It’s hard to believe I haven’t written anything in this blog since July. What can I say - I needed a long break to think about the trip, the project, and process all the material. But, it’s been long enough and we’ve had a number of successes that I want to start sharing. Not to mention, the road trip story itself (which we roughly stopped blogging about at around day 5.) This is Part 1. Hope you enjoy it!
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the crew, drinkin beer and playing cards in the van
Here we were, my crew (Alex, Nick, Corene) and I, lugging our backpacks and stocky film equipment on the side of the road in the brutal midday heat, trying inefficiently to hitchhike into Bishop, California. This was day 5 of what would be a 30+ day trip across the country in our 1976 VW van to capture the oral histories of American rock climbing.
“Maybe we should split up so we have a better chance of getting a ride.”
After the trip had ended and I was back in Los Angeles, I would recount the ups and downs of the trip. “Ooh, aah” climbers would say upon hearing our roster of interviews. “How glamorous,” said somebody I met at a coffee shop. Glamorous? I thought. There were many words for this trip, ‘glamorous’ was not one of them.
Back on the side of highway, I held firmly onto a portabrace briefcase which housed five or six hard drives containing our precious interviews. I was now very glad I had opted to buy the “rugged” shell for them. Hitchhiking in 100 degree weather seemed rugged enough. Four dirty youths with bulging baggage were not the likeliest ensemble to pick up, and we trudged the entire way on foot into town.
This was one of the two moments on the trip when we would find ourselves more than a few feet away from the VW. We slept in our van, cooked in our van, we carried our film gear in the van as well as our backpacks and sleeping bags and two plastic trees. But at that moment, we had left it at a German Mechanics to get some new brakes.
It’s hard to convey the difference in driving a vehicle that is over 30 years old. The VW has no power steering, no radiator, no 5th gear, and as of this moment in the trip, no brakes and no reverse. “Coffin-on-wheels” is what I’d heard my father’s friend Joe Herbst call my dad’s climbing vans of the 70’s. The term now held meaning for me too, as we sailed down the 8% grade of Monitor Pass with no brakes, holding on for dear life.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
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Mark Powell and his dog
Four days earlier we had left Southern California, stopping for interviews with Stone Master strong man/poet laureate John Long, the incisive Gerry Galwas, and the original Camp 4 climbing bum Mark Powell. But at some point between the first 60 seconds on the road and driving 20mph uphill into Antelope Valley to pick up our 4th crew member Corene (who had flown in from Colorado), we lost the ability to reverse. In fact, all gears seemed difficult to reach, and the grinding sound of repeatedly finding 4th instead of 2nd gear became a familiar sound.
Some point after midnight we reached Corene. From there we would have to drive all night to reach Modesto, California where we would do one of our most important interviews with the most famous climber in American history: Royal Robbins.
Corene and I tool the driving helm during the wee hours, and at about 5 in the morning we approached the city limits of Modesto. Our interview was at noon. Using our trusty Magellan GPS – somewhat of an anachronism in our vintage interior, we told it to find us the nearest campground or park to rest our eyes for a few hours. “Approaching left turn, approaching right turn, approaching right turn…” called out Magellan.
Corene and I looked dubious. The sun was coming up blue and pink over the horizon, and we found ourselves on a dirt road surrounded on all sides by hundreds of Orange trees. We were just tired enough to be completely delirious. “Where are we?!!” laughed Corene. She has a very infectious laugh, and for that on this trip I was very, very glad. We turned one last right turn, and lo and behold from the midst of this agricultural orchard sprang up the signs “State Park”.
Needless to say, we did not sleep for long. No sooner had we put our heads down on the ground, than we were we were ringing the doorbell at Royal Robbins’ house. I was sweating through my best interview shirt. Suddenly my mouth was dryer than a cotton ball. For a brief moment I wondered why I had opted for such a stressful career.
While I had been keeping up correspondence with Royal for some time, I had only met Royal in person once before at the 50th Anniversary of the First Ascent of El Capitan by Warren Harding and crew. I generally hate this kind of meet-and-greet. For the old timers who hadn’t seen each other in years, I’m sure it was magical. Mark Powell, for example, glowed about it and how he saw people he hadn’t seen for 20 years (not to mention being in Yosemite again after so long). But I was a strange breed – a young girl who knew all about them after extensive research and phone or email correspondence, but didn’t actually know them. And here in this room everybody wanted a piece of these guys, whether to sign something or take back a story to their friends at camo about how they had a conversation with the great so-and-so and what he/she was really like. But was I much different? Royal and Liz had been sitting quite elegantly, signing copies of “Yosemite in the 60s”. But there I had felt uncomfortable, out of place, like some kind of silly fan. My youthful looks had no doubt taken Royal by surprise as he took a moment to remember who I was. I wanted to die!
Back outside the house, Royal opened the door to his home, and his shaggy white dog bounded out. Liz Robbins was sitting on the couch gracefully talking on the phone. Now, in the intimacy of Royal’s house, everything was different. As the interview started, life as I knew it ended, and the road trip officially started. Royal’s interview was…long. And how could it not be? The man has over 50 years of history in climbing. It’s hard to explain, but Royal talks exactly the way he writes, a mixture of poetic description and comic relief (especially full of puns). I had never been quite able to get a handle on this writing (think John Muir meets Groucho Marx) but during the interview it all started to make sense.
Me: What was it about that publicity [on the Dawn Wall] that bothered you?
Royal: (Starting slowly) I didn’t like the media being there…and yet I was jealous that I wasn’t getting the attention.
Royal Robbins was very honest in all his thoughts. It was clear he had spent many years reflecting on his life and he was not remiss to speak poorly of himself at various moments in his life. I have always thought him complex character, who would say that he never did achieve what he had set out to do – become the best climber in the world. His opinion of himself interested me. The interview compounded this. Gerry Galwas had told me that at one point about a decade ago Royal had wanted to make a film about the rivalry between him and Warren Harding. I wanted so much to know what it would have been like.
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classic Robbins (on the left)
When the interview was over, the four of us sat calmly in a shady coffee shop in downtown Modesto, enjoying the peace and quiet of a free moment. While we were cheerfully mulling over ice tea, a local TV crew who happened to be there stopped to interview us along with other people at the coffee shop. They gave us gift certificates for free food, and we chuckled at our luck. We took a look at some pictures my father had emailed us of the shifting coupler, but couldn’t find anything wrong with the one on the underbelly of the VW. As the sun was setting, we left Modesto and continued on our way in high spirits, as if everything was working out in our favor, unsuspecting of what the rest of the night would hold for us…
While we scanned slides, Don looked through them all, picking some he thought we would be interested in. He noted he hadn’t seen some of these pictures since the day he took them.
