Funny how the stuff I learned from the Royal Robbins classic gets repurposed for my SOTA career.
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Hi Eric,
Like you, I find that my rock climbing skills come in handy for climbing some of the more technical SOTA peaks. In addition, I find that the skills I learned placing protection and sometimes using natural protection help a lot when guying a mast where stakes don’t work. Below are a couple examples similar to yours.
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BTW: I also had that book by Robins.
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I love it Pat! Ingenious use of the terrain. I had the good fortune of running into Mr. Robbins on the south side of Lily Rock back in the '80s. Perhaps better known as Taquitz Rock to most. Here’s another:
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Excellent Eric. I also met Robins in early 80s. He was at the base of the Yellow Spur in Eldorado Canyon, CO. He did the first free ascent of that route with Pat Ament in 1960. He said he was there to see if he could still climb it. Always nice to meet your heroes. 
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I love the use of chockstones - particularly the artificial one!
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Excellent! I’ve rappelled off similar anchors 
Normally, common sense would argue against it, but sine 100s had done so before me, cheapness (didn’t want to leave a nut) won the argument.
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I, too, still have my copy of Basic Rockcraft but with something special (see photo).
I was at university in 1973 when Royal came through on a speaking tour. 50+ years later I fear I’ve long forgotten what he said, but afterwards a line of us formed with our well-thumbed copies in hand! He was gracious enough to sign each one.
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It’s funny. The book is called Basic Rockcraft, but the cover shows Tom Frost on what I think is the first ascent of The Salathe Wall, hardly BASIC rockcraft
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Nice! I heard Pat Ament give a talk on John Gill back in the 80’s. Got him to sign his book. Yes, that was back when rock climbing was sparsely populated with fringe characters.
We would do routes on Tahquitz the day after a gnarly thunderstorm and harvest a rack of gear left behind in panicked exits, only to leave the same gear in the next storm.
Just got back and checked my library. I have “Advanced Rockcraft” by Robbins.
Some classic cartoons in it by Sheridan Anderson. And it has very good illustrations of good and bad nut placements and horn slinging etc.
And this classic cartoon by Anderson. Brilliant!
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Eric, yes, when I started climbing in 1976, climbing was still a fringe sport populated mostly by eccentrics. Also, I could walk into Eldorado Canyon, outside Boulder, CO, almost any day and get on any climb without waiting in line. Same in Yosemite. And in Yosemite, after Sept 15, you could camp indefinitely in Sunnyside / Camp 4 for .50 cents a day. Very good conditions for a climbing bum.
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Ah, yes the 70’s! On Mt. Kenya with wool clothing, hard-twist ropes, industrial hard hats, canvas rucksacks and no harnesses. It is a wonder any of us survived.
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Dam’ right! When I started climbing the idea of a nut on a sling for protection was spreading: we used to bore the thread off suitably sized nuts but the expensive aluminium nuts and wedges that were appearing in the shops were much lighter to carry! My first cagoule was made of green canvas, it didn’t keep much rain out but it was quite windproof and hard-wearing, it was still good when nylon replaced it. I had a friend who insisted on still climbing with a hawser lay rope when the rest of us used kernmantle: coiling up his rope was a chore, it fought you all the way! Happy days!
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I still have some of my old hawser laid rope - now relegated to use whilst canoeing.
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Looks like what we called goldline. I believe it was a hemp fiber. Somehow appropriate for the age.
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It was indeed Goldline. Good eyes!
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There’s a couple of Youtube videos showing the great Don Whillans with one especially interesting video of him and (the not so great but media savvy IMO) Chris Bonnington climbing Dovedale Groove (E1 5b - 5.10a) oldstyle using chockstones. Can be found here :- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYgBlneMiCY&t=2086s
A couple of other things come to mind looking at the cover of the Royal Robbins book. Once in around 1987/8, myself and a couple of friends used to frequent a manky old local quarry for the only reason it was easily accessible by bicycle as none of us had a car. This quarry , had an old A1 line up a crack, and for a laugh we pegged our way up it. I thought it was harder to do that , than to actually free the route which went at E4 6a (5.11b), although it was only short and none of us had ever aided anything before.
The other flashback was my father coming home one night all excited in the early 1980’s to which I thought (being only 11 or 12 at the time) he’d bought something new for my train set only to be disappointed that he’d got hold of a new device - a Wild Country Friend. He was testing it out all over the house. I think taking a rack of friends on a sota trip might be overkill, but who knows?
Ian
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