climbing's impact upon families. We often met at 3:00 A.M. in the Soledad McDonald's parking lot. We'd leave a car and drive to Pinnacles. We'd hike in by headlamp, don our gear and climb at first light. We often made it out by eleven and home by noon, with time to transport kids to music lessons, dance recitals, play practices and baseball games. Fortuitously, this schedule also allowed us to escape the worst of Pinnacles' summer heat.
Occasionally, however, we blew it. I remember one late August day when we lingered too long at Piedras Bonitas. To approach Piedras, we usually parked just outside the West entrance cattle guard (yes, that no parking sign is specifically directed at Jack and Bob) and hiked along the fence until we hit a ridge connecting with the High Peaks. The distance to Piedras is a bit more than two miles. Anyway, the climbing was fascinating (it might have been an Ola Verde day) and it was well past noon when we started to unlace our shoes. It was still fairly mellow in the shade where we'd stashed our packs, but by the time I hit the ridge I was sweating buckets. It's not that steep or far from Ola to the ridge. I looked back at Jack. He was sweating and gasping too. We turned to the work at hand.
I went into my 'don't quit until it's over' trudge and tried to tune down my awareness of discomfort. I kept my water bottle out and took a swig every hundred yards or so. I heard Jack crunch a stick every so often about ten yards behind me. Usually I enjoyed the walk out, the scents of heated sage and chemise, the smell of hot dust, sweet and aromatic. Not this time. Despite my retreat into trudge mode, I felt my brain starting to cook beneath my tractor cap. I reached the fence. This distraction kept me going until I reached the car.
I popped the trunk, got out extra water and poured half of it over my head and neck. Better. I took a long drink and turned to make a sarcastic comment to Jack. No Jack.
Oh, shit.
My hearing's not the best, but surely I would have heard Jack crash unconscious into the brush. Still, he wasn't there. I dropped several bottles of water and a tarp into my pack. I turned and headed up the hill. Waves of heat shimmered above the chemise. I stared at my toes and began to put one foot in front of the other.
After a few dozen yards, I heard the crunch of a footstep and looked up. Weaving like a boxer who's been punched too many times but won't go down, Jack staggered down the slope. I greeted him with a water bottle. He snatched it, poured half its contents over the back of his neck and drank the rest. He took several deep breaths and then gasped that he'd almost passed out. Heat drove him to his knees and he crawled under a bush for a few moments of rest in the shade. Slightly revived, he then rose and continued on.
We were too knackered to talk much when we got to the car. I'm a lifelong believer in the magical restorative properties of beer. It is the elixir of life. I reached in the cooler, grabbed a Tecate, popped it and inhaled brew. Jack, abstemious as usual, stuck with water. We tacitly agreed to give ourselves a few days off from August climbing.
Those hikes back from Piedras were often toasty in the extreme. Our work on Condor Crag, however, was often cold, cold and wet. Deep shade on that north side of Condor, especially in November, made for chilly days. We worked on the steep lower part of Condiment's first pitch a couple of times before we were ready to gain some serious ground. Jack let me put in the last bolt before the angle moderated. He wanted to be in a position to lead around the corner of the big buttress once I established a belay.
I gave the last bolt a final tap (We were still using star-dryvins and some 5/16 compression buttonheads; in the eighties you made do with what you could find) and headed up for parts unknown. A few delicate moves on good rock led, as often happens at Pinnacles, to a lower angle ramp of not so good rock covered with moss, dirt and munge. Such terrain requires close attention, but I gained height quickly anyway. Forty feet out, it crossed my mind that I ought to put a bolt in. The angle had become embarrassingly low, however, and our intended belay alcove was only twenty feet or so above. I kept going.
A few lichen moves on steeper rock made me doubt the wisdom of my impatience. I oozed into a mini-alcove/crease and achieved a comfy, one-hip seat. I got a good alien (yellow, I think) into an incipient crack and got out the drill.
Jack joined me soon in a flurry of chatty remarks. He's a cheery person to climb with. Our usual conversation was a comic, mildly satiric, not that off-color, stream of consciousness dialog. I was mostly the straight man, but my lumbering wit periodically produced a passably humorous line. The patter masked Jack's deep urge to climb onto new ground. I've met no other climber with as great a desire to explore the unknown.
Before exploration, however, craftsmanship must be served. Combined with his unequaled drive was unequaled caution. When life began to get interesting, Jack always played by the rules. Despite his eagerness, he banged another bolt into our belay. What did Don Whillans say? "I never go oop a mountain I can't coom down." Jack, too.
All right with the belay, Jack stepped around the corner. He traversed up and left about five yards and took a peek at a black and curving wall. He wanted to get to work on it, but first he stopped on a good stance and stuck in another Star.
Jack is justly famous for his use of natural protection on Pinnacles leads. He never placed a piece of natural pro that wasn't "bomber". Many of them actually were. Of course, the key to a good Pinnacles placement is the quality of the rock. Often (and here is where Jack's exquisite judgment comes in) a placement's security depends on the use of the best qualities of demonstrably weak rock. Nobody excels Jack in this desperate art. That first bolt, however, often low on a pitch, is the key to all that follows. It is intended to absorb upward pressure and keep all of his precision placements where he put them. Leading a Holmgren pitch is a lesson in creative protection design. Every thing works together and may not work at all if one of the pieces is a bit off. Truth in advertising forces me to confide that neither Jack nor I ever took a long (or short) fall on natural pro while we climbed together. If any of you are volunteering, I'd be interested to see exactly what some of those placements would hold.
Jack floated up a forty foot wall (5.6/5.7) and placed four pieces: a Lowe tri-cam (invented, I believe, for Pinnacles pockets) a small Alien, a wired stopper (placed Salathe' fashion between scarcely visible, insignificant knobs) and a medium Friend. Close to the top of the wall, our second pitch goal was in sight, the Condor Club belay. You've got to ask him about that or take a long look at the bulge on Condor's north skyline.
He began a delicate, ascending traverse onto the bulge. We both gave it a 5.9 in our estimation of its difficulties but are ever eager for other opinions. He stopped on small holds and put in a bolt. He stopped twice more to do the same thing, each time on a more tenuous stance. I couldn't see what he was doing, but I could imagine what was going on. Jack's running commentary kept me updated and I knew the focus he brought to bolting, the strict balance which ignored cramped muscles and screaming tendons, the extreme economy of motion, the compact hammer strokes.
What I honestly don't recall is how many trips up that wall it took to reach the bulge. It was one more, at least, but eventually we were both standing gleefully atop the bulge. I went up a bit and put in a bolt twenty feet or so above the belay. I came back down and we escaped via a double rope rappel to an acceptable piece of ground nowhere near the start of the climb. We were very pleased with ourselves and grinned all the way back to the car.
Our subsequent summit push was mellow and a tad anticlimactic. Aside from a patch of awful rock above my bolt, (that bit still gives me the willies; we came back years later and created a cleaner, much preferable alternative) no difficulties remained. It was a walk in the park, an airy walk.
Jack's dedication to bolting from stance, inspired by Mr. Higgins, is not as appreciated as it should be in this age of power drills and rappels. Folks don't care where the bolts came from or how they got there as long as they appear at regular, closely spaced intervals. I've got to mention a morning out at the Gargoyle. We were exploring a line (Que Lastima) on the NW corner. The first crux (10b) began about fifteen feet off the deck. Jack went up, moved partway through the crux, reversed and climbed down (did I mention that he was a master of this disappearing art?) He did it again. And again. On the third time, he dropped into a stem that would make any ballerina proud, achieved balance and slowly let go with his right hand. Muscles trembling with strain, he announced that this was a good bolting stance. Sam and I withheld comment. He needed no further encouragement. He reversed the moves and assembled the bolting kit.
Up again. Down again. Up again. Down again. He could achieve the stem and three-fingered stance (left thumb and index finger were busy holding the drill) and get in fifteen or so hammer strokes before his abused body threatened to spasm him to the ground. Reversing those tough moves with the grace they required inspired my lasting admiration. He never let howling muscles hurry him or spoil the sequence. He would then rest for five minutes or so before returning to the rack. This went on for more than three hours. When that first bolt was at last in, Jack was shattered. Sam made a good lead into the chute and to the top, but Jack's bolt was the key to the climb.
All that grueling work aside, some of our best days at Pinnacles were spent not climbing. A blue, February morning after snow found us at the north end of the tunnel on the High Peaks trail. The little bridge there was six inches deep in light, dry flakes. The scene was so beauteous that we nearly turned around. We both felt guilty when we tromped footprints into the unspoiled snow.
We duly arrived at a remote pinnacle on the ridge out past Squareblock. It looked more like a snow cone than a rock, but Jack was not to be deterred. He assured me that the verglace covered knobs would submit to the heat of his fingers and that the day's inevitable warming would rid the upper holds of snow. Ha.
Jack went up about ten feet, somehow achieving this height on ice without crampons. Then even he was convinced. He came down and we spent the rest of the day viewing winter vistas only rarely seen in Central California.
Jack and I share deep respect and liking for the Rangers and Park Service workers who care for Pinnacles. Their mission is a noble one, though it is chronically under-funded and unappreciated by most of the public they serve. Ranger Dan Jaramillo was a special friend. He stood vigil when darkness beat us to the parking lot and called wives with news of late returns. It was a great surprise to us, therefore, to one day find ourselves hunted by rangers.
This was George (the older one) Bush's fault. He and Congress got into a dispute which resulted in the closing of National Parks and Monuments, Pinnacles included. Jack and I took this imposition personally and decided to ignore it. We parked down the road from the entrance to the West Side and skulked up the hill, past Piedras Bonitas and over to the High Peaks. I forget what we climbed, possibly something on Goat Rock, but we definitely caused no trouble, called no attention to ourselves and saw nobody else. Imagine our surprise when we returned to the ridge above the road and found patrol cars and rangers posted below us. One was right by the entrance gate. Two were walking slowly down the road.
Crouched in the chemise, we watched and pondered. These folks weren't getting paid. Why were they out trying to pinch two relatively innocent climbers? They must have known that we didn't intend to burn the place down or steal Photographer's Delight. Obviously stealth was required if the combined Holmgren/Walton bank accounts weren't to suffer inconvenient hits.
Reverting to Lone Ranger and Tonto mode, we crawled from bush to bush down the long slope. Jack was kemosabe, by the by. The rangers patrolled. Jack and I scuttled, dragging ropes behind us. Periodically, we stopped beneath convenient manzanitas to stifle our giggles. We were into it, but we knew it was ridiculous.
When we got close to the car, we waited for the ranger pair to turn uphill on their rounds. They did. We dashed to the car, hopped in and roared off toward Soledad. There was no high- speed (Jack's car was only up to an OJ type chase anyway) pursuit. We did leave that car in the McDonald's parking lot for some months, however, in case his license plate number was on some governmental hot sheet.
I could go on. Jack was among the first to camouflage bolt hangers. He played around with colors at home and came up with two basic patterns. Once in place, he'd touch them up by hand. Chameleons? Rank amateurs in comparison to Jack's hangers. Should you get up on one of those Piedras climbs and start feeling anxious, look around. Look very, very closely.
As I said, I could go on, but I can answer Tom's question now. How did the Pinnacles' climbing ethic come about? It came from the respect and love climbers have for Pinnacles. Of course, Jack and I were addicted to the excitement of stepping onto new ground. That's a great thrill, but we became aware of a deeper joy in our climbing, the joy of harmonizing with the place, of becoming part of its natural flow for a morning or an afternoon. Climbing by itself is a transient activity. Skill, reputation, even the routes themselves soon fade. But the joy of movement, of climbing up South Finger in late autumn sunshine, is renewable and eternal.
Now Pinnacles climbers didn't get together, sit in a circle, hold hands, sing Cumbaya and come to this conclusion. No. As amusing as this vision is, it didn't happen. The various folks who climbed here in the seventies, eighties, and nineties came to share a non-intrusive ethic. The place and its beauty taught us consensus.
We had a lot of fun climbing out there. Countless others will too because we were careful about what we did."
Bob added this too:
"I climbed that way as I learned from traditionalists like Joe Herbst
and
by reading Higgins and others marvelous articles in Ascent and the
like.
And I felt that there were and are limits to what we can and should do
at places like the Pinns. Climbing traditionally has a lot to do with
controlling our hubris. It humbles us. We need that more than
anything
else. Pinnacles, for me, was always about humble joy.
Jack Holmgren"
