CLEVELAND (CLEVE) MCCARTY. Born 1933. TRANSCRIPT of OH 1336V A-B. This interview was recorded on June 8, 2005, for the Maria Rogers Oral History Program. The interviewer is Robyn Crispe. The interview is also available in video format, filmed by Liz McCutcheon. The interview was transcribed by Catherine Jopling and Carol Jordan. NOTE: The interviewer’s questions and comments appear in parentheses. Added material appears in brackets. ABSTRACT: Cleveland McCarty, a pioneer in rock climbing and co-author of High Over Boulder, talks about his love for climbing (both rock climbing and mountaineering) since his boyhood days in Boulder. He shares stories of some of his more memorable climbs along the Front Range and elsewhere. [A]. 00:00 (This is Robyn Crispe. I’m interviewing for the Maria Rogers Oral History Program of the Carnegie Branch Library for Local History. The date is Wednesday, June 8, 2005. The narrator is Cleveland McCarty, and we’re at his home at 315 Arapahoe in Boulder, Colorado.) (So, thank you for having this interview with us, and I’ll start by asking when and where were you born.) I’m a native, born in Denver, Colorado, and when—1933. (When did you move to Boulder?—What brought you here?) I went to school here, so that would’ve been in the ‘50s—‘53 or so. And then I went in the Air Force. I went to dental school in St. Louis at Washington University and then the Air Force, and back to Denver for a year, and finally in ‘66 bought a home here, started a practice. So— (How long were you in the Air Force?) I was in there almost four years—was in Germany. (Stationed there the whole time?) Excuse me? (Stationed there the whole time?) Yes, I was. 01:00 (So, your main interest has been climbing, for a big part of your life, and—) Uh-huh. (—and when did that start for you? When was the first time you were grabbed by the idea of climbing?) The first time I started to grab the bark on a cottonwood tree out in the backyard. [chuckles] I could go right up it, and no one else could. I thought, “Well, this is unique— I have an ability to do something none of the neighbors did"—or wanted to! And so, actual rock climbing started back up at either Cheley Camp or down in Colorado Springs at the Garden of the Gods. I’m not sure which came first, but it was early on—about thirteen years old. (And when you started climbing trees, and—) Oh, it was long before then, [chuckles] yeah— (But the rock climbing came when you were about thirteen years old?) Yeah. Jungle gyms, all those kinds of—I don’t know, something instinctual about climbing things that I happened to have, and so off I went and just climbed everything. Just—born to climb. (Was climbing a sport like it is known today, at the time?) The transformation of that sport is fantastic—incredible as to what has transpired in the last thirty or forty years. It astounds me. It’s frightening to see some of the new magazines that have come out. It used to be in a magazine, people would—you could see them going up things that had forty-five degrees, and that would be an astounding photograph, like one on the Third Flatiron, but as years go by, the verticality of these photographs have gotten more steep. And now, people are on overhangs, and so, just the covers of magazines alone tell you something about what’s happened in the sport. Huge. (Did you know other people, say when you’re a teenager, and you had this instinct to start climbing, did you know other people that were—that you connected with that were also interested in that kind of climbing—) Hard to find. Hard to find.—Very rare. (How old were you when you started recognizing that there were other people out there that were climbing?) I was about sixteen, I think. Nowadays people get started well before then, but then— there wasn’t anybody else, and—now and then we could locate a person, either in school or somewhere that was interested in doing it. None of us were great athletes at it. We just had a desire to go up—that was it. (How did you decide where you would climb?) Well, the proximity of—below the age of sixteen, you needed a driver—you didn’t have a drivers license, so whoever—wherever you were and where the nearest rock was— determined where you were going to go climb. An then after sixteen, then we started expanding our interest—I say ‘our’—whoever I could trap into going with me [chuckles]—some really early excursions throughout the state. It wasn’t all local. It was throughout the state, basically. Things that attracted me as they do nowadays to people— the Maroon Bells—that photograph of those two bells—is really compelling. And so the result of all this, we’d travel over dusty, dirty—It was Independence Pass at that time, with no railings. Went over on a Model-A Ford one time—a lot of rudimentary hours were spent. But wonderful. (Did you run into other people that were mountaineering and climbing, or were you pretty much by yourself with your friends when you’d go out there?) Pretty much solo; pretty much just an individual group. Now and then we’d run into a Colorado Mountain Club excursion, and they were formulating some adventures up in the high country. That was the only group. I felt very fond of them. They were on Josephine at the time—14th and Josephine in Denver. That was where their office was. For me, to go in there was like going in to the White House. I was so impressed by some of the people that were older than I, and had had some wonderful experiences. I’d trap them into sharing some of their climbs. (And so they were a big inspiration for you?) Yes, the Colorado Mountain Club was really, for me, a very important formative group. 05:20 (Was there a difference between mountaineering per se and rock climbing, or at that time, was it all kind of in the same genre?) It’s hard to think back that far, as to what we thought of it. I think rock climbing definitely was pointed toward pinnacles, things that came to a point of some kind, which we have a few around Boulder. And mountaineering of course—things like Quandary and Evans and Long’s Peak—without thinking of the east face of Long’s Peak—but big mountains. Big, tall—they didn’t have to be fourteeners. They could be twelve-thousand footers, and on down. There was a separation between the two. Usually they co-joined somewhere. There’d be a little rock on the way up, some place. But individual rock climbs were—yeah, we pointed toward some of the pinnacles. I can name them, like the Maiden. Yeah. (And the Maiden is in Eldorado Springs?) It’s between here and Eldorado Springs. Yeah. (Had a lot of people climbed that, at that point, when you—) Interesting. You need to interview one of them: Stan Black, Mark Taggert are people that were implemental [sic]—in fact they did the first ascent, and they’re still around here somewhere. (And you’re still friends with them?) Oh sure. I see Mark every Friday at Rotary Club. First ascent, imagine. They’re guys that are still active. Mark’s done the 54 I think, again, almost. (The 54 fourteeners?) Yeah. (Is that right?) Yeah. 07:00 (When did Boulder really become the Mecca for rock climbing? At what point did all these people start kind of converging in this area?) In the ‘60s. That was a major time of transformation—in Boulder at least. And I have to say we take some responsibility in that, in having published the book High Over Boulder which brought the attention to Eldorado Springs and the Flatirons and local rock up the [Boulder] Canyon. (And High Over Boulder is a book that you—) Yeah, Pat Ament and I did it together. (What was the inspiration for that?) That’s a great story. Do you have a moment? (We have all the moments that you have.) Somewhere in 1952, ‘53—yeah ‘53—two of us went out to do the Maiden and we’d seen in Trail & Timberline—which was the Colorado Mountain Club magazine. They had done an issue on the first ascent of the Maiden, and we had that issue with us, or at least in memory. We had learned that the rappel off the backside was about a hundred and ten feet, which is an exciting rappel. It’s all free, and you don’t touch anything; you’re hanging out, and it’s the most exciting rappel, except for the desert rappels, that I’ve ever been on! And so we got up—we thought we got up on top of the Maiden—it was a rock spire by Eldorado Springs—we got on the summit of this thing, and on the descent, the rappel, it was too short. Our rope was too short, so we were left hanging out in space, or close to it, and it happened to be the Matron we were on. And I thought, “Oh my goodness,” and my co-leader, co-climber, had to climb back up to the top of the Matron and then we went back down the east side of it, and then we thought—I thought—“Hey, there’s got to be a guide to this whole area somewhere,” so that got me started.