• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

SHEER y the time Tom Frost started B up El Capitan’s 3,000-foot vertical walls in the fall of 1960, the glory of being the first to scale FOCUS Yosemite’s most imposing mono- Tom Frost was an unlikely pioneer, lith had already been claimed. A but his exploits—and ethics— maverick named Warren Hard- ing had taken the honors two have shaped generations of high achievers. years earlier, staggering over the granite giant’s rim before drying his tears and greeting the throng of reporters and fans gathered to BY SAM SCOTT celebrate what had so recently PHOTOGRAPHY BY TOM FROST/AURORA PHOTOS seemed impossible. STANFORD 51 But Frost was after something different. Harding had es- sentially taken on El Cap like it was Mount Everest, bolting Frost’s quick emergence into the rock a trail of fixed ropes that allowed his team to come and go during 45 days of climbing spread over 18 months. Such among the world’s tactics were common in the murderous altitude and weather of the Himalayas, but for climbers like Frost, ’58, they seemed best may have surprised unsporting in Yosemite. With enough bolts, fixed ropes and time, any obstacle would submit—even El Cap—but that wasn’t those who knew him in the point. And so Frost and three others, led by a charismatic climber his early years at Stanford. named Royal Robbins, the purist yin to Harding’s pragmatic yang, left the valley floor in September 1960. They expected a 10-day climb and hauled only enough water for a quart and a half per day. The aim wasn’t just the summit, Frost says; they wanted to strike a blow for their cause—climbing with “good style,” one that embraced uncertainty. “For us, it was almost a sacred business how we climbed, not what we climbed,” Frost says, speaking at his home in Oak- dale, Calif., halfway between the Bay Area and Yosemite. “It’s about discovering what you can do, and what you can’t do.” Six and a half days later, they too had scaled the Nose, the prow connecting El Cap’s two faces. For Frost, it was like step- ping right into heaven, not that the general public took much notice. But in the climbing community, their accomplishment cast a resounding vote for the vision of the “Valley Christians,” as Harding ribbed his rivals. “It is difficult to imagine now what a psychological break- through this Nose climb was,” climbing journalist Steve Roper writes in his book Camp 4. “Without fanfare, the best rock climbers in the world had simply gone and done the world’s toughest climb without using fixed ropes. In a single stroke, this changed Valley climbing permanently: Never again did top- level climbers string fixed ropes from ground to rim. This tactic would have been like using a horse and buggy in the thirties.” Frost’s quick emergence among the world’s best in anything— even something as esoteric in 1960 as rock climbing—may have surprised those who knew him in his early years at Stan- ford. By his own description, he was often socially awkward, academically overwhelmed and athletically mediocre. He relished his time on the crew team, but because he was only a few pounds heavier than a coxswain, nobody minded much when he put down his oar after his sophomore year. “I loved it, but I was lousy,” he says. But from the moment Frost, a mechanical engineering stu- dent, discovered climbing in the Stanford Alpine Club as a se- nior, he flourished. He found a harmony with rock that he’d had with the wind as a competitive sailor in his teen years, an easy familiarity with nature that often eluded him in social settings. Yosemite granite was nothing he took lightly. “When you go up something that big, the rock owns you until it spits you out at the top or at the bottom,” he likes to say. But on its walls, he dis- covered a place in the world where he belonged. It was spiritual. The extent of his comfort is evident in decades of stunning black-and-white climbing photographs, another of his legacies STRAIGHT UP GUY: Frost was part of the team that completed the first ascent of the that began on El Capitan. An amateur behind the lens, Frost Salathe Wall on El Capitan in 1961, left. brought a camera only at the urging of a veteran of Harding’s Forty years later, he completed the same team, who offered his Leica IIC 35mm a day before the climb. climb, right. Previous page: Frost on El Capitan’s Lower Cathedral Spire in 1965. 52 JULY/AUGUST 2014 ON TOP OF THE WORLD: Frost, Robbins, Chuck Pratt and Chouinard on the summit of El Capitan after the first ascent of North America Wall in 1964 (opposite). Frost photographed Robbins and Pratt waiting to climb the next pitch during the first ascent of Salathe Wall in 1961 (left). ‘For us, it was almost a sacred business how we climbed, not what we climbed.’ It was another instant connection. Despite the extreme El Cap. He would climb in the Himalayas with Edmund Hill- pedition to Annapurna in Nepal. Others on the team reached His influence on the sport continued in other ways. In the environment and unfamiliar equipment, Frost combined a ary, the man who along with Tenzing Norgay first stood atop the 26,500-foot summit, but Frost, so ravaged by the extreme early ’70s, he and Chouinard grew increasingly alarmed at the natural eye and an almost unnatural cool. Able to detach from Everest, an opportunity presented to Frost after he drove 830 elevation he wouldn’t fully recover for two years—stopped damage left by pitons, the metal spikes climbers hammered moments of mortal danger, he took shots more experienced miles from California to Utah for a 20-minute interview. 1,500 feet short. He could have made the summit, he guesses, into cracks to serve as anchors for safety ropes. The pitons photographers may never have dared. And he would emerge as business partner, designer and but probably not the return. were crucial to their business, not to mention their own climb- “In those awesome situations he led, cleaned, hauled, day engineer with Yvon Chouinard in what then was arguably the To get so close to such an epic peak after months of effort ing success. after day and—somehow—used his camera with the acuity of a world’s best manufacturer of climbing equipment. Chouinard, would torture others, but the decision never bothered him, he As climbing’s popularity grew, and Yosemite emerged as Cartier-Bresson strolling about a piazza,” climber and photogra- who joined Frost on first ascents of new El Capitan routes in says. He’d done his job in a successful expedition and returned its mecca, the scarring of previously pristine cliffsides was pher Glen Denny marveled in a book on the Stanford Alpine Club the mid-’60s, later founded apparel maker Patagonia. Through alive. (One of his teammates did not, having died in an ice fall growing undeniable. In 1972, Frost and Chouinard developed and its alumni. Speaking recently, Denny said it was as though it all, Frost says, he tried to keep his focus on good style—a during the descent.) chockstones of varying sizes and shapes that could be wedged Frost were smiling when others were thinking about surviving. climber’s version of “It’s not whether you win or lose, but how Frost continued mountaineering into the 1980s. But his into cracks without damaging them. “Remember the rock, the “I was just plain comfortable up there,” Frost says. you play the game.” days on Yosemite’s big walls ended long before—at least for a other climbers—climb clean,” the two men wrote in their 1972 The Nose ascent and the photos would be far from the last He didn’t always triumph by conventional standards. In time. The level of commitment needed for such technically catalogue, a manifesto still seen as an inflection point in the time the quiet Frost would make his mark in climbing. In the 1970, burnishing his credentials as perhaps America’s most challenging climbs didn’t fit with the demands of family and sport’s ethos. coming years, he and Robbins would pioneer new routes up versatile climber, he accepted an invitation to join a British ex- business, he says. The two went their separate ways after Chouinard began 54 JULY/AUGUST 2014 STANFORD 55 ‘If you turn back before to focus on clothing, but some of their gear you can put your designs are still being produced. Frost also emerged as a leader and designer in another nose against it, then field: photography lighting equipment. He returned to Yosemite in 1997 to climb you’re giving up.’ El Cap four times—this time with his son, Ryan. With modern gear and techniques, he climbed faster, though it was far tougher than he remembered. As a younger man, his focus had been absolute, but at age 60, with pressures of life and business crowding in, he took short falls on each climb, something that never occurred 40 years earlier. The experience led to Frost’s most tan- gible legacy at Yosemite. While his son was off climbing, he grew concerned that park of- ficials intended to build employee housing on the site of Camp 4, the base for generations of Yosemite climbers. Both a staging area and a community gathering place, its potential demise aggravated many, notably John Mid- dendorf, ’82, another big wall climber who had taken to leafleting cars at night to raise opposition.

Load more

  4

Copy Link