“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

            “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 2^nd 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 4^th 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.

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.

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 5^th 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 5^th in slalom and 10^th 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.

A new collection of Allen Ginsberg’s work, “Wait Till I’m Dead” Uncollected Poems, has recently been published. Not surprisingly, it’s wonderful. The first poem in the book is titled “Rep Gordon Canfield (Mine Own Dear Congressman).” It was written in 1942 and published in Columbia Jester in 1943. It reads:

“Canfield votes like a
Typical politician,
Guided strictly by
November Intuition.
For Canfield is
But half a man–
The other half
Republican”

Almost 80 years later only the names of typical politicians have changed.
HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

“Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.”
Winston Churchill

“The ‘white race’ thus becomes the chief victim of its own myth.”
Harry Edwards

1968 was a pivotal year in American history. It was also the year I received a powerful, disturbing and disheartening lesson about American journalism and the effect it has on the society it serves. I know, I know, many reading this are tired of and impatient with cultural relativism rants from old farts that came of age in the ‘60s, but sit down and listen. 2016 was also a pivotal year in American history, and that same disturbing lesson of mine from 50 years ago has been in the forefront of the news every day for the past couple of years. I refer, of course, to the unexpected, unbelievable, powerful and disturbing campaign and election of Donald Trump as President of the United States. So far, the words, actions, personnel and stated intentions of the Trump administration are terrifying for those who care about the whole of humanity, the environment of Earth, social justice, compassion, common decency and freedom. The affects Trump and cadre will ultimately have on the world are, at this writing, undetermined. It can be safely assumed they will make the influence of Agent Orange on the flora and fauna (including those humans who happened to be present) in Viet Nam in the ‘60s seem like benign organic fertilizers used in the backyard home gardens of today.
I was 29 years old in the spring of 1968, a recent graduate school dropout, who, like others of my social/political/psychedelic persuasions, was adrift and searching to find a suitable place even on the fringe of the mainstream. One of my varied sources of income was writing a column for the major newspaper of a western city of some 70,000 souls. The column was well received and I enjoyed free rein to write about whatever I thought appropriate until I wrote a column that I thought pertinent, timely and socially relevant to every American. That column changed my perception of America and my life, though it was never published.
The column was about Harry Edwards, a sociology professor at San Jose State University, and the movement he was leading called the Olympic Project for Human Rights (OPHR). The intention of Edwards and OPHR was to organize an African American boycott of the upcoming 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City to expose the racist policies and practices of America and the hypocrisy of the white washed image of itself America presented to the world, in opposition to its reality perhaps best explicated by the great American writer James Baldwin: “The American Negro has the great advantage of having never believed the collection of myths to which white Americans cling: that their ancestors were all freedom-loving heroes, that they were born in the greatest country the world has ever seen, or that Americans are invincible in battle and wise in peace, that Americans have always dealt honorably with Mexicans and Indians and all other neighbors or inferiors, that American men are the world’s most direct and virile, that American women are pure. Negroes know far more about white Americans than that; it can almost be said, in fact, that they know about white Americans what parents—or, anyway, mothers—know about their children, and that they very often regard white Americans that way. And perhaps this attitude, held in spite of what they know and have endured, helps to explain why Negroes, on the whole, and until lately, have allowed themselves to feel so little hatred. The tendency has really been, insofar as this was possible, to dismiss white people as the slightly mad victims of their own brainwashing.” In addition, OPHR had four demands: Restore Muhammad Ali’s heavyweight boxing title; remove Avery Brundage from his long time position as head of the International Olympic Committee (IOC); hire more African American coaches for the nation’s athletic teams; and bar South Africa and Rhodesia from the Olympics because of their racist policies.
OPHR and Edwards seemed to me timely topics just months before the Olympic Games in Mexico City and their message to American society significant. I put my best efforts into writing a good column and turned it in. The editor refused to publish it, though he conceded it was well written and its message relevant. His reason for not publishing it was simple and direct and I’ve never forgotten it: “This community is not ready to hear this message,” he said. I disagreed and said so and it ended my relationship with the newspaper and altered my relationship with the editor, an old friend. Less than six months later Edwards and OPHR had not accomplished all their goals, but they did raise their voices into the collection of myths to which white America clings. OPHR and Edwards were responsible for the most significant and published athletic photo of the 20th century which stripped those myths to naked, porous, racist bone: Tommie Smith and John Carlos, black American runners who finished 1st (in world record time) and 3rd respectively in the 1968 Olympic 200 meter race on the podium after receiving their medals raising their black-gloved fists in the air, their heads bowed, their feet bare. Their friend and silver medalist, Australian Peter Norman, wore an OPHR badge on his chest in support and solidarity. Smith and Carlos were shoeless to protest black poverty as well as beads and scarves to protest lynching. Their gesture was reported all over the world as a “Black Power Salute” though Smith, Carlos and Edwards referred to it as a “Human Rights Salute.”
At the time my editor told me the reason my column wouldn’t be used I attributed my disappointment to his personal flaws, a journalist’s moral/professional failure of public trust and public service. But after the photo was published all over the world it became evident that both failure and flaw were much larger than one editor. It was a failure of the (almost) entire profession and industry of American journalism, not just one editor. The Los Angeles Times described Smith and Carlos’ gesture as a “Nazi-like salute,” apparently unaware of the irony that IOC head Brundage had, in 1936, defended and approved of German athletes raising their arms on the podium in the real Nazi salute to the real Fuhrer in the real capital of Nazism, Berlin. Time magazine put the Olympic logo on its cover, replacing the motto “Faster, Higher, Stronger” with “Angrier, Nastier, Uglier.” The Chicago Tribune termed Smith and Carlos “renegades,” and called their gesture “contemptuous of the United States” and “an insult to their countrymen.” And a young reporter for the Chicago American who later became an iconic sportscaster, Brent Musburger, described the two Olympic medal winners as“…a pair of black-skinned storm troopers.”
It would seem that most of mainstream American journalism agreed with my editor and for several years after 1968 I believed that American journalism as a whole was failing the community. That was and is true, but gradually so gradually–it became clear that the “collection of myths to which white Americans cling” clouded the perception of American journalism itself for the simple reason that it clung to and was part of those myths. As a white American male, my upbringing was within those myths and clouded my own perceptions, though even as a boy and young man it was clear that many of the myths were simply not true. Some of the voices of the 1960s and 70s rising into the myths—Dalton Trumbo, Martin Luther King, The March on Selma, Rosa Parks, Muhammad Ali, Malcolm X, Jane Fonda, Dennis Banks, Russell Means, Leonard Peltier, Ken Kesey, Dick Gregory, Gloria Steinem, Tom Hayden, Stephen Gaskin and many others—created enough heat and energy to help dissipate more of them. Like every sincere critical thinker who knows that all things are connected and that changing the world starts with each person (you and me), I’m still working on separating the collection of myths and alternative facts from the organic reality that America is and always has been a racist, sexist, misogynist, imperialist nation built on the genocide of its indigenous peoples, the backs of slaves and the institution of slavery, all justified by the religious delusion that white males are God’s chosen people and superior to all other races as well as the females of their own race.
Harsh words, yes, but they are rooted in a long and venerable tradition of voices both harsh and maternally kind rising into the myth. One of the first was from abolitionist Thomas Day in 1776 commenting on the Declaration of Independence, just written by Thomas Jefferson. The second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence reads, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.” (The first draft of the Declaration was worded “…all free men are created equal…” and the removal of the word ‘free,’ a message the fathers of the constitution apparently were not ready to hear, or, at least, did not think the community was ready to hear, was the beginning of the myths.) Jefferson and George Washington were among slave owner fathers of the constitution (Jefferson also fathered children with his slaves) and Day responded to their hypocrisy: “If there be an object truly ridiculous in nature, it is an American patriot, signing resolutions of independency with the one hand, and with the other brandishing a whip over his affrighted slaves.”
The myths were built into the Constitution from the beginning. The voices rising into the myths were present at the beginning as well, and they have been and continue to be the home of hope for America and the only reason the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence creeps ever so slowly out of myth towards reality. It took nearly a hundred years before the Civil War ended slavery and in theory gave slaves freedom and the right to vote, but in reality it was not until the 1964 Civil Rights Act made it possible for the descendants of slaves to vote in America. Native Americans were not granted citizenship by Congress until 1924 but in many states could not vote until 1957. Even white women could not vote until 1920 when the 19th amendment to the Constitution was passed after 70 years of the voices of organized women’s groups led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Susan B. Anthony and others (and, it seems likely, individual pillow talk voices) created enough heat and energy to dissipate the fog of myths enough so that even the morally challenged couldn’t hide within them. As everyone reading this knows, the inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in America are not the same for white males, black people, native Americans, people of any shade of color, females, those who believe in the wrong religion or private sexual preferences that tweak the image of the world’s most direct and virile men and pure women. Still, over the past 50 years the volume of rising voices and the pace, slow as it is, to bring these inalienable rights to all the equal people of America have raised dramatically compared to the previous 200 years. That is, there is hope and there has been progress and human rights are better in America than they were 100 years ago. That snail pace came to a screeching (literally) stop with the election of Donald Trump, but the voices rising into the myths have never been louder, higher or hotter. Nor have they ever been more necessary or grateful for each new voice.
Which leads to an issue that many Americans, starting with Donald Trump, believe the community is not ready to hear: Since two of the last three Presidents of the United States lost the popular vote and still became President, democracy itself is another in the collection of myths America tells itself and anyone else who will listen. The Electoral College circumvents the democratic process of voting rights and, like slavery, racism, sexism, bigotry, misogyny and religious intolerance, destroys equality in the name of the nation it mocks which needs voices rising into the myths of its usefulness as a tool of democracy.
As self-encouragement to raise your own voice, take some time to contemplate how different our country and the world would be if Al Gore instead of George W. Bush and Hillary Clinton instead of Donald Trump had become President as the population had voted them to be, if democracy of the people, for the people and by the people had prevailed instead of the myths of the slightly mad victims of our own brainwashing.
Raise your voice, friends and fellow citizens. Raise your voice. Loudly. Clearly. Respectfully. Truthfully. In the venerable tradition of Thomas Day and those who came before and the many who followed. Raise your voice. Dissipate the myths. Make your Mother proud.