ENDGAME NOTES AND AIDS FOR HEALTHY LIVING

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NOTHING LASTS FOREVER

Read:

Terry Tempest Williams book “Erosion”, Salman Rushdie’s “Languages of Truth” and HH Dalai Lama’s “A Call for Revolution” for a wider perspective of humanity and Mother Earth and “The Ministry for the Future” by Kim Stanley Robinson for the more anthropocentric attitude.

Consider:

The Earth is somewhere around 4,500,000,000 years old. Humans and their ancestors have been walking around the planet for about 6 million of those years. Homo sapiens in its modern form evolved 300,000 years ago from Homo erectus. Human civilizations started forming around 6,000 years ago. That is, the Earth has been here a lot longer than the first ancestors of modern humans or any human civilizations, and any and all platitudes that proclaim Earth was created and exists for human life are delusionary at best. The notion that Homo sapiens are the highest form of life, superior to every other form of flora and fauna on Earth, is hubristic madness.

            Many, many, many life forms have come and vanished on Earth during those 4,500,000,000 years, some of them recently, alas, because of the anthropocentric actions of mankind growing out of his/her swollen-headed hubristic fantasy that Earth is a resource instead of a mother of all life, not just human life. Many people, including two old friends, Doug Tompkins and Yvon Chouinard, have done their best to address this fallacy. Check this: https://www.tompkinsconservation.org/ and this: https://www.patagonia.com/ownership/  even knowing it would not be enough. Doing the right thing for the right reasons has a value that endures beyond the action in the moment. May we all do as well, that is our best.

            Each time I have rafted the Colorado River down the Grand Canyon, at its narrowest point (56 feet) I have run my hand along the Vishnu Schist (the oldest exposed rock on Earth, several billion years old years old) and something about its smoothness and density and color communicates the relativity of its age and mine, and one of the ways that I have learned to (or at least choose to) think about that relativity is that a human life is like a snowflake falling on its journey to its source which never ends or an Aspen leaf that grows from a larger dynamic, has a life which ends falling from its tree in a return to that larger dynamic that never (so far) ends and of which the Earth is as small a part as a snowflake is to the Earth.

            And this is not new information. In the 18th century Thomas Malthus wrote this: https://evolution.berkeley.edu/the-history-of-evolutionary-thought/pre-1800/the-ecology-of-human-populations-thomas-malthus/

            The population of Earth when Malthus issued his warning was around one billion people. In 1900 the population was about 1,600,000,000. By 1960 it had grown to 3,034,949,748. By 2000 it was 6,143,493,823 and today it is more than 8,000,000,000.

            Mother Earth cannot sustain that many people, nor shall it for much longer (one of my grandsons is of the opinion that humanity will be gone in 50 years).

            The best each of us can do is to live each moment mindfully with the right intention, the right thought and the right action, all with love and compassion and a smile.

Alan Cranston

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During the drought years of the mid-1970s I taught skiing in Squaw Valley, California. One consequence of the drought was that there was no snow on the bottom of the mountain. At the end of the day’s skiing everyone rode the 120 passenger tram back down the mountain. It was always packed. On one of those rides during Christmas vacation 1975 I wound up eyeball to eyeball with a pleasant, balding, distinguished looking gentleman who I had never seen but whose self-assurance was both evident and appealing. We began chatting and he said his name was Alan. I noticed we were being monitored by several people around us, something I attributed to the incongruity of our respective appearances—a distinguished looking gentleman and a ski instructor with shoulder length hair and a beard to mid-chest. I later surmised that I was the only person in the car who didn’t know who he was. When we reached the bottom we were enjoying our conversation and did not want to end it. He asked what I was doing. I was going to the sauna, a favorite practice after a cold day on the mountain. He asked if it would be alright to join me and of course it was.

            We sweated and talked of many things for quite some time before I got around to asking what he did for a living. “I’m a United States Senator,” he replied with the gleeful smile of one who enjoys a good sandbag. He was Alan Cranston, U.S. Senator from California. To say I was surprised is an understatement and we had a good laugh at my expense. Cranston turned out to be one of those rare political animals more interested in people than in having people interested in him. He was curious about me and how I managed a non-mainstream lifestyle light years different than his. At the time I was a single father raising my four year old son Jason, earning our living by teaching and coaching skiing, guiding climbing, occasionally selling a piece of writing, giving slide shows of various outdoor adventures and, when desperate, the occasional construction stint. He said he wanted to know how and where I lived and he invited himself to dinner at my house, to which I happily agreed. He showed up the next night, took off his shoes, stretched out on the floor in front of the Franklin stove and made himself at home. We ate and drank wine and talked until late that night and began a friendship that greatly enriched my life and gave me some perspective on the world of power and high end politics, and, therefore, more tools with which to live my own American life. A few nights later he came to dinner again with his son Kim and a friend, Ginger Harmon (who later was one of the founders of the great environmental activist group Great Old Broads For Wilderness). Once again we ate, drank wine and talked about many things until late in the night.

            Cranston had been an outstanding track and field athlete at Stanford University from which he graduated with a degree in journalism. (At the age of 55 he set a world record for his age in the 100 yard dash, and he kept himself fit and healthy until his death at the age of 86 on the last day of 2000.) We remained friends until he died. Sometime around 1990 he came to Aspen where I was working. We skied and dined and conversed together as always, but I had made some significant changes in my life—–I had shaved and cut my hair and had quit a lifetime practice (habit) of drinking and drugging to excess, and at dinners Alan drank wine and I drank water. At one dinner he said, “Dick, in many ways it’s hard for me to recognize you without all that hair……..until you start talking, and then it’s the same person.” He worked as a journalist in Ethiopia and Italy in the years before World War II. Because he believed Americans did not properly understand what Adolph Hitler was really about, Cranston translated and, with William Hearst’s help, published Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” into English, an act for which he was successfully sued by Hitler for copyright infringement and was forced to stop publishing, but not before the book had sold half a million copies. He also incurred the wrath of Mussolini for his journalism, which in itself is a good indication that his work was accurate. He entered politics because, as he put it, “I wanted to be in the middle of the action and not just writing about it.”

            It takes a certain sort of person to relish the middle of the action in the political world, and Alan was that kind of man. Born to the trade, one might say. In my opinion Cranston was a superb politician because he was a fine man of integrity and an intelligent, independent thinker. I don’t say this because I agreed with his worldview and his politics, which I did (and do). I think John McCain, for instance, was a fine politician, as is Liz Cheney (unlike her despicable father), whose politics and worldviews I do not embrace. Politics in a democracy is rough, unsanitary and, according to Alan Cranston, self-regulating. I often think of a couple of things he told me about the political world, and, despite the Charles Keating scandal which tarnished the end of his political career, I think he had it mostly right.

            He said that a good politician “always aims here,” pointing to the level of his head, “knowing in advance he’ll only get here,” pointing to his waist,” or, maybe, with luck, here,” pointing to mid-chest height, “but if he doesn’t try for here,” pointing again to his head, “he’ll wind up with here,” pointing to his ankles.”

            Cranston viewed politics as the art of compromise in pursuit of the middle path that most benefits the most people, not to benefit the few at the expense of the many.

            He perceived political power in America as a pendulum. That is, it is a mistake, folly really, for political power to get too far to the right or too far to the left because, he said, it always eventually swings back just as far in the opposite direction and that such extreme oscillation is unstable and dangerous to both the citizenry and its government. He had that right.

            Alan’s pendulum analogy is apt in today’s far (one might reasonably even say far a field) right political policies that are destabilizing America. It’s worth considering what caused it to swing so far to the right in the first place, for (one can hope) it’s about to start its inevitable move to the left any election now. At the time I met Alan I had grown disheartened with America’s politics and, among other things, the Viet Nam war and had not voted in the past couple of elections. After knowing him and talking over a few late night dinners I re-registered to vote and have done so ever since.

            One of my jobs in those days was working for Squaw Valley’s Jean Pierre (J.P.) Pascal as a ski racing coach at a camp in Bariloche, Argentina for the month of August, summer in the northern hemisphere, winter in the south. The job paid well and I always made extra cash selling used skis for more than they were worth because of the Argentine tariffs on imported skis. However, in February of 1975 with the help of the United States and the Gerald Ford administration, particularly the CIA and Henry Kissinger, the democratically elected government headed by Isabel Peron was overthrown in a coup d’etat and replaced by a military dictatorship governed by Jorge Rafael Videla. By then my country had, with the active involvement of the CIA, Kissinger and the U.S. Ambassador to Chile Nathaniel Davis, already disgraced itself and the concept of democracy by staging the overthrow of the democratically elected government headed by Jorge Allende in Chile, replacing it with the military government of Augusto Pinochet. The two military dictatorships were among the most brutal and murderous regimes in modern history, and my country created them. Think of that. And read Naomi Klein’s “The Shock Doctrine.”

            I first visited Chile at the age of 19 in 1958 and in the ensuing years had spent considerable time in both Chile and Argentina and had many friends in both countries which felt like second homes. That the U.S. had turned both these fine nations into military dictatorships was a nightmare for its citizens, hundreds of thousands of whom simply ‘disappeared’, many of them unloaded while alive from airplanes above the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The arrest, public torture and brutal assassination of Chile’s most popular and beloved folk singer Victor Jara as well as the suspected murder (it has never been proven) of Nobel Prize winner poet Pablo Neruda, galvanized the world in opposition to Pinochet. So…..it was frightening and disheartening when my country orchestrated Videla’s vicious dictatorial takeover of Argentina’s democracy.

            And some of the consequences were immediately evident when six months later we stepped off the plane in Buenos Aires on our way to Bariloche to ski. Teen-aged boys in military costume holding automatic weapons, their eyes and faces filled with hatred, anger and fear, were scattered throughout the Buenos Aires airport and, after we had changed planes, in Bariloche, both at the airport and in town. Not surprisingly, though at first I was surprised, those of us with long hair and beards were immediate objects of focus, for all that hair represented to both soldiers and hairy ones…………personal and social freedom, threats to dictators and their lackeys.

            This from my journal of August 8, 1975:

            Hotel Los Pinos—Bariloche. My old room #7. Night after dinner. Jackson Browne on the sound box, Kenny (Kenny Corrock an old friend and fellow coach at the camp was my roommate) cruising around. A very different feeling than last year. I am very happy.

            Last night an amazing thing happened. After dinner I worked on the coyote piece and talked with Helene. Then Kenny, Ryan (Meldrum, a ski racer from Salt Lake) and I went down to the Munich where I used to sit and write in 1968 to have a beer. We had one stein of beer, and Ryan had a hamburger. About midnight we walked outside to go home. Two police cars, a meat wagon and about 20 police with loaded machine guns were cruising down the streets. Like flaming ass-holes with toadstools for brains we stood on the corner to see what was up, instead of going back in and hiding in the last booth. The pigs asked us for our documents, which, of course, we didn’t have. So we were herded into the meat wagon, one of them letting me have it in the kidneys with his night stick.

            Four others in the wagon, a large, barred jail on wheels with a bench along each side, a window at the back, one into the driver’s compartment and one on each side—all able to be slid open. One pig with a machine gun stayed inside with us. He was about 20 to 25 years old, smooth skinned, Indian descent; flat, cold, black eyes and a cigarette hanging from his fat lips. He smoked constantly, but allowed no one else to smoke. No one was allowed to talk, but he tried to be friendly with his charges; and, sad to say, a few motherfuckers tried to kiss his ass, expecting I know not what in return. His buddies stopped people in the street and went into the cafes and bars frequented by the poor and the workers; they didn’t, I couldn’t help notice, go into any of the ‘higher’ class establishments; the fuckers only hassled poor buggers with no power. We cruised down Mitre and the lads with the machine guns picked up many people along the way—including 3 young girls (17-18) who were in Bariloche on vacation with a Catholic Girls school. One spoke English and had been to N.Y. 3 times. They were scared. The macho with cigarette and machine gun played on their fear. One of the guys outside had a cigarette in his mouth the entire time—-unlit.

            As soon as the night stick was repeatedly jabbed into my kidneys I knew I would have to tread lightly to avoid having the shit kicked out of me. I did, but I pushed it as hard as I could feel it was possible to get away with. (I did not include it in my journal, but I pissed blood for 3 days and nights afterwards, which indicated that the night stick’s holder had been well-trained.)

            Kenny was worried. My appearance almost asks for shit, and we have talked about it. He thought we might be in for a bad time.

            I thought about the bullshit involved; and about justice; and the military mind; and I thought a bit about ignorance and stupidity, for the men with the guns and uniforms were as stupid and ignorant as any I have ever seen. Men whose bodies have been deprived of proper protein all their lives, their brains shorted on ideas or education or imagination or confidence; their spirits beaten by a system they will never understand—potential Einsteins and Beethovens and Picassos and Gandhi reduced to cretins by—-what?—-their brother human beings. And so, at the same time I am in a rage about what they are doing to us; at their stupidness; their blind power games; their insensitiveness to their own danger; I know their helplessness—they are victims, not the motivating force. They are more used than those of us in the meat wagon. Still, I am in a rage and doing whatever to vibe them into shame with themselves.

            But none of that means shit. The owner of the Munich Bar with whom we had been talking saw us get busted. He ran out and yelled to us that he would go to Los Pinos. So, while the machos arrested people criminal enough not to carry identification we cruised down Mitre in the meat wagon.

—-(The next day)

            We knew we were okay, so long as we didn’t make any silly moves as we were surely tempted to do. But, still, you can never be too sure, and those fuckers with the machine guns had all the cards. Makes me appreciate and sympathize more than ever with the Jews in Germany, the Blacks and Chicanos in America and any leftist left in Chile.

            Before we were half way down Mitre Jean Pierre was outside—grinning, waving and yelling encouragement to us. He had our passports but they had to take us to jail. So we made friends with the 3 scared girls and laid our best vibe on the shitheads and watched very carefully.

            The shithead got on my case when I talked to J.P. through the window.

            When we got to the jail across from the P.O., all thirty of us, we were herded into a tiny room where the only one of the pigs who knew how to read and write took our names  into an enormous black book filled with names. A pissed off nun came to take the 3 girls away. (I didn’t include it in my journal but one of my all time fun experiences was watching the officer in charge being verbally abused and clearly chastened by that nun in a very loud and aggressive voice and manner for arresting teen aged girls. The officer had no response except an obvious shame, and I was both proud and some envious of the nun.) Several of us were herded into a courtyard under the stars and told to wait. I made friends with an Argentine who spoke French and we both agreed the whole matter was ‘degolas,’ that word I learned so long ago in St. Tropez from Nicole.

            Finally we got called in for a conference with the chief pig, J.P. and the owner of the Munich. After much babbling in Spanish which I didn’t bother to follow—being into laying down the vibe—they let us go.

            J.P. had threatened to call the French and U.S. Embassies and to create an international incident over it. He also told them I was a famous writer and would be sure to write about it. So we were free at 2 a.m. with nothing lost except a little sleep and a great deal of awareness gained. The Munich owner drove us home. He owns a solid block of tourist downtown Bariloche, and he implored me not to ‘write anything bad about us.’ He has said the same thing each time he sees me. Yesterday he bought my ski boots and he said it again. He doesn’t know that I know he’s an ex-cop. So fuck him. Fuck him anyway.

            What I think is that the country is just about to come apart. The U.S. $ is worth 80 pesos right now (as compared to 18 a year ago), and the people are ready for a change. The military/police would like to be in charge of that change, which looks like it will be soon. The trip we got involved in was a move to show power and instill fear, the classic way of the pig.

            At any rate, now we go downtown with passports. This country is very weird right now, and not likely to get any better for awhile. But the skiing is wonderful.

               In 1968 I had another experience of looking in the eye of another angry young soldier filled with hatred and fear who was pointing a machine gun at me while I was in a sleeping bag on the ground. I described it in my book “Night Driving”:

Cartagena—the heroic city, yesterday’s queen of the sea is farther north than Panama. A sad, interesting place, full of memories and history and the vibes of the Spanish lust and greed that founded Cartagena, the same that made short work of the Inca and Aztec civilizations. We spent part of a day walking around, waiting for the car to be brought up from the bowels of the ship; as soon as the car was on the dock we got on the road, and we didn’t want to stop until we reached a place called Playas, in Ecuador, where Chouinard, the surfing expert, informed us Mike Doyle had reported excellent surfing and sympathetic surfing people.

And so it came to be; but not without a more-than-fifty-hour grind, making only the minimum necessary human and mechanical pit stops of life on the road. There were two reasons for our haste: first, we wanted the Pacific surf; and, second, in those days the reputations of the bandits who lived in roving bands in the mountains of Columbia did not instill confidence in the peaceful, unarmed traveler. Indeed, a week after we passed through a bus on the same road was stopped by one of these bands, and more than twenty people were reported shot. Not too long before that drive, we had been surrounded by an army patrol in the hills near Antigua, Guatemala; the soldiers kept us covered with submachine guns and vibes that could turn blood to ice, especially those from one fellow who had the aim on Yvon and I—the first human being I had ever seen who l knew wanted badly, deeply and truly, to kill me.

Did you see that dude’s eyes?” Yvon asked me after they had left.

Yup, sure did.”

They’d kept us wondering if we had driven our last mile until we could convince them that we were only tourists, not “revolutionaries” (i.e. CIA) and, for sure, only passing through. Two weeks after this incident, the U.S. Ambassador to Guatemala was machine gunned to death in his limousine in downtown Guatemala City while on his way home for lunch. We had heard other stories, including the one about my old schoolmate, Bob ‘Spade’ Moran, who, as it turned out, was a CIA agent and died as a consequence; he met his end with two shotgun blasts in the back while walking down the main street of a tiny Guatemalan town, from two local fellows who did the job for a hundred dollars. So we knew that insanity was real, and we suspected a full measure of it existed in the mountains of Columbia. That was our feeling, anyway, and one measure of saneness is the ability to listen to the music of the gut twanging away on the central nervous system.

I am reminded of the great writer Salmon Rushdie in his book “Languages of Truth”, written half a century after my journal entries, commenting on Kurt Vonnegut’s book “Slaughter House-Five”: “Vonnegut’s novel is about the inevitability of human violence, and what it does to the not-particularly violent human beings who get caught up in it. He knows that most human beings are not particularly violent. Or not more violent than children are. Give a child a machine gun and he may well use it. Which does not mean that children are particularly violent.

“World War II, as Vonnegut reminds us, was a children’s crusade.”

One of my dearest friends in Bariloche was a woman I’ll call Maria who we had met in 1968. She was the divorced mother of two sons and we had stayed in close touch in the intervening years. During our annual ski camp visits Maria hosted one or two or three dinner parties at her house which included gringo ski campers, family, Barilocheites and others who wandered into her orbit. There were often 10 to 15 people present for her feasts which were accompanied by fine Argentine wine and lasted late. We discussed many things, including the disaster of the military government and the daily challenges it presented to Argentine citizens in general and to those present in particular. Maria also sometimes accompanied us on our nighttime visits to the downtown bars. That is, she was publicly and clearly our friend.

Not long after we returned to the U.S. Maria was unexpectedly arrested, taken from her home and immediately confined to one of the notoriously harsh military prisons in Argentina as a threat to the nation because of her association with us. A month or two later she managed to smuggle a letter out of the prison telling me about her situation which I had not yet heard. She did not include details of anything, including how she managed to get the letter out, but she said it was really bad, she was really frightened and asked if there was there anything I might be able to do to help her. I immediately contacted Amnesty International for advice. They responded with the astute observation that the very worst thing would be to have my friend’s name associated with Amnesty International because, as with the echelons of power in every other military dictatorship in the world, Amnesty International was taboo. AI recommended that I contact my state representatives to the U.S. government. As it was, I had some direct connection to Senator Paul Laxalt, including being friends with his brother, the fine writer Bob Laxalt as well as with one of the senator’s personal assistants who was an old schoolmate. The disheartening response from the senator was to the effect that he could not interfere in the affairs of Argentina concerning an Argentine citizen who had broken Argentine law. Laxalt was among the most conservative senators in Washington during the administration that created the military dictatorship of Argentina, so I should not have been surprised. But I was.

During the 1975 Christmas vacation Alan Cranston visited as usual. We skied together and I told him about my jail time in Bariloche and about Maria, and, as usual, he came to my house for dinner and wine and conversation. He asked to see Maria’s letter. He read it and took some notes and said he’d look into the matter, and so he did. As near as I was able to determine the timing, about 12 hours after he returned to Washington, D.C. Maria was unexpectedly and without explanation released from prison and had a visa for the U.S. She soon was in the U.S. working in California.

All because a drought in the Sierra caused me to be in a crowded tram car face to face with Alan Cranston, who became my friend and is among the finest human beings I’ve known in a long life (84 years) of cherishing those friends. Thanks Alan.

BIRTHRIGHT

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BIRTHRIGHT

By

Millicent Ward Whitt

Who has the gift of mountains

To live with day by day

Has found an endless treasure

That cannot fade away.

And should he travel later

To where the prairies lie,

Still that imprinted pattern

Reflects against the sky.

As eyes that turn from gazing

Into a blazing light

Still see its splendor shining

Upon the aftersight,

So those with mountain dazzled eyes

Shall nevermore see empty skies.

From “Say to the Moment”

Poems by Millicent Ward Whitt  1996

LETTER TO THE EDITOR, THE ATLANTIC

Jonathan Franklin wrote “A Wild Idea….Saving South American Wildlands”, an unauthorized biography of Doug Tompkins which was wildly inaccurate and offensive to those who knew Doug. Franklin interviewed me after telling me Doug had authorized the biography and, regrettably, I spoke with him by phone before checking with Doug. He also broke several promises to me in the process of getting his book published and when it was I decided not to read it. When a review of “A Wild Idea” was published in The Atlantic I was deeply annoyed. I wrote a letter to the editor which was never published or even acknowledged that it was received. Here is the letter:

            “Michael O’Donnell’s unwarranted assault on Doug Tompkins and his life, intentions and legacy disguised as a review of Jonathan Franklin’s unauthorized biography of Doug is a disgrace to The Atlantic. In addition to O’Donnell’s malicious ignorance of Doug’s person, there are some glaring factual errors that anyone who knew Doug will note. I have not read Franklin’s book, though I am quoted in it, so I do not know whether those errors were copied from the book or if O’Donnell invented them. Either way, that The Atlantic copy editing process missed them is extremely disappointing.

            “That the review appeared in the August 2021 issue, as the hottest month in the world’s history since records have been kept ended, is ironic enough to note that O’Donnell’s review contained one accurate sentence: “History may well thank him for preserving as much wilderness as he could before it was too late.” As I write this from Bozeman, Montana where the smoke from the burning of western America is dangerous to breathe and the air quality index today is 10 times above safe levels, I join history and millions of other humans and the uncountable flora and fauna of Earth in thanking Doug Tompkins. Thanks, Doug. You are not forgotten.

            “O’Donnell’s ignorant diatribe ends with this observation about Doug: “….a bit more self-reflection might have done him—and all of us—good.” Doug Tompkins was among the most self-reflective people I have ever known, so I disagree. But I respectfully suggest that O’Donnell turn that observation on himself, and pay attention.”

Sincerely,

Dick Dorworth

D.T. Suzuki on the desire to possess

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“The desire to possess is considered by Buddhism to be one of the worst passions mortals are apt to be obsessed with. What, in fact, causes so much misery in the world is due to a strong impulse of acquisitiveness. As power is desired, the strong always tyrannize over the weak: as wealth is coveted, the rich and poor are always crossing their swords of bitter enmity. International wars rage, social unrest ever goes on, unless the impulse to have and hold is completely uprooted. Cannot a society be reorganized upon an entirely different basis from what we have been used to seeing from the beginning of history? Cannot we ever hope to stop the amassing of wealth and the wielding of power merely from the desire for individual or national aggrandizement? Despairing of the utter irrationality of human affairs, the Buddhist monks have gone to the other extreme and cut themselves off even from reasonable and perfectly innocent enjoyments of life. However, the Zen ideal of putting up the monk’s belongings in a tiny box a little larger than a foot square and three inches high is their mute protest, though so far ineffective, against the present order of society.”

From “Essays in Zen Buddhism” published in 1927

WHAT’S AT THE ROOT OF THE NAME OF THE ROUTE

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            “Proper names are poetry in the raw. Like all poetry they are untranslatable.”

W.H Auden

            “A proper name is a word that answers the purpose of showing what thing it is that we are talking about, but not of telling anything about it.”

John Stuart Mill

            It is a significant matter to bestow upon a person, place, thing, entity or climbing route a name, whether done in reverence, irreverence, esteem, silliness, as a pun or insider joke, a factual geographic description or orientation, or a rebellious or cultural statement. There are consequences to names and in many cases there is pertinent information about the route contained in its name. And always there is information contained in a route’s name about the thinking, culture or mind-set of him, her or those who conferred the name. As such, the name of a climbing route is, in my view, a too-little noted and largely unappreciated aspect of the history, culture and present moment of the experience of climbing. There is a saying that words have meaning but names have power.

            Both the Muir and Salathe Walls on Yosemite’s El Capitan were named in honor of the two Johns, icons of Yosemite and the values of reverence for the natural world and simple life by which they lived. The names, the Muir Wall and the Salathe Wall have raised both the climbing and larger worlds’ consciousness about the lives of those men and what they represented in ways that cannot be measured but which can be appreciated. It is unlikely that the people who named those routes would have chosen Rockefeller Wall, Peabody Wall, Rothschild Wall or Roosevelt Wall, even though Theodore Roosevelt was crucial to establishing the National Parks, which includes Yosemite. If they had honored America’s robber barons instead of its lovers of nature, a good argument could be made that it would have changed the flavor of Yosemite (and thereby American) climbing, and without question it would have altered the nomenclature of subsequent climbing routes. The very nature (sic) of Camp 4 dirtbag climbers’ campfire conversations and rants would have been completely changed in unimaginable ways by contemplating or describing the Peabody Wall rather than the Muir Wall, or the Roosevelt Wall instead of the Salathe Wall, even if referring to the same piece of stone.

            Royal Robbins, Tom Frost and Chuck Pratt made the first ascent of the Salathe Wall in 1961 and named it, in Robbins’ words, “…to honor our beloved predecessor.” According to T.M. Herbert, at the time Salathe was as big a name in the climbing community as Robbins’ and the name was meant to describe “the whole damned wall” left of the Nose and not just a route. It was only the 2nd route up El Capitan after the Nose route and it broke new ground in both style of Yosemite climbing and naming of routes, consistent with Robbins’ entire career as America’s preeminent rock climber of his time. “A good name for a climb is a sort of short poem,” Robbins replied to an inquiry about naming the Salathe Wall, and so it is.

            Yvon Chouinard and Herbert did the first ascent of what they named the Muir Wall in 1965. It was the 4th route on El Cap. Herbert, who when he lived in Berkeley used to visit Muir’s home and museum in Martinez, said Muir was “….a hero of nature and conservation” and so far ahead of his time in the environmental movement that they wanted to recognize him. It is worth mentioning here that Chouinard and his company Patagonia have long been and remain in the forefront of environmental activism and consciousness raising in America. It is an interesting aside that Robbins noted that he would have named it the “John Muir Route,” not the Muir Wall, but it was not his to name.

            Other El Cap route names are simple geographic descriptions: West Face, West Buttress, The Nose, East Buttress, and The East Ledges Descent.

            These names are easily appreciated and do not require much elaboration or investigation to understand the intention of those who named them.

            Other El Cap names are not so easily grasped by the uninitiated to the culture and the time of the people who bestowed the names: Tangerine Trip, The Central Scrutinizer, Grape Race, Magic Mushroom, Bermuda Dunes, and Realm of the Flying Monkey.

            And that’s just to mention one rock in one valley in one state, though it is the iconic rock of American climbing. Every climber has his and her own realm of routes climbed and, in many cases, named in various areas all over the world. Every climbing guide book contains a wild and wide range of names of routes from the bizarre to the boring, from inspired to offensive (to somebody), from the subtle to in your face, from humorous to macabre. And often themes run through the names of an area’s climbing routes, not all of them as wholesome as honoring Muir and Salathe, but each of them affecting the consciousness and conversation of every climber ‘s campfire sermons and rants about that climb.

            Idaho’s City of Rocks has Decadent Wall with a range of names guaranteed to offend or at least bring a blush to somebody recognizing explicit human organs and intimacy, chauvinism and crassness, or homage to past relationships. The National Organization for Women took some hostile interest in the sexist flavor of Decadent Wall and some names were provocative enough that they were eventually changed. Dave Bingham’s latest guide book to the City includes this caveat: “In the early 80’s Utah climber Jay Goodwin coined the ‘decadent’ theme, using sexually-oriented names for about a dozen climbs. I decided to omit some names because they are idiotic and were not given by the first ascentionists.” So much for the first amendment. Later censored/altered City of Rocks guidebooks lists these names: Dykes on Harleys, Carol’s Crack, Divine Decedance, Flesh for Fantasy, Adolescent Homosapien, FDC, Bestiality, Kibbles and Bits, Sex, Drugs & Rock & Roll, Life Without Sex, Estrogen Imbalance, Sexual Dysfunction, Frigidity, Testosterone Test, Impotence, Stiff Vegetables, Box Lunch, Just Hold Still, Self Abuse and Shaved in the Shape of a Heart. A bit of raucous imagination and licentious license will allow the reader to trace Bingham’s somewhat staid names back to the original ‘idiotic’ones. But for those of a less decadent droop of mind, the original guide book lists these routes on Decadent Wall: Dikes on Harleys, Watersports, Submission, Carol’s Crack, Flesh for Fantasy, Devine Decadence, Adolescent Homo, FDC (which is reported to stand for Fucking Dead Cows), Beastiality, Rancid Virgins, Dimples and Tits, Nipples and Clits, Preteen Sex, Abortion on Parade, Life Without Sex, Estrogen Imbalance, Sexual Dysfunction, Frigidity, Testosterone Test, Impotence, Stiff Vegetables, Box Lunch, Just Hold Still, Self Abuse and Shaved in the Shape of a Heart. (A few weeks ago I encountered Goodwin having dinner in Almo, the closest community to the City of Rocks. He was enjoying looking through the charming homework papers and drawings of his six year old daughter, and I neglected to solicit his thoughts about the transformation of names of Decadent Wall routes or whether he thought his daughter would better appreciate Dad’s original names or Bingham’s tidied up ones.)

            The drug culture has made a significant impact on American climbing and expanded its possibilities and standards in ways both subtle and obvious, including the naming of routes. It continues to do so. The double-entendre in the name of the group of climbers who called themselves The Stone Masters is one of my favorites and their contribution to pushing the limits of climbing is certainly mind-expanding. Among the many well known routes with drug inspired names (and, perhaps, first ascents) are Left, Right and Middle Peyote Cracks in Joshua Tree, Columbian Crack and White Line Fever at the City of Rocks, Tangerine Trip, Mescalito, Magic Mushroom and Pyschedelic Shack in Yosemite, and Drug Nasty (a.k.a. Dean’s Dream), Lethal Dose, Panama Red, Cocaine Crack and Powder up the Nose at Smith Rocks. And the popular Tuolumne route Oz is not named after the famous wizard of, but rather is the accepted abbreviation for ounce. Oz is on Drug Dome and connects to Gram Traverse.

            Like every climber I have my own realm of experience, knowledge and perspective concerning the naming of climbing routes. Some of it is included here because I believe my own experience is not so different from that of other climbers, and if history matters (and I think it does) then clarifying history is crucial. If a name has power, then the more one understands about the name the more power it has and the more satisfying the experience of doing the climb. Climbers name routes for different reasons and to contribute different legacies to the world of climbing.

            At one time we were taken with naming routes according to a message hidden within the given title. For instance, in 1972 Sibylle Hechtel and I named a route on Mt. Mitchell in the Wind River Range “Ecclesiastes.” Joe Kelsey, who might be called the John Muir of the Wind River Range, was not amused, pleased or in favor of the name because of the precedent it might set. But neither Sibylle (I believe) nor I are Bible students or, at least in my case, even Christian. We named it because of the great line in Ecclesiastes, “It is all emptiness and chasing the wind,” an apt description of climbing itself and, one might say, much else in life. The author of Ecclesiastes did. The name of the route had nothing to do with Bible thumping or Christian theology, though it did (and does) pay homage to the wisdom of it being all emptiness and chasing the wind. The name stuck in certain circles, but so far as I know it has never been included in a guide book by its proper name.

            A year earlier Chris Vandiver and I named a route on Lembert Dome in Tuolumne Meadows Truckin’ Drive. It is next to the older route Rawl Drive, named after the Rawl drill which was used in the early days of placing bolts (and which was used in the placing of the original bolts on both routes). Truckin’ Drive was named after the Grateful Dead song “Truckin’” and particularly for the famous verse:

            Sometimes the light’s all shinin’ on me;

            Other times, I can barely see.

            Lately it occurs to me…

            What a long, strange trip it’s been.

            In the guide books Truckin’ Drive is misnamed Truck ‘N Drive, a misnomer that matters mostly to those who named the route and to those curious about the significance of the name and of the long, strange trip between the two very different names with totally different meanings and possible connotations. A truck and truckin’ are as different as a pair of pants and pantin’.

            That same Tuolumne summer of 1971 Wayne Merry and I named a route on Daff Dome “El Condor Pasa” from the then popular song of that name by Simon and Garfunkle on their album “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” and, more specifically, the line written by Paul Simon and Jorge Milderberg, “I’d rather be a hammer than a nail.” The music for this lovely song was actually written in 1913 by the Peruvian Daniel Alomia Robles. Wayne was on lead and not very happy about his pro and his run out when he yelled with great relief that he’d found a chicken head. After he tied it off and clipped in he said that it wasn’t a chicken head, it was a condor head. The condor allowed us to pass and we would rather be hammer than nail, and as with Truckin’ Drive there is much lost in the Tuolumne guide books that call the route El Condor instead of the original El Condor Pasa.

            There are undoubtedly names of other routes that have gradually and perhaps inadvertently, or, in cases like Decadent Wall, suddenly morphed into something quite different from what the original name intended. Poetry in the raw turned to poetry dressed in a mistake or the censor’s morality or good citizen’s sense of good taste.

            There used to be a rock formation at the City of Rocks called Hershey’s Kiss because its top resembled one. On the left side of its west face is a 5.12 three star overhanging jam crack route. Tony Yaniro is credited by Bingham as doing the first ascent of this fine route, but Stan Caldwell disputes this. According to Caldwell, Yaniro started the route but couldn’t complete it and Caldwell found the key to the route in a hidden hold at the crux that one ‘ought to see’ in order to get through. Through a process that can be imagined but probably never completely tracked, both the rock formation and its best route are now known as Odyssey, though for personal reasons my favorite routes and route names there are Driving at Night and Just Another Mormon on Drugs.

            Yosemite’s Crack of Doom was first climbed and aptly named by Pratt in 1961. This led to another intimidating route of a different flavor being named Crack of Despair soon after and even another Crack of Doom named by George Lowe at the City of Rocks. These names are poetry eliciting the feeling of beginning such routes and, of course, inspiring puns. Many years and several states away in Colorado’s Unaweep Canyon is a far easier route named Crack of Don, though I have been unable to find out anything about Don.

            Every guide book and even climbing areas without them contain names to suit every taste….intriguing, offensive, inspiring, descriptive, confusing, dumb, clever, incomprehensible and sappy. A guide to Oregon’s Smith rock includes Vomit Launch, Victory of the Proletarian People’s Ambion Arete, Virgin Slayer, Shark-infested Waters, Silly Boy, Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book and Darkness at Noon.

            Climbers in Utah’s Wasatch Range have named routes like Satan’s Corner, St. Alphonso’s Pancake Breakfast, Nipple Remover, Shadow of Death and Mind Blow. There is also a plethora of religious themed names including, Final Prayer Variation, Garden of Eden, Holy Grail, Judas Priest, Lazarus, Missionary Jam, The Rosary and Celestial Ascension.

            The point is that every route has a name (except, of course, the few orphaned, nameless ones looking for adoption or at least discovery), and a name has significance and power, history and personality, thoughtfulness and thoughtlessness. Understanding or at least contemplating both the significance and the power in the name of a route adds to the meaning and experience, even the poetry, of doing the climb. Check it out next time you do a climb. Discover the stone poetry at the root of the name of the route.

THE FIRST ASCENT OF OLYMPUS MONS

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FROM MY BOOK “CLIMBING TO FREEDOM”

THE FIRST ASCENT OF OLYMPUS MONS

(A delayed report from Mars)

by Andrew Acro

Only now that the 300-year energy war has run out of energy am I free to report on a most unusual achievement in mountaineering history, the first ascent of Olympus Mons, the highest mountain yet climbed in the Free Solar System.
Man had set foot on top of Olympus Mons before our climb of the 24,120-meter-high Gargantuan, three times the height of Earth’s Everest and with a base 600 kilometers across, as wide as California’s Pacific Cesspool Boulevard is long. In fact, man was there while we climbed, but until our expedition every person had gotten to the top by personnel carrier, usually electromagnetic or nuclear powered, though a few craft with more modern propulsion systems had been used. The experimental Transcend I, the telepathic-powered craft that had mysteriously crashed near the summit crater of the mountain early in the year 2281 was such a vehicle. This crash, now ten years ago, is pertinent to our story.
It started for me about six months after the Transcend I crashed. I had been living normally, climbing around the world, getting by any old way, working as little as possible and whenever I could hoard enough wealth, escaping to one of the three non-city refuges on earth. I had been to all three, but preferred the Sahara to either of the poles. My reputation as a mountaineer was spreading, bringing in a few telespray contracts and a wealthy client or two.
Like most of my climbing friends I had avoided learning any skills useful to the military (or so I thought), but I had gained a name attached to skill by making the first unprotected ascent of the 1200-meter glass-covered Transgalactic Computer Building in uptown Moab. And I had put up the first 5.18 on Uranus Wall inside the Shasta Nuclear Mistake Shelter, a little gem I called “A General’s Game for Drones,” done during that time after the Liverless Nuclear Breeder succumbed to passion and made life unlivable on the surface of Earth for two years, a time every person who lived through it remembers. With my friend Sheffield Stamp I’d climbed Everest from the bottom of the Northeast Face and made it down to the South Col Hotel in time for dinner. And the final blow was all the publicity after I snuck into Diznee City for the Senile in the old Yosemite Gully and soloed the big Captain Cliff in less than 20 minutes. I would have pulled it off with no trouble if some old woman at the 1000-meter level of the Tissyack Towers hadn’t spotted me from the window of her retirement cell and called the military goons. They charged me with disobedience to the Law of Off-Limit Territory, Trespassing on the Right of the Elderly Rich to Have an Unchanging View, and Lack of Repentance for a Crime Well Done.
I was in deep trouble, but after five days of dark detention in the cellar of Curry Compound I was suddenly released.
I thought my climbing reputation and public opinion—after all, climbing doesn’t hurt anyone except, sometimes, the climber and that’s his or her affair—was responsible for my release. In a way I’d never anticipated, I was right. Harry Hopper had gotten me out, and he was waiting for me outside.
Like most everyone, I knew who Harry was but I’d never met him. Now that he’s been appointed to a high cabinet position in the Solar Republic of Universal Justice, it is no longer a secret that he worked for many years as a secret agent for the CYA (Check Your Act) of the Free Solar System, using his mountaineering interests and exploits as cover for some very bizarre adventures. None of these was stranger than ours, an episode in the classic CYA tradition of mountaineering espionage begun on Earth’s Himalaya range in the twentieth century, not long before greed for that exhausted mineral substance called “oil” started the energy war in a place called the Near East on Earth. But our effort was more successful than those early endeavors.
Harry stood alone and waved the goons away. The jerks. They disappeared.
“Hello, Andrew,” he said jovially, extending his hand as if we were old friends.
“You know me?” I asked, suddenly suspicious and alert.
“Of course, Andrew; we all know you. You’re one of the great osmiridium men of mountaineering.”
I blushed.
“Come,” he said. The thin face atop the slight body quit smiling and his gray-green eyes bored through me. “We don’t have time for idle talk.” He glanced around the empty steel yard. “We’re going to Mars,” he whispered.
“We are? Whatever for?”
“We’ll talk later.”

Three hours later five of us were gathered in the locked conference patio of Pan Earth’s daily rocket shot to Planetia, the largest Martian colony and the only reason the entire solar system had not fallen to the enemy. The other three were friends from climbing and shared my surprise and bewilderment as to why we were suddenly on our way to Mars. None of us, except Harry, had ever been off our planet of birth. I was delighted to see Sheffield Stamp, my closest friend and climbing companion. He’d been atom-coptered out of the Manhattan Intrication where he had been found showing a favorite client some prime jungle wilderness climbing.
“Am I happy to see you,” Sheff said, giving me a warm hug. “I don’t know what this is about, but I’m glad we’re together.”
“Me too. This whole thing makes my testicles tighten.”
Jeremiah Jefferson was there too. Jeremiah, a huge man with an easy smile and a legendary climbing and social reputation, had quit climbing four years earlier to devote his life to spreading the cause of the Witnesses of the Apocalyptic Presence.
“Andrew Acro,” Jeremiah said, his smile full of warmth and confidence. When are you going to settle down and make something of yourself?”
“As soon as you quit preaching that rocket exhaust you’re always talking about and get back to climbing where you belong,” I retaliated.
He laughed and nearly broke my hand in his grip. Jeremiah’s ideas were full of folly but I liked the man enormously. His climbing abilities are and were worthy of reverence if you understand climbing.
The other member of our group was Merlin Macropsia, a quiet, reserved fellow at the height of his considerable climbing powers. Merlin was liked, respected, sought out as a climbing mate and highly admired, but Merlin is a true-believing total devotee of the Church of Later Innocents of Ecumenical Saints, and I could never be completely at ease with him. His religious posture is that there are two kinds of people: those in the church who are salvaged, and those on the outside, who need salvaging. If they don’t get salvaged by Merlin’s church they get to the other side of innocence and are lost forever. So, friendly and kind and warm and intelligent as Merlin could be, I knew he viewed me as salvageable material. I wish to state publicly that I am not.
“Andrew,” he said, “I’ve wanted to congratulate you for the Transgalactic coup. I admired that climb enormously. You have, you know, unlimited potential as a person. You can be anything you want to be.”
He smiled so sincerely that I felt almost, but not quite, guilt, that barely known feeling from ancient times. I knew he was telling me his true feelings, and at any judgment Merlin was a dark force of a climber. I’d climb anywhere with him.
“Enough, enough,” Harry broke in, “we’ve got work to do. “Besides,” he said with a sly grin that instilled in me a prudent feeling, “you’re undoubtedly a microspeck urined on because you’re here without really any choice in the matter.”
“You could say that, Harry, you refugee from penis envy,” Jeremiah jumped into the gap. “Why have you arrested me and put me on a rocket to Mars? I don’t, you politician, have any need or want for Mars.”
“I understand your feelings,” Harry said, clearly agitated, “but hear me out.”
“Why?”
“Because you have no choice.”
“Good edge,” Jefferson conceded.
“Thank you,” Harry continued. “You are, as the saying goes, probably wondering why we’re gathered here together.”
We all laughed, especially Harry. Somehow it felt better, understanding that no matter what was going on we were all in it together. Nevertheless, we threw every extra seat cushion at him.
“Enough.” Harry grew swiftly serious. “Here’s why we’re here. You have never known this, but I work for the CYA and…….ahhhh.…..so do you, now. Starting from the time you were picked up until the time we return to Earth, you will be paid two weeks’ living expenses for each day plus bonuses if we’re successful. What we’re going to do is climb Olympus Mons, which you’ve all heard of, to do a bit of……ahhhh……official CYA work at the summit. If all goes according to plan, we’ll have a personnel carrier ride back down. Now, you will remember hearing that the Transcend I crashed on Olympus Mons several months ago. I won’t go into details, but the craft’s developers are positive that something interfered with its flight and that it didn’t crash through its own failure. Investigation found nothing. Then Allison Alpert, one of our best clairvoyants, was taken to Mars. Alpert insists that there is a Detectostroy unit somewhere on the top of Olympus Mons.
“We can’t figure out how it got there, if it is there. Every craft sent out to investigate has discovered nothing. Still, Alpert insists it’s there. If true, this would explain several setbacks we’ve suffered recently in this ageless war, losses truly embarrassing to us in the face of increasing opposition to the war.
“As you know, the war began before our time over the extinct substance called oil. The war’s present critics argue that the war is about the ownership rights of something no longer in existence and they try to find a reason in such nonsense to stop the war. Well, such people obviously can’t grasp the reason for the war. I can tell you these critics are cowardly and unreasonable and de facto supporters of the other side, but they are a nuisance and troublesomely free in thought and voice and action. In short, they are an embarrassment to the Free Solar System.
“Many times recently the enemy has anticipated precisely the movements of entire fleets of our war craft leaving Mars, and we’ve lost tens of thousands of craft and hundreds of skilled technicians. Not only is this a danger to the cause, it is a source of fuel to critics who are too stupid to realize that some must die in war in order for the rest to have jobs to support themselves and our great system.
“Now, as to Olympus Mons. We think there are two possibilities: either the other side has infiltrated some minds in our highest commands, or there is a vanishing Detectostroy unit operating from Olympus Mons. Or, perhaps, both. So, my friends and fellow climbers,” Harry smiled brightly and something inside my mind slowly rolled over, “we have developed a theory. And we have the privilege of testing it.”
 He looked intently at each of us. “The theory is that there’s a Detectostroy unit up there. The unit relays information to the other side. It monitors all craft movement on Mars, and is somehow able to detect conventional craft approaching Olympus Mons. It then vanishes. The Transcend I, because of its unique new propulsion system, was not detected in time for the unit to hide itself. Caught in the open with its detect apparatus exposed, the unit maser froze the Transcend I’s force field before it could take evasive action or even transmit the information‑‑and the craft crashed. All the evidence supports this theory.”
I liked this business less and less. The CYA, the worst pollutants in the system. War. Mars. The possibility of death. No, I did not like it.
“So,” Harry continued, “to summarize our theory, this unit is on top of Olympus Mons, able to detect any approaching craft, able to disappear and able to destroy any craft if necessary.”
“But it can’t detect the approach of the unaided human body,” Jeremiah blurted out.
“Brilliant, Jeremiah,” Harry said. “You’ve always had a fast mind. Technology, as usual, has forgotten to take into account the basics, in this case as in others the human body.”
“I don’t want anything to do with this,” Jeremiah said curtly.
“Take me back to the Curry Compound,” I put in.
“Shit,” said Sheff.
“My religion forbids me to engage in war, Harry,” Merlin said softly.
“You don’t have to fight, Merlin. All you are going to do is make the first ascent of the known universe’s tallest mountain. Besides, all your religion forbids is the taking of human life. If our theory is correct and if we are successful, we will save thousands of lives. Think of that. If we fail in our endeavor it will be for the glory of the Free Solar System.
Jeremiah and I looked and each other and shook our heads.
Harry,” Sheffield pointed out, “in addition to being crazy, you’ve kidnapped us all.”
“Yes, I know. In a free system we must sometimes remove freedom in order to retain freedom. Everybody knows that. Think about the climb.”
We had plenty to think about. I recalled that Mars had been named by the ancients after their god of war, and that they had sacrificed human lives to gain his favor. Its two worthless moons were named after the war god’s attendants, Phobos and Deimos, Fear and Terror. I thought lots about those names and our situation during the three weeks it took to walk across the bizarre Martian landscape where, once Planetia is left, there are no buildings, the way it is said to have been on Earth in the time before memory began.
Just sand and rocks. No vegetation. Interminable valleys and gullies and sometimes soil so fine you sink in to your knees. All day long the wind blows hard. It blows red-orange dust into everything into the creases of our self-contained enclosure suits, into any opening we invariably left in our overflowing packs (which, with six weeks’ supplies plus climbing gear, weighed well over 50 kilos each), and, worst of all, into our visor shields, clogging them so that it was necessary to continually clean them with anti-dust material. Nothing serious or difficult, just a never ending nuisance.
Besides the packs, our enclosure suits weighed some 23 kilos. These suits allowed liquid and food intake as well as waste product outtake. They recycled all urine and perspiration automatically, since we could not afford liquid loss. This took some psychological adjustment at first but the system was quite sophisticated, and, as all mountaineers know, liquid to a tired body is more important than psychological preconceptions. Outdoor Martian defecation was something else. A series of electro-sealed flaps on the suit in the area of the buttocks enabled the wearer to create a mid-passage between his living space inside and the hostile environment. The flaps, called for some reason “grandpa flaps,” worked like this: squat; open flap closest to body; defecate into second flap; close and seal first flap; open second flap to dump waste, which, because all liquids instantly vaporize in the thin atmosphere, immediately turns to powder; shake off and close second flap. The suits fully protected us from exposure to the 95 percent carbon dioxide atmosphere and the -125 C. temperature.
Mars gravitational pull is less and Earth-conditioned bodies can carry heavier loads, something prospective Martian climbers will do well to remember. Because of the thin atmosphere the famed 600-kph Martian winds are bearable, probably easier than what we encountered near the summit of Everest in monsoon season.
Whenever the wind became dangerous we activated a device used by geologists for field work on Mars called a magneto-hold. Attached to the feet, hands and knees, the magneto-hold acts on the 16 percent iron content of Martian soil, riveting the climber to whatever piece of ground he is on. Given sufficient time, patience, and energy anything on Mars can be climbed with a magneto-hold, but we used them only when safety warranted, which was often. To those Earth-bound climbers who will fault us for using such mechanical aids, I suggest they either try a 600-kpm wind or stuff it.
After the longest walk any of us had ever done we began to climb. For a week previously Olympus Mons had been sticking up ahead of us like another planet sitting on the one we were on. In all honesty, technical climbing as we know it is non-existent on Olympus Mons. Because of its lack of plate-tectonic activity in the planetary crust the volcano that formed the mountain just kept adding to the same plume of lava forming slopes that aren’t so steep, although they are certainly long. We did have to overcome a few 5.11 and 5.12 moves getting by crater rims and erosion gullies, but nothing we would have bothered hooking up for on Earth. Here, however, because of our unfamiliarity with the place we were connected the entire time with nearly weightless but faultless one-millimeter carbon-fibered cord attached to our enclosure suits. We gained more than 3000 meters the first day, slogging through sand that had the consistency of heavy powder snow. It was hard work but we were conditioned from the approach. A nice little crater served for our first camp on the mountain. We had some excess liquid for emergency and depletion, but we mostly depended on our recycling systems. One doesn’t climb for the purpose of ego-palate gratification, and we ate with appreciation the standard ten-gram high-nutrition tablet for each meal, one per meal. It was sufficient. Our bodies had what they needed, though our egos had a hard time of it.
When it was dark we lay down, adjusted enclosure suit temperature and oxygen control, and slept. The soil particles in the atmosphere produced some spectacular color shows in the twilight, and it was pleasant to watch them in the last waking minutes of the day, the fiery spectacle of unavoidable life. We watched Phobos and Deimos in eclipse and we had seen them during the day as black spots crossing the sun. It was also interesting to see Phobos rise and set twice a day, very different from the single moon of Earth.
The second day we gained 5000 meters over variable terrain. The soil was sometimes as hard as granite, sometimes like knee-deep cottage cheese. That day we encountered two constant realities of Olympus Mons, both objectively and objectionably dangerous. First, the wind: it blows virtually all day but ceases at night, causing us to activate our magneto-hold devices more than we would have liked and often we could see only a few meters ahead. Second, Olympus Mons has a built-in defense far superior to any icefall, avalanche, rock fall, or fear factor of the most treacherous mountain on Earth: the wind simply erodes away a part of the mountain and whatever is left to gravity, say a boulder the size of hovercraft or a good-sized man, starts rolling down the mountain. After a few thousand meters it builds up a lot of speed. Because of the wind and the dust there’s no advance warning; suddenly a dark object hurtles by at 100 kph and is gone. There’s no defense. It’s like crawling across a busy rocket landing pad in dense smog, hoping you’ll reach the other side.
In any other situation I’ve known I would have turned around. But the CYA’s long reputation, dating at least back to shortly before the beginning of the war when the Third Metric World statesman Alberto Yende was murdered in his own office by CYA functionaries was enough to make the four of us realize that Harry was not your usual mountaineering expedition chief. We were climbing for our lives, in more than the usual sense.
The CYA, it is now known, started the war: its employees raided certain desert oil deposit encampments, killed all the technicians and unsuccessfully attempted to destroy the oil-mining machinery. They were disguised as members of the neighboring tribe whose land contained no oil. The CYA counted on the centuries-old, marrow-deep hatred between the two tribes living in that area to present the incident as a reason to fight. The CYA, using its usual methods of mixing deception, violence and local hatreds in the service of interests and goals that were always clarified under the cloak of security, were successful. The tribes fought. Over the years the entire known universe lined up on the side of one or the other of those tiny desert tribes whose original names only the scholar remembers. They were, literally, destroyed by their own hatreds. Yet the war continued. That’s how the CYA works and we knew that if we wanted out of this one alive we’d have to do a good job. Also, we lacked enough supplies to reverse the walk. This knowledge and circumstance somewhat dulled the joy and sense of adventure normally felt while undertaking unsolved mountaineering problems.
Our progress slowed. The wind continued. The need to constantly attach to the mountain with magneto-hold, the sense of helpless fear that came over us with each passing/hurtling/lethal eroded-away piece of Olympus Mons, the pure size of that unbelievable hulk, slowed us down.
The days flowed into each other. There were just us and that seemingly endless mountain with its red and orange and black and yellow and brown rock and deep black lava, its daytime red/yellow/orange dust storms, and the peaceful nighttime views of the moons of Mars and other stars and planets. The mountain had ledges, plateaus, steep and gradual sections, but the overriding feeling it gave us was endlessness. Olympus Mons, the endless mountain.
Harry, the weakest climber, urged us to push on at all times when both fatigue and intelligence indicated otherwise. After all, fatigue clouds judgment, and life can be terminated just as quickly and surely by falling off non-technical terrain as off the smoothest glass building. Harry’s continued disregard for our opinions contributed to the resentment we carried.
Jeremiah, typically, though he had “retired” from climbing four years before, was so enthusiastic, so excited to be doing what he loves to do, that he continually sided with Harry. Push on! Push on! I called them the Excelsior Twins, after a verse ancient even before the war began.
On one of those indistinguishable days none of us precisely recalls we encountered an eroded cliff with an interesting chimney caused by some geologic power of nature not yet understood. It was unanimously agreed that I should climb it, leaving a line for the others.
Without using my magneto-hold, I spent the best two hours of the climb working up the 700 meter chimney. It was exhilarating climbing. It would have been exceedingly simple on Earth, but under the circumstances, and considering my enclosure suit and pack, it was quite interesting. I could have used a laser beam to drill holes in the rock for secure protection hooks, but we were exceedingly paranoid about detection and had agreed to use this only as a last resort. So I fell back on a barely remembered system perfected by some ancients in a place that is now part of the island of London that used to be called Wales. In this system, the climber protects himself by placing loops of line around irregularities in the climbing surface, or by putting tiny and irregular pieces of metal into holes and cracks in the rock and clipping the climbing line into a line attached to the metal. It’s scary at first but works marvelously well. (Not all ancients were as stupid as the present state of Earth makes them appear.)
Fortunately, no falls occurred to test the system. At one point I smiled and then laughed at myself. What irony that the CYA, the ancient order of deceit and manipulative violence that represents everything I wanted my life not to mean, had finally found a way to use the only skills I’d allowed myself to develop.
I broke out of the chimney to be met by the wind. I activated my magneto-hold and tied off the line so the others, saving time and energy, could climb it with the classic ascendeur clamps, attached to hands and feet. A small crater offered good protection. I felt wonderful, satisfied with climbing and very happy.
We bivouacked in the crater. One by one as my mates came up the classic expedition strains began to show. Macropsia and Hopper got into a heated argument about our pace. We were all fatigued and getting tired of ten-gram nutritional tablets for subsistence. The strangeness of the climb with its peculiar defenses, just being on Mars and the underlying fears of what we would find on top had thinned our cooperative abilities. By the time we bedded down my sense of well-being from climbing the chimney had dissipated.
In the morning we were all irritable, sluggish, and inattentive. We started climbing up a moderately steep slope of loose soil in which we sank to the knees. I was climbing second behind Harry. Before the wind came up we saw a cliff band several thousand meters above. Beyond that we could not see. When the wind descended the dust obscured everything. We toiled upward. Wind. Dust. Labor. And then it seemed like the mountain just came up and hit me in the face, and we both started moving. Suddenly I was knocked off my feet and rolling end over end, completely buried under sand, rocks, and dirt in motion. My pack was ripped from my back. There was no color, only blackness and movement and rocks banging against my enclosure suit.
My mind dwelt on the suit, for breaking it would mean the end of existence. I was falling, rolling, being pushed by an avalanche of Martian soil. Then the line came taut and it felt like I was being broken in half. The avalanche roared over me and under me and pulled at me to join it. Then it was over as quickly as it had begun and everything was silent and dark.
The next thing I knew Merlin and Jeremiah were digging me out and shouting for me to wake up. I have never known such gratefulness as came over me when I saw them, but there was no time to indulge in personal emotions.
“Andrew, Andrew,” yelled Merlin, “c’mon. Wake up. We’ve got to dig out the others. Are you all right?”
“Yes, I’m okay,” I lied. I felt like going to sleep. My body raged against me as I stood up. The line disappeared into the soil, and we immediately set to work uncovering it. In an hour we had retrieved the other two, and I still think it was what the ancients called a miracle that we all survived. Sheff and I just hugged each other wordlessly after we uncovered him.
We figured out what must have happened: a huge section of the cliff band we’d seen in the morning had collapsed in the middle and rushed down the mountain to hit us. As it worked out, the break in the cliff created by the collapse gave us an easy passage through, but Sheff and I both lost our packs with all our food, climbing equipment, extra liquid, weapons and repair material for the enclosure suits. The only reason all of us weren’t swept away by the slide is that Merlin, who happened to be last on the line, somehow saw what was happening and had time to activate his magneto-hold. Only that held us to the mountain. Good old Merlin. He must live right.
Our position was not good. Merlin and Harry began to argue. Harry wanted to move on as soon as we dug him out. I wanted to stop and rest. My body ached, my mind was numb and my spirit was looking for a place to land. Jeremiah was surly and uncommunicative. Sheff and I were both concerned about losing our packs. Supplies were low.
“Blast you, Harry,” Sheff said, jumping into Merlin’s argument. “Look what you’ve done to us! We could die up here, and if something happens to you none of us has the faintest idea of how to get out. And…and…Harry, you—are—an—asshole!”
The enormity of what he’d said hit my old friend the way a cat baps a mouse around and all of us started laughing, gut-hysterical laughter, until we were all on the ground paralyzed with the one shred of humor in our situation.
“You sly bastard, Harry,” Jeremiah finally managed.
“Now I want you guys to take real good care of me. You hear?” Harry said, and we all howled, especially Harry.
It was easy to see how Hopper had managed to rise as high as he had in the hierarchy of the Solar Republic and, strangely enough, the strains eased up. Even the unethical side of life can be made understandable and, therefore, funny.
We continued upward. Our enclosure suits had been tough enough not to tear during the avalanche and kept us from the classic Earthly altitude and breathing problems, but after four weeks of pushing as hard as possible our endurance was low. So was our capacity to believe in much outside of putting one foot in front of the other.
On what we later determined was the eleventh day of climbing, Sheff suddenly pointed out that we were almost to the top. Indicative of the state of our minds was our surprise that we were actually near the summit. Harry called us together for a conference and then we moved fast. When we estimated that we were only a few hours from the rim where we could, at last, look out across the 70 kilometer-wide extinct volcano crater that is the summit of Olympus Mons, we stopped. We would go to the summit under cover of darkness. Harry said to us, “I have no more idea than you what we’ll find there.”
When it was dark we set out. Fear and Terror, like evil’s own lanterns, crossed the sky, and our minds. The going was not difficult, and Deimos gave off enough light for fair visibility. Since there is less wind on Mars at night the visibility was in some ways better than during the day. Perhaps night climbing is the future of Martian mountaineering. We pushed on over easy ground.
And then, suddenly, it was done. There just wasn’t any mountain left. We silently shook hands all around. Then, according to plan, we found a crater to hide in and await the dawn. To say that we were apprehensive is an injustice to the power of the god of war and his attendants. Give me a good, old-fashioned, dangerous, ridiculous, scary, non-socially-redeeming climb any day over waiting for daylight on the top of Olympus Mons.
The first light found us peering over the crater rim with high-powered teleoptics. Nothing: sand; rocks; a huge dead basin. After about three hours of motionless observation I was beginning to succumb to boredom when a most startling event occurred. Less than a kilometer away on the rim a boulder about the size of a large hovercraft opened in the middle and two men in enclosure suits stepped out. It was one of the strangest moments of my life.
“Holy exhaust,” I whispered, despite our agreement of silence.
Harry’s head swiveled toward me like a detect unit picking up an incoming irreversible reaction missile. Harry and everybody else saw where my teleoptic was pointed and followed. To the two men we watched the thought that others might be watching them was completely absent. In a way it was great voyeuristic fun. They were, we understood after a time, getting their daily exercise which was much needed. They had been living in cramped quarters inside that “rock,” the most elaborately equipped and camouflaged Detectostroy unit Harry had ever seen. An hour’s gambol on the highest rim of Olympus Mons each morning was the highlight of their existence and nearly the extent of their movement. The two of them ran around the “boulder,” wrestled, took advantage of the low Martian gravity to do front and back flips for each other’s scrutiny and in general acted like two six-year-old boys during rest break from state educational torture sessions. They held our undivided, silent attention for an hour.
“Well, I’ll be Hitlered, Nixoned, and Crucified,” Harry muttered. “One of those technicians is Cary Catalin.”
“Who’s he?” said Merlin.
“One of my boys. I trained him in all the basics.”
“Basics of what?” Jeremiah asked.
“The basics of our profession,” Harry answered with a solemn dignity. He seemed genuinely hurt by Catalin’s conversion.
“Looks like he missed one or two of them,” Merlin commented.
The two men finally ceased their independence and returned to the shelter which closed behind them and just sat there like the boulder it wasn’t. After a few minutes several scanner-antennae moved out from the boulder’s surface. A short time later an obvious maser beam launcher appeared atop the boulder. Harry’s theory had proved sound.
We spent the next five days in a continuous watch of the boulder. There were only those two technicians with the unit, and every morning at the same time they exited the unit and took their daily exercise. The rest of the time they monitored the movement of craft on Mars.
On the morning of the sixth day we ended it‑‑we were waiting for Catalin and his mate when they came out for exercise. Their astonishment at our presence rendered them temporarily paralyzed. That, along with the menacing aim of Harry’s laser gun, made them quite submissive. We took over the cleverly disguised Detectostroy unit. Our mission was accomplished.
True to his word, Harry got us back to Planetia. We were all handsomely rewarded, and each of us was given the Free System Legion of Merit award. I am in no way qualified or motivated to report what significance our climb had in the effort to end the war, but after we took it over the unit was used to relay false information to the other side. Also, the vindication of the Transcend I and the usefulness of telepathic power caused research in that field to be expanded. As everyone now knows, telepathic power is drawn from an unlimited and nonmaterial source and is not based on something that can be possessed or fought over. We ended 300 years of energy war misery last year by giving the other side, in exchange for peace, access to more energy than has ever been fought about in the entire history of the known universe.
So, despite my personal aversion to war and warriors I feel our climb was a worthwhile accomplishment, both for climbing and for the free system in general. A 24,000-meter mountain offers new dangers and challenges, and I emphasize to future climbers of the extreme the importance of adjusting the scale of the possible within each human mind as the safest, surest method of being equal to these new challenges. Under the unique circumstances that brought us to Olympus Mons, we did not have the time and the understanding to do that. I realize now that we had a large measure of that essence many people these days think is only an ancient superstition—luck.

MEMORIES OF SPIDER, Mr. Bojangles

Posted on the 46th anniversary of Spider’s death

In a long life (83 years) immersed in several aspects of the world of skiing there are, naturally, many fellow skiers I remember (some are forgotten) along that path. Though he died in 1976 at the age of 31 Spider Sabich often comes to mind, and despite the tragic circumstances and flagrant miscarriage of justice surrounding his death, his memory continues to warm, inform and bring a smile of gratitude. His friendship and example of living a successful life continues to inspire both those who knew him and many who were not yet born when he died.

His birth name was Vladimir (as was his father’s) but when he was born Vladimir Sr. noted his son’s long, thin arms and legs and nicknamed him ‘Spider.’ I knew Spider from childhood as we were both young (he was seven years younger than me) ski racers near Lake Tahoe in the Sierra Nevada in the 1950s. His extraordinary talent as a racer was evident from the beginning as a member of Nebelhorn (later Echo Summit and then Edelweiss) Ski Team coached by German immigrant Lutz Aynedeter. Spider was a superstar from childhood to the end of his life, and in my opinion he enjoyed and played that role with grace, passion and humility. And he had a great deal of fun along the way. The seven year age difference and the 90 miles between Spider’s home in Kyburz, California and mine in Reno, Nevada meant that the few times I raced against him were at the end of my racing career and we were never ‘on the circuit’ together. However, in the late 60s and into the 70s, when Spider was doing his best ski racing and I was teaching, coaching and writing about skiing, we were together on a similar ‘circuit’ loosely described as the ‘counter-culture.’

 Skiing is a microcosm of the larger society and the tensions between the establishment(s) of American skiing and the skiing counter-culture, including that of ski racing, were as tense, uncomfortable and contentious as everywhere else in America. Spider embodied the best of ski racing’s counter-culture, and because of his four World Cup slalom podiums including one first place and 5th in both Olympic and World Championship slaloms he was a favorite with the press and fans. It didn’t hurt that he was also handsome, graceful both on and off skis, charming and accessible. His lifelong friend Dede Brinkman described him for the Sacramento Bee: “He was so charming and very sexy. It was the same type of charisma you see in movie stars.” His brother Steve who was called ‘Pinky’ because he was bright pink at birth, also a fine ski racer not quite at Spider’s level, said, “Spider was a babe magnet. Just catching his overflow was fine with me.” Pinky also said, “Spider smoke, drank and did whatever all of us did. Let’s not forget, those were the ‘60s and ‘70s.” That gives you an idea.

 Though many (not all) of the best American ski racers‘…smoke, drank and did whatever all of us did’, it was a time when whatever all of us did was out of synch and accord with those in the administrative ranks of ski racing who embraced the status quo with all its quid pro quo perks for some and averted their eyes from such problems as the Viet Nam War in the organic, real world of all of us. As a consequence, many American ski racers tended to seek out fellow racers rather than official advisors for moral/mental/emotional support, friendship and guidance. And it is safe to posit that no one was more sought out, appreciated and loved than Spider Sabich. For the writing of this I solicited comments from old friends and fellow racers. The first to answer was well known ski racer and fellow writer Dan Mooney: “Hello Dick: So nice to hear from you and thinking of me for Spider’s memorial. It was my third year on the tour and I was no longer skiing for Rossignol. I was struggling a bit and no longer enjoying the benefits that Rossignol had provided in the past. Spider recognized this and came up to me one day and said, ‘Moondog, when we are in Aspen this year I want you to stay at my house so you can save some money on hotels.’ A gesture of friendship I’ve never forgotten, I feel blessed I got to stay there. It was a blast, such a good time. It was short lived however because shortly thereafter he was taken from us. Love you Spider and will never forget. The Moondog.”

 Paul Ryan, one of the great ski photographers, replied: “I wasn’t around Spider that much. What I recall is his seemingly casual approach to racing on a World Cup level. But I often wondered if that belied an underlying intensity. As you probably know, we ( Fat City Films; Myself, McKinnon, Clasen) made a film about him when he had transitioned to Pro Racing. circa 1972. His narration included words like:

“I don’t think about it much, I just ski it from gate to gate, as fast as I can…”

“I really don’t like training, but I do it anyway …”

In the late 60s there were many fine turns on skis and some long nights of spirited conversation over dinners and drinks shared with Spider in Aspen, Bear Valley and Squaw Valley. In 1969 Squaw Valley hosted a World Cup slalom and giant slalom. I was Chief of Course for those races, responsible for the courses being safe and inviting for the racers, and it was one of the most complicated and difficult tasks of my professional skiing life for two reasons: a plethora of chicanery from the Squaw Valley management and USSA and FWSA administrators who seemed to me to be more concerned with the prestige and PR benefits of a World Cup than putting on a good ski race, and the fact that a classic Sierra storm was dumping two to three feet of snow each night. It was a long, stressful, hard week in which, with the help of Spider and a couple of other U.S. Ski Team racers and a few coaches from other nations we cajoled Squaw management into giving over 100 volunteers a free lift pass for each hour they worked boot packing and ski packing the courses, and they did a marvelous job. Snow conditions and weather were less than perfect and inflicted undue suffering on gatekeepers, timekeepers, officials, coaches, racers and spectators alike, but the races were successful. Squaw and American skiing prestige and PR image were enhanced. Spider placed 5th in slalom and 10th in giant slalom and Bill Kidd won the slalom. The post race celebration was hosted by the French Consulate and featured an unlimited supply of Chartreuse which I remember (sort of), among whatever else we all did, being one of many to toast Spider with Chartreuse for his help and good results.

                                                                                                                                A couple of years later I was working as a men’s coach for the U.S. Ski Team. The other coaches included a German, a Swiss German, an Austrian and an American who had been schooled in elite Swiss private schools and who spoke German as well as he spoke English. They all had impressive skiing resumes and I liked and respected them all (well, except for one), but none of them were by any means in synch or accord with the culture of American ski racers of the 60s and 70s. In one coaches meeting they began speaking in German as a means of keeping me out of the conversation, but, fortunately, I knew enough German words to interject as if I understood what they were talking about (I didn’t). They quickly resumed speaking English and their responsibilities as U.S. Ski Team coaches. That gives the reader an idea of the dynamics surrounding the last U.S. Ski Team training camp Spider attended in December 1970 in Aspen a few weeks before he left to join his old friend and coach Bob Beattie’s newly formed World Pro Ski Tour. One of the training camp tasks I took on without being asked was to rise each morning an hour before everyone else and make a tour through the men’s ski team rooms and make sure any girls who had spent the night with ski team members were gone before the other coaches were up and wandering. As there were usually a couple of females in the rooms, it was one way of averting unnecessary contention between the reality of whatever we all did and the establishment’s transparent pretense that ‘we’ did not include ‘them.’

Spider’s move to the pro circuit changed the world of skiing. He was the just right person at the just right time and place. Beattie, of course, changed skiing several times, but having Sabich on board for the World Pro Tour was just the next step along the path of U.S. ski racing leaving behind the hypocritical ‘amateur’ policies exemplified by Avery Brundage and other white sepulcher elitists in favor of the more egalitarian policies European ski racing had embraced many years before. It was a move that benefited Spider, Beattie, World Pro Tour and, eventually, the U.S. Ski Team where today’s best racers can become millionaires from their skiing efforts and skills, as they should. Terence McHale in a 2005 California Conversations article wrote: “Spider was just eighteen when he left Kyburz to take a skiing scholarship offered to him by Coach Bob Beattie, the brilliant enfant terrible at the University of Colorado and considered by experts to be the godfather of competitive American skiing. The rough, ebullient Beattie would net his own level of fame as the voice of Winter Sports for ABC. He was still young when Spider was young, and they would become best friends, one of several best friends who would take pride in being close to Spider. They were kings of the hill. They were noticeable. They belonged in the icy solitude where their sport is its most challenging. In retrospect, the Coach marveled four decades after recruiting him to Colorado how Spider balanced his life. In public and private he lived scandal free. It was not a life of innocence. Instead, his was a life at ease with himself, a guilt-free life that, like his folks, was based on making his own way. Spider subscribed to the notion of expected conclusions: hard work meant being rewarded. Consistent with his upbringing when folks thought a person’s character should be evident, his good manners were ingrained. His humor was inherent. His mistakes were manageable. There was the flirtation with the University of Colorado lineman’s girlfriend that ended up with the 300-pound football player finally sharing with Spider the ludicrousness of the situation and playfully pushing him away. He ran Jimmy Ellsworth’s car into some garbage cans. He shook the lift on the way up a hill and ended up falling thirty feet and breaking his leg. He fit in easily when partying temptations were enjoyed. It is true he would not be freed if charged with vanity and hubris. He had a wandering eye for fun. A New Year’s Eve celebration in France was capped off with a spirited dispute over the tab. It landed Spider and his favorite teammate, Billy Kidd, in jail– not the best way to end the night, but there was enough laughter involved to keep it from being ugly and it is remembered as an adventure. There is a rumor, probably more wistful and wishful than true, that a love affair with a beautiful girl resulted in a daughter. Yet, there is no evidence that Spider had any capacity for hurting people. There was remarkable depth– a world-class athlete, a fledgling businessman with incipient plans toward participating in the development of the burgeoning Colorado communities, a spokesperson for corporations–and a colorful image that made him the premier draw of pro skiing. The quote that documentarian Ken Burns used to describe Henry Clay is apt for Spider also: “He had all the virtues indispensable to a popular man.”

Spider won the overall title the first two years he was on the pro circuit, and neither Spider nor American skiing would ever be the same. He made a great deal of money as a racer, around $200,000 a year (worth almost $1.25 Million in today’s purchasing power) in prize money and endorsements. In November 1974 he was featured on the cover of the popular Gentleman’s Quarterly magazine with the tag line “Spider Sabich: Pro Skiing’s Richest Racer.” He participated in celebrity ski racing events which were designed to gain support and fans for the pro tour. In 1972 at one of those celebrity ski racing events he met singer and Hollywood startlet Claudine Longet. One year later Claudine and her two children from her ex-husband singer and television star Andy Williams were living with Spider in Aspen. As previously indicated, Spider was a hard-living bachelor who had many girl friends, but Longet was the only one he ever invited to live with him. Miles Clark in a Snowbrains article wrote: “Spider had been living as an unruly, partying bachelor and his new life with Claudine and her children was a major change.  After the Claudine and the kids came his wild days were abruptly ended.  Naturally, there were conflicts between the two. Once, she threw a glass of wine at Spider’s head at a nightclub when he wasn’t giving her enough attention.  She forbade him from attending the ‘Best Breast’ bash in Aspen (the 70s were different).  Alcohol, cocaine, and other drugs regularly flowed through Claudine and Spider’s veins.  The power couple was weakening.”                                                

During those years I was working in Bear Valley and saw Spider a few times there, but he never mentioned and I was unaware of this aspect of his relationship with Claudine. I directed a master’s race clinic at Bear Valley and on one of his visits (for a pro ski race) Spider kindly volunteered to spend a couple of hours coaching the clinic. Needless to say, the racers were awe struck and ecstatic by his presence and the wisdom of his advice. A ski instructor saw us all standing around and stopped by to ask if I was teaching. “No,” I replied, “I’m learning.” Everyone laughed. I had a great deal to learn that I regret not learning sooner. After Claudine murdered Spider my good friend and fine photographer Don McKinnon sent me the following: “Dick:  well I guess it’s good that you had fond memories of Claudine for a while because I never did.  I met her long before Spider did down in Malibu.  I had rented a house on the beach not far from Andy and Claudine’s house to edit a surf film.  Back then Hollywood rental houses would deliver all the editing equipment necessary to cut a film.  Anyway some company got ahold of me to film an interview with Andy Williams about the singer Dusty Springfield and they wanted it shot at Andy’s Malibu home.  He and Claudine were separated but he had let her stay with her children at the Malibu house.  She immediately jumped in next to Andy and wanted to be in the tribute.  The director/ producer did not want her in it.  A very long argument took place and I finally had to relight and change angles to reveal the ocean and the inside of the house.  We finally got it shot.  Some time later I was jogging down the beach and ran into Claudine and her sister Daniele.  Claudine thought I would be the perfect person to date her bitch sister, so I did.  I was on a deadline with the surf film but made time to jog down to the house for sex with Daniele. Years later I was practicing tennis with a pro at the Maroon Creek Club preparing for a tournament.  The two sisters barged onto the court demanding to play doubles with us.  I calmly explained what I was doing but she threw an unbelievable tantrum on the court and had to be escorted away.  Later that evening a group of us, including Spyder and Claudine, were having before dinner drinks at Galena Street.  Claudine started screaming at me about not letting her and her sister play tennis and threw a steaming hot cup of coffee at my face.  She couldn’t throw well but some hot coffee did burn my ear and neck.  Spyder grabbed her and drug her out immediately.  Two weeks later she murdered him.  Sooo I’ve never had any good feelings about her.”                                                                                                   

I knew nothing about this dynamic when in December 1974 I got a magazine assignment to write a story about Spider. He happened to be in Kyburz visiting his family and I was in Reno visiting mine. Spider (a fine pilot) flew to Reno in his private plane and we flew to Sun Valley to pick up Claudine who was skiing there. The three of us flew to Salt Lake City and spent the night in a fancy hotel. The next day we flew to Aspen for an amazing, good skiing, hard living week of parties and conversations with Spider and Claudine. Her children were with their father. The last day of the year was celebrated with a huge party on several floors of one of Aspen’s hotels. I will never forget that evening. Several years later I wrote about it to McKinnon: “That night Claudine and I stayed up until dawn packing our noses, drinking wine and talking about many things. The next day I flew back to Bear Valley where I spent the winter. I saw Spider several times in several places after that but not Claudine. I liked her a great deal and found her intelligent, funny, engaged and a good companion. I mean, I liked her and thought she was good to and for Spider until she murdered him. The entire time I was living in Aspen in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s I never saw her until the very last day I was in town. I had packed up and was leaving town and heading for Moab to climb and had stopped by the market for supplies. As I was leaving we bumped into each other (almost literally) and we just looked at each other without a smile or a greeting but with (I hope) acknowledgement of what she had done to Spider and to all our lives.”                                 

I was referring to the four years I was Director of the Aspen Mountain Ski School from 1988 to 1992. With a month remaining in that last season I was unexpectedly and without following legal protocols fired by my immediate supervisor, an old friend. His stated reasons for the out of the blue move were bullshit and he would not discuss them. It took me a couple of years to figure out that he had placed himself between a personal rock and a professional hard place, and firing me was a (temporary) reprieve from the pressure. I have good reason to think this move was a significant contribution to his firing a year later. Nearly 30 years would pass with no communication between us when an e mail arrived from him with these words, “For some reason your name has been coming up a lot in the last couple of months.  Must be something in the air!  Karma? Who knows. Anyway I thought I would reach out and see how you are doing.” By the time his karma note arrived I had moved on, but in 1992 I was pissed. Aspen, like every town, city, nation, business and individual person, has its dark side, and my last two days in Aspen were filled with dark metaphors. My last run down Aspen Mountain was an enjoyable slide in the present moment as well as memory lane of Spar Gulch until just past Kleenex Corner when a skier in front of me on the cat track dropped just like he’d had a heart attack (which he had) and started sliding down Niagara. I skied below him and stopped his slide and he was not breathing. I immediately radioed the ski patrol which was there within a couple of minutes, but their cardiopulmonary resuscitation efforts failed. The man was dead.                               

The next morning I was packed up to leave town…unemployed, adrift, confused and disappointed about what had just happened and really angry. Skiing and climbing have always been physical activities that help me find my better self, focus on the present moment and seek the light instead of falling into the gloom. I was heading to Moab to climb its beautiful sandstone crags and already feeling better to just think about climbing when I stopped by the market in town to buy supplies. That’s when I ran into Claudine, who exemplifies the black worst of what Aspen means to me, as Spider represents the very best and brightest.                                                        

After seeing her I spent the next four hours driving to Moab and the next several days climbing there, contemplating the metaphors of watching a man die on one of my favorite mountains and encountering a despicable woman in one of my favorite towns and how to rise above them in the spirit of Spider Sabich.                                                                

Much to my regret and chagrin, the salient truth of what I missed in my talks that last week with Claudine was that she was an actress reading from a script of how she wanted her and Spider’s life to be presented in whatever I wrote, not the reality of her own person which she is most likely not capable of facing. In retrospect, I think that like other friends of Spider’s I knew that his love for her was authentic and supported him in every way I could.                 

  And there is this: That New’s Year’s Eve party in the Aspen hotel included entertainment by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, and I was standing with Spider while they played the moving song by Jerry Jeff Walker, “Mr. Bojangles.” I’ve never heard that song without thinking of Spider and somehow feeling like the song captured his spirit and essence:                                

I knew a man Bojangles and he danced for you
In worn out shoes
Silver hair, a ragged shirt and baggy pants
The old soft shoe

He jumped so high
He jumped so high
Then he’d lightly touched down

Mr Bojangles
Mr Bojangles
Mr Bojangles
Dance

I met him in a cell in New Orleans I was
Down and out
He looked to me to be the eyes of age
As he spoke right out

He talked of life
He talked of life
He lightly slapped his leg instead

He said the name Bojangles and he danced a lick
Across the cell
He grabbed his pants for a better stance
He jumped so high
He clicked his heels

He let go a laugh
He let go a laugh
Shook back his clothes all around

 Mr. Bojangles danced and Spider Sabich skied and they both jumped so high, but the only time Spider was ever down and out was the last few minutes of his life.

LAKE TAHOE IS PERSONAL

“Earth has no sorrow that Earth cannot heal.”
John Muir

Those words from Muir’s private journals, published more than 20 years after his death, are generally viewed through the anthropocentric lens that only sees the sorrows of humanity. I suggest that Muir meant exactly what he wrote, referring to the sorrows of Earth itself. When Muir was born in 1838 the population of the U.S. was 17 million (including 2.5 million slaves), and when he died in 1914 the U.S. population had grown to 100 million. Muir’s rambles through, love for, understanding of and influences on the Sierra Nevada need no introduction, and long before his death the deleterious impact of humanity on his favorite mountain range was obvious. And Muir, an avid reader and serious student of Thoreau, Wordsworth, Humboldt and Emerson, was likely aware of Thomas Malthus’ 1798 book “An Essay on the Principle of Population” in which he posits that human populations would continue to grow until stopped by disease, famine, war or calamity. Though he could not have foreseen such particular (and, to me and many others, personal) calamities as human caused climate change and today’s accelerating pollution of Lake Tahoe by algal growth, sediment erosion, eutrophication, cultural eutrophication, intentional and unintentional introduction of invasive fish, invertebrate and plant life, more than 220 years ago Malthus was aware that Planet Earth cannot support 8 billion human beings.
Throughout his life in America (he did not arrive in America from Scotland until he was 11 and not to California until he was nearly 30) he was an advocate for preserving the environment. Michael Turgeon writes, “As Muir grew older, his advocacy started translating into policy. Congress finally established Yosemite National Park in 1890, and Muir was instrumental in the formation of several other National Parks, including Sequoia and Grand Canyon. He soon co-founded the Sierra Club with the goal of furthering preservation and filling in the gaps left by government conservation work. And in 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt travelled to Yosemite to meet with Muir, in what is now seen as a seminal moment for American environmentalism.”
That seminal moment was not enough for America’s environment, including the Sierra Nevada and Lake Tahoe. A study by the University of California Davis titled “ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS FACING LAKE TAHOE” includes this:

Destruction of Wetlands

“Lake Tahoe historically had natural wetlands that acted as filtration systems to remove excess nutrients from stream water before the runoff would reach the lake. This is one of the many reasons for Lake Tahoe’s famously clear and pristine water. Unfortunately, the value of wetlands was not fully known prior to the heavy development that began in the mid-1950s. For example, the Tahoe Keys was built on one of the largest wetlands in the Lake Tahoe basin. Research has shown that the wetlands of South Lake Tahoe used to remove tons of sediment and nutrients. The detrimental impact of this development can be easily seen during heavy runoff when plumes of sediment cause the water to turn cloudy.”

Forest Health

“The numbers of dead and dying trees throughout Tahoe and the Sierra Nevada are increasing due to a combination of drought stress, insect attack and disease. This carries direct implications for fire safety, biological diversity and carbon sequestration.”

Lake Tahoe has never relinquished its place in mind or heart or spirit as my first real home as a child, though I have not lived there in many years. As I write these words in September 2021, the unprecedented fires of the Sierra, including the ones impacting Lake Tahoe and environs are raging, just as the UC Davis study predicted a few years earlier. And those predictions are a direct consequence of what Thomas Malthus predicted more than 220 years ago. I mean, difficult as it is to accept and understand, none of this is surprising. These excerpts from my essay “My First Mentor: The Sierra Nevada”* describe that first real home:

“I turned 8 in 1946 and my family, like millions of others, was putting itself back together after the emotional/mental/relationship traumas and dislocations of WWII. Each of us—Mom, Dad and I—lived apart and led three very different lives during that war. When it ended we reunited and moved to the Sierra, living in a series of small mountain cabins where there were few and often no neighbors in winter. My primary companions after school and before dinner with Mom and Dad were the skis I used to access my Sierra Nevada playground. Neither of my parents were skiers or much interested in the outdoor life, but they encouraged and supported me in those things I most wanted to do—ski in winter, wander in the woods and meadows and hike up some of the peaks in summer, swim in the lakes when warm enough and read while at home. That is to say, a significant amount of my time between the ages of 8 and 14 was solitary.
“Solitude can be an unspoiled mindset for the experience of learning and the Sierra Nevada is a perfect setting for that same experience. Timothy Leary coined the term ‘set and setting’ to describe a slightly different (though not so different as some might think) consciousness expanding experience in which “set” was the mindset of the participant and “setting” referred to the surrounding social environment. The Sierra was more often than not my solitary social habitat. I was a young adult before being exposed to the writings of Muir, Plato or Leary, but I knew the Range of Light illuminated my path through them……..
“As a boy and young man the Sierra Nevada was the center of the world in which I learned to play, explore, test my skills and limits to learn about myself, including gratitude for the gift of living amidst such beauty and bounty. Of the Sierra it has been said, “One is never alone or unobserved,” and this is how I have always felt in the mountains of the world during more than seven decades of mountain life……..
“I don’t remember Ernie Lee as a skier, but he was the all-year manager of a summer resort. Ernie knew the Sierra and its huge snowfalls intimately, and knew how to live safely with them. His daughter Michele and I attended the same one room school with 8 grades, 8 students and one teacher. When Ernie found out that I was regularly wandering around the mountains on skis alone at the age of 11, he went out of his way to alert me to the steepness of slopes that might avalanche, the different types of untracked snow and how they affect one’s ability to ski in control and other basics of the Sierra Nevada not immediately obvious to a young boy. Ernie emphasized that the pleasure and satisfaction of moving through snow was a blessing that carried inherent and often hidden dangers that were the responsibility of each individual, no matter how old or inexperienced.
“It took many years to reach a level of consciousness that embraced the responsibility that inescapably goes with caring for that blessing by noticing that the Range of Light was not so bright as in the days of Muir. The relationship was out of balance and had changed noticeably in just a couple of decades in the life of a young man who loved his home, respected his mentor and sought the light. Everyone who spends time in the mountains learns that the smallest detail of nature is connected to everything else — in this case, the entire Sierra Nevada and to one’s own well being and survival. I was troubled by some of the first shifts in the natural order that I found unacceptable. Clear mountain streams where we once freely and safely drank were no longer drinkable, and more than one of my favorite mountain lakes was visibly befouled and no longer pristine. Both of these unnatural alterations and many others everyone reading this knows from personal experience and spoken or written word revealed that the student was taking more than he was returning. Neglect the responsibility and the gift will gradually—so gradually that the changes pass unnoticed and become acceptable and normal—decay, become polluted, diminished and be treated as commodity rather than cornucopia. E coli, stormwater runoff, fertilizers, greenhouse gas emissions, animal waste, sediment and “nutrients” creating algae — these words describe concepts I had never before associated with lakes, streams, ponds, meadows, valleys and mountains of the Range of Light.”

Those early rambles, tumbles, plods and schusses in the mountains above Lake Tahoe remained with me throughout a long life of skiing, some of it in the backcountry of mountains of the world, most of them in western America. I had the good fortune to skin up and ski down mountains in China, Chile, Argentina, Europe, Canada and Alaska, and some of my most cherished experiences and memories of places and people are from those exotic adventures. Because of the ‘set and setting’ of those first skiing endeavors above Lake Tahoe, the snowpack and weather and climate of the Sierra (the most compassionate of any mountain range I know) and the pure allure of its skyline, Lake Tahoe’s mountains were always my favorite backcountry skiing. At the age of 83 my skiing is limited to lift serviced runs down runs groomed to carpet smoothness by machines that cost a million dollars and pump carbon dioxide into an already overheated atmosphere so that my old bones can continue enjoying what’s left of the beauty and bounty of the Sierra Nevada and elsewhere. I am grateful and at the same time recognize my complicity in the destruction of that for which I am grateful.
In May 2021 I was visiting friends and family and drove from Reno to Lake Tahoe over the Mt. Rose Highway, a favorite route I have traveled innumerable times. The sky was blue and the air crystal clear. I stopped at the Scenic Overlook on the west side to enjoy the view of what is still to me the most beautiful lake on Earth, so long as one is not close enough to perceive the personal and Lake Tahoe changes between childhood and old age noted above. As always, I was moved by the landscape and lake which are part of me and I of them, when unexpectedly tears were running down my face and I was filled with both gratitude and emotions of loss I do not know how to describe. I am not the weepy type and such experiences are rare for me, but I believe the tears were nostalgic ones of appreciation for a life lived as well as I could manage and my personal piece of mankind’s sorrow of the certainty that the Earth will indeed heal its own sorrows.

*https://insidethehighsierra.com/
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