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21.
Climbing Equipment - A Matter of Perspective
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Len Margolin joined the
Los Alamos Mountaineers in 1969, and very kindly provided us with this
section on the history of some of our climbing and mountaineering
equipment.
Many things have
changed since I joined the Mountaineers, mostly for the better. Newer
members of the club may not have thought much about how the state of the
art, in terms of clothing, equipment, guidebooks, etc., affects their
climbing experience and opportunities. Below I describe some of this
environment of my early days, hoping that some club members from even
earlier days might add to these notes. There is no motive or message in
these notes, nor any intent to compare the climbers of different eras.
It is simply, as stated in the title, a matter of providing the visitor
to this website a perspective to better understand the history of our
club.
In 1970, there were no specialized rock climbing shoes. Most of the
experienced climbers used medium weight hiking shoes, which had rigid
soles but were heavy and clunky. Beginners often started in running
shoes, which were more comfortable, but whose flexible soles were
generally useless for the thin edges of our basalt cliffs. It was 1971
when George Bell first came to the climbing school with his brand new
Royal Robbins climbing shoes. RRs combined a rigid sole with lightweight
uppers. The narrow welt permitted edging on the thinnest structures. On
the downside, the shoes were narrow and were supposed to be worn tight.
The original soles were very hard rubber, which tended to track up
kitchen floors and didn't last more than a single season. Worst of all,
the shoes were ostentatiously royal blue and came with bright red
shoelaces.
Fig.
1. Royal Robbins rock climbing shoes and two chrome moly pitons
(Len Margolin photo, 2008).
Despite these
disadvantages, soon all of the serious climbers wore RRs. Many of us
changed out the red shoelaces. The approach to the Brazos Cliffs in RRs
was very painful, and the sharp quartzite rocks of the descent gully
chewed up the soles rapidly, so many of us began wearing sneakers to the
bottom of the cliffs and lacing up our boots on the first moves. After
the original soles wore out, some of us experimented with softer
replacements. There was only one shoemaker in the area who would work on
the RRs, Steve Komito in Estes Park, Colorado. He was very busy and
sometimes one would make an appointment more than a month in advance.
Helmets were required on all technical club climbs. If you carried a
rope, you wore a helmet. This was a sensible reaction to the accidents
of the 1960's, where several deaths were attributed to lack of helmets.
The club had a stock of loaner helmets; these were plastic shells with a
plastic suspension. They were hot, uncomfortable and had a tendency to
slip forward over the eyes at the most inopportune times. The more
experienced climbers had Bell Toptex helmets, a shiny white shell with
padding and a lining inside. These were even hotter, but more stable.
They must have been effective, because most of us could point to many
dents in the outer shell and tell the stories that accompanied them.
However, it turned out that Bell had designed these helmets for surfing,
and when they realized they were being used for climbing, took them off
the market.
We were still in the piton era in the early 1970's. Chrome moly pitons
(see Fig. 1) had replaced soft iron pitons; the harder new pitons were
much more reliable in the granite of the Sandias and worked okay in the
Brazos. However, I remember trying to remove an old fixed iron piton on
the lower pitches of Easy Ridge, working in vain for half an hour. In
the mid 1970's, climbers started to notice that the cracks on many
popular climbs were being destroyed by the constant placement and
removal of pitons. I remember a thin crack climb in Yosemite (Serenity
Crack) that had been an aid route, but became a free route when the
piton scars became wide enough to use for finger holds. This concern led
to the first chocks, marketed by Chouinard. These were steel and heavy,
and many of us drilled holes in the larger chocks to reduce the weight.
In 1970, Plymouth goldline, a woven nylon rope, was the "gold standard."
(A goldline rope is visible in Figure 3 of the
Brazos section.) Climbers who
have never used goldline have missed an interesting if unpleasant
experience. No matter how carefully one coiled a rope at the end of a
climb, the next time out it was spaghetti. Several times, the rope
kinked in my belay plate while rappelling; this is a very awkward
situation if you have no way to temporarily take the weight off the
rope. Another unpleasant feature of goldline is its stretchiness. While
perlon has a nonlinear response with almost no stretch at small loads,
you had to get at least ten feet up to avoid a groundfall when belayed
on goldline. I recall a particular episode at the Overlook, when an
unlucky climber did not get high enough on the Cholla Wall before
peeling, and so had an intimate experience with the large cactus that
used to grow at its base. The development of perlon ropes was indeed a
blessing.
In the early 1970's, a company named MSR (Mountain Safety Research)
began to look at climbing equipment with a more scientific eye. Ice axes
then were still made of wood with a metal head. MSR marketed an ice axe
entirely made of metal and painted bright orange (see Figure 2). I don't
know whether the new ice axes addressed a serious safety problem, but
soon most of the mountaineers sported the new axes. It appeared that the
thorough research of MSR did not extend to the orange paint, which had a
tendency to bleed when wet. Owners of the new axe were readily
identified by their matching orange gloves.
Fig.
2. An MSR ice axe and a pair of Mickey Mouse boots (or K-boots)
(Len Margolin photo, 2008).
MSR did address another
piece of technology that I think was more pressing. In those early
1970's, there were many models of gasoline-fueled backpacking stoves.
These were quite varied, but had one thing in common, which was their
lack of dependability. Cold uncooked oatmeal does not provide a good
start to a strenuous day. In frustration, some of us went to a French
stove termed a Bluet, which used propane cartridges. These were more
dependable, though on cold mornings one had to remember to bring the
cartridge into the sleeping bag to warm it up. I used my Bluet for
several years, but then reports of explosions and tent fires began to
surface. When MSR put out its first gasoline stove, it proved a
satisfactory solution to all these problems.
In 1970, there was no Goretex, no artificial insulation like fiberfill
or polar guard, no polypropylene. What we had was down, which was
effective if you could keep it dry, and wool. Polyurethane ponchos were
absolutely waterproof, but did not breathe and trapped body moisture.
Some of the climbers carried umbrellas in the mountains, which worked
well if there was not too much wind. I did my first winter climbs in
wool knickers, which were stylish in some retro sense, but totally
uncomfortable.
In the mid 1970's, a small company started up in Santa Fe. Altiwear used
foam to make innovative winter camping products like parkas and sleeping
bags. I bought the third sleeping bag they produced; it worked as
advertised. Then I bought a jacket and pants, and I used them on a
winter trip to the Spanish Peaks. The foam equipment kept me warm and
dry, with no itching or irritated skin. When I came home, I threw away
the knickers. I still have the sleeping bag. Altiwear achieved some
international notoriety when a Himalayan expedition used their
equipment. Unfortunately, they were eclipsed by the introduction of
newer and more comfortable artificial fibers and went out of business.
There was at least one piece of equipment from the old days that worked
really well, what we called K-boots or Mickey Mouse boots (see Figure
2). Many of the Los Alamos Mountaineers had expedition experience,
including trips in 1966 to Antarctica and 1971 to Greenland. Also George
Bell and the Liskas had climbed in the Andes and the Himalayas. For such
expeditions, leather boots had some serious drawbacks, mainly associated
with keeping them waterproofed. We used a product called snow seal to
waterproof leather; this was messy and had to be frequently reapplied.
Snowseal was waxy, kind of like artificial bear fat; the most effective
way to apply it was to spread it on the boots and then put the boots
into a warm oven. Not too warm, though, as some climbers discovered.
Eiichi Fukushima turned me onto K-boots, which were actually Korean War
surplus boots made of unibody molded rubber. They came in two models,
black and white, and two sizes (big and bigger), and in those days could
be found in army surplus stores. Of course, you couldn't just use them
off the shelf. K-boot soles had no tread and were too flexible to use
with crampons. So they had to be resoled with a more rigid bottom. The
boots were very large, and it was difficult to find crampons that fit.
Don Liska once told me that no one had ever gotten frostbitten toes in
K-boots, but wrinkled skin and blisters were a problem because of
excessive sweating. He recommended a very heavy "Indian" sock to absorb
the sweat. I ordered a pair, but they were scratchy wool and I couldn't
wear them. I still have the boots and wear them occasionally. I also
have the socks, still unused, which I will sell to anyone at cost.
We now live in the information age. Climbers argue the merits of the
many guides to Colorado's fourteeners, some of which now contain CDs
with topo maps and GPS coordinates. Life was simpler in 1970, when Ormes
"Guide to the Colorado Mountains" was the only source. In my copy of his
sixth edition, Ormes covers all the mountains in Colorado in under 300
pages. Difficult mountains, like Capitol Peak, merited nearly a full
page and a hand drawn map. Easier fourteeners, like Bierstadt and Evans,
got only a brief paragraph and shared a hand drawn map. Of course, Bob
Ormes hadn't climbed all of these peaks himself; much of the information
was culled from reports of other Colorado mountain climbers and was
never verified. Consequently, climbing trips sometimes uncovered errors
that we noted in our books and shared as needed. Ormes' book also
contains some interesting notes on geology and history of the Colorado
Mountains.
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