RMF Member Submission: Connecticut Climbing in the 70s - Part One
Connecticut Climbing in the 70s - part one
Written by Mike Heintz, August 2023
The 70's: It was an exciting time to be a climber and I was fortunate to have been around for it. We probably all hold a special place for the period when we were personally most active, but having said that, I believe this decade was exceptional and in Connecticut represented something of a "Golden Age". Several things came together simultaneously to make this true.
This isn't a history of Connecticut climbing. Others have already done that. In particular, Al Rubin's history, which is included in the guidebook "Traprock" (now out of print), is an excellent treatise. I recommend reading it, if you can find a copy. What I'm interested in, is presenting a snapshot of what it was like to be a climber back then. As such, what follows is undoubtedly subjective. Obviously, there are people whose experiences and attitudes were different from mine. I've tried to bring to light some of the cultural norms which existed, distinguishing that era from today. I hope to achieve at least a general picture of who we were and what motivated us.
Mike Heintz on Dol Guldur 5.11, East Peak, Meriden, CT.
For one thing, living was cheap and independence came earlier. With a roommate or two you could afford an apartment right out of high school. Employment seemed to be plentiful. A climbing bum could pick up some disposable job, make a few hundred dollars, go out West and live off that for a month or longer, then return home and start the process all over again. I spent nearly every year from 1975 to 1979 doing just that, both spring and fall. Though a resident of Connecticut, and sometimes North Conway, NH, I climbed in Eldorado and Yosemite almost as frequently, as did many of my contemporaries.
There were also fewer of us, which meant we were less visible and had less impact on our surroundings. This allowed for more freedom than is currently enjoyed. When I say there were fewer of us, the implication goes beyond just numbers. Unless you happened to reside in a large town or city, there was a very good chance you might be the only climber who lived in your area. There were no climbing gyms, of course, and fewer climbing schools. If you belonged to the AMC, you might be introduced to climbing through that resource. Chances were, however, both the inspiration to become a climber, as well as the necessary guidance to pursue it safely, were largely self-generated and often heavily augmented by book instruction.
The ways in which modern individuals are introduced to the sport are many. Climbing gyms, corporate team building programs, Television documentaries and online videos, all abound. Somebody you know is almost certainly already a climber. Children's playgrounds even sport little climbing walls. If anyone had told me back in the 70's that climbing would become an activity featured on cruise ships I wouldn't have even comprehended what they were talking about.
Of course, 50 years ago none of these existed. As mentioned previously, many of us back then were, at least in part, self taught. Typically, one would pair up with a partner of similar ineptitude and you'd both develop proficiency together, assuming you survived. Advancement was by trial and error, and always under fire. One quickly learned how to get out of trouble, largely because of the frequency of getting into trouble. To Quote Alfred E. Neuman, "The problem with learning from experience is that you always get the exam before the lesson."
There was a hidden advantage built into this learning method however. Climbers typically started leading right from the get-go while still raw beginners. Obviously, commencing with the easiest routes. It was a common practice to lead all, or as many as possible, of the routes within one grade before advancing to the next. It sounds silly now, but the implications of this curious practice would have unexpected advantages. It meant leading all sorts of nasty off-widths and squeeze chimneys in one grade, before moving on to the more appealing sorts of routes in the next. How often today do routes like "Sweat Slot" or the "Cave Route" get done at Ragged? This self imposed curriculum paid off though. One quickly developed broad and diverse skills. When finally the next grade was broached, one suddenly unveiled a cornucopia of new possibilities to climb. This was especially true of places like the Gunks, where there were many routes within each grade.
Modern climbers have access to a mind-boggling amount of route information. Guidebooks seem more detailed, with more frequent updated additions. Internet guides provide real-time information (though not always accurate), as do the accompanying reader comments. There are even beta videos which can sometimes be pulled up. I no longer have a copy of Steve Roper's guide to Yosemite Climbing, but I still remember sentences which read like this, "Next, pendulum left into a crack system, which is followed for many hundreds of feet to a small ledge." With minimalist descriptions of that sort, it's easy to see why 3,000 foot El Cap routes, featuring more than thirty pitches, ended up with single paragraph route descriptions. It goes without saying that in the days before the internet, up-to-date information was limited. In fact, for much of the 70's, one of our chief sources of news and information came from a couple of bi-monthly magazines, one of which was actually British. It usually grouped information regarding American climbing into a single column heading. You can imagine how exciting it was for us on the rare occasion when the Northeast was included.
I'm not condemning all these modern advantages. It seems unrealistic not to avail oneself of them and I confess I do so myself, some aspects anyway. Climbing does seem less adventurous than it used to, however. I came to realize when I began writing this just how culturally different the past was. One needs to do more than just transport oneself back several decades to understand those times. We were almost different people.
That's just the point. Even the type of individual who was apt to become a climber in the first place was different back then. Generally speaking, the climbing world was a bit like the land of misfit toys, a very eclectic assortment of individuals who often just didn't fit in anywhere else. Very few of us started out as athletes in the usual sense. Personally, I was one of those kids who, in gym class, was always the last one picked for team sports, but on the weekends was driven to push myself on the hardest routes in the state. I never would have considered training to be a better climber. The very idea was repulsive. It would be like training to be a better lover. We followed the example of our English climbing heritage, where one was expected to climb hard with a hangover.
There is another way we differed back then which deserves mention, and that's in the way we were perceived by the general public. Climbers were often seen as undesirables; long-haired gypsies occupying campsites for weeks at a time. This was especially true in Yosemite, where run-ins with the park service and its associated concessions were frequent. The following story illustrates how suddenly this all changed.
In 1988, on a trip to the New River Gorge, Bill Sullivan and I attended a slide show. It was presented by Lynn Hill, and hosted at a local hotel. When the event was over, an accordion divider opened in the rear of the room, doubling its size. Behind the divider was an open bar and full buffet. We all looked around at each other in confusion. Was this really intended for us? We were used to being thrown out of places like this. For the first time in my experience, climbers were seen as a boon to the area, a potential new revenue source, not just a bunch of dirt-bags. I think in the end we overstayed our welcome and they ended up throwing us out after all, but the point is, things were changing, and there was no turning back. We were beginning to have careers, expendable incomes, and climbing was becoming mainstream enough that local business owners probably had kids of their own who participated. Climbing was becoming respectable.
Mike Heintz is a long-time supporter of the Ragged Mountain Foundation. He is a Connecticut native, now living in Bellingham, WA. Mike, a prolific first ascensionist from the early years of Connecticut climbing, was the first to free climb Dol Guldur (pictured) with Tony Trocchi in 1975. Read more about his experience on that route here. Mike’s story will be published in four parts.