chossmonkey.com Blog

Recently, the New York Times had a nice little article about Fred Beckey.

The article reminded me of a story about Fred Beckey from my good, old friend Darrell. Darrell is a wild one, to say the least. He’s the one who drove straight through from Georgia to Colorado, revved up on can after can of Red Bull. I met him outside my house when he arrived and he promptly popped a couple of Percosets and washed them down with Jack Daniels, straight out of the bottle. Then he said, “I need a drink. Let’s go to the bar.” We headed downtown where he ordered two double scotches on the rocks and a beer and then asked what I would have.
Darrell is a helicopter mechanic for the National Guard and has been stationed in Oregon. Never mind that he won’t fly in any of the Blackhawk helicopters he works on every day, instead referring to them as “crashhawks” and “lawn darts.”

One weekend he sauntered up to a campfire in Smith Rock. Once inside the circle, someone whispered to him, “hey, that’s Fred Beckey over there.” “Fred Fucking Beckey?!” Darrell yelled in astonishment as every head in the circle turned in his direction with a curious glare towards this interesting newcomer.

As the night wore on, Darrell struck up a conversation with Fred and they made plans to climb the next day. The next day, Darrell took the lead on an easy 5.6 or 5.7 multi-pitch climb and promptly marched up the climb. 20, 30, 40 feet Darrell climbed without a piece of protection. Fred called up, “how about placing some pro?” “Oh yeah, just a second.” At 50 feet with still no pro, Fred called up, “how about that pro?” “Yep, just a second.” With another 10 feet, Darrell showed no sign of placing gear and this is when Fred tugged on the rope and said, “place some damn pro Darrell!” Finally, he relented. I asked Darrell why he was obsessed with purposely running it out. “Because I was climbing with Fred Beckey,” as if that were explanation enough.

When it was Fred’s turn to come up the pitch, Darrell described to me the tightest belay he had ever given to anyone, ever. I asked him why he felt the need to give such a tight belay to the living legend Fred Beckey, the prominent first ascentionist and mountaineer extradorinaire. “Dude, he’s like 80 and I didn’t want to be known as the guy who broke Fred Beckey’s hip!”

Our backyard, high on Treasure Mountain in the Raggeds Wilderness.

What’s a climber to do if they don’t live in the mountains? This Alpinist online article demonstrates the response of climbers in Kansas. Early in my climbing career, I also had to make the most of my surroundings in Iowa. There’s a scattering of good limestone climbing in eastern Iowa, including five minutes away from the farm where I was raised. Still, climbing in Iowa is made difficult by wet, humid weather and relatively short climbing seasons. Part of my answer to this was to build a small climbing wall in my dad’s barn. Short on money and climbing holds, I did my best to create a place to train when the weather wouldn’t cooperate. It worked. I made a huge jump in my climbing ability at this time by significantly increasing my strength, jumping a whole number grade for my hardest onsight within a few months. My technique still needed a lot of polishing but I was able to hold on and make use of endurance that I didn’t have before. I still have fond memories of the mornings, afternoons, and evenings spent in that place.

Here’s a classic photo that has a lot of fond memories attached to it. Notice the license plate and that will tell you a lot. This is August of 2000 when I was just barely out of college and full of excitement for my first trip to Yosemite. Two great friends, Pete and Craig, joined me and we had big plans to do a bunch of big walls.

Our road-tripping vehicle – my Chrysler LeBaron sedan, previously owned by my mother and grandmother. Notice the crash pad strapped on the trunk, along with water bottles and sandals attached.
Instead, all three of us got poison ivy and had a horrible time in the sweltering summer heat of the Valley. We young and naive but we tried hard. Inspired by posters in the Valley gift shops, we successfully climbed the Lost Arrow Spire and did the tyrolean traverse back to the valley rim. That was pretty much it though, as we eventually gave into the itching and heat and bailed for an air-conditioned hotel room in Las Vegas, where we finally got the prescription meds we desired.

It was a quite an adventure and a big step up for all of us. For me, it was just the beginning of my climbing career and the experience taught me a lot and inspired me to reach for bigger heights. For Pete and Craig, it was one of their last climbing trips as they both fell out of climbing. Craig moved to Phoenix for a career and a love for cycling. Pete seriously injured himself in a sport climbing accident – he hung from the back of his knee from a quickdraw after falling on a warm-up. His knee was never the same and as far as I know, he’s never returned to serious climbing.

Hence, it’s probably fitting that my memories of that trip are more about the fun and the laughs we had rather than a pitch-by-pitch account of what we climbed. And that’s the moral of the story – friends are far more important than climbing.

Courtesy of one of my fine high school students, comes this photo of me, reputedly on a first ascent of a crack. I can’t say how classic it may or may not be, but it was certainly a “hairy” lead.