Santa Barbara Climbing History in Print: V

Note: Recently I've spent some time compiling and scanning as much printed medium that I could find that covers climbing in the Santa Barbara area. Originally intended to be one post, I've broken it up into what will be several, with some [I think] cool stuff that appeared in books, magazines, and newspaper articles over the years.

Part V: 1997-2003

Kings of The Castle - Climbing - November 1997
Wills wrote this short piece in winter 1997 in Climbing's old section that they had highlighting home walls. Ahhhh, the good old days. You know, back when Climbing Magazine was actually worth reading (although on its last legs).

This one brings back fond memories, showing a little slice of life into what The Castle was at that time, which from the picture that they printed (unbelievably) was bordering on unbridled chaos. I recall that the editors wouldn't let Wills print any of the better pictures because no one was 'climbing' in them, so they printed the one that had Arvind the Maniac on the Stairmaster wall, while the Pukester attacked a burning couch (which ended up in the swimming pool) with a pair of garden shears.

Like I've said many times before, it all looks a bit nuts in hindsight, but at the time everything seemed perfectly normal...
Enlightenment Ridge Guide - Reese Martin - Spring 1998
In 1998, prolific Central Coast developer Reese Martin put out a guide to the Enlightenment Ridge Area of Pine Mountain. A little odd, certainly, to put out a guide for an area within an area, but it was where Reese was spending a lot of his time at the time, so that's what it is.

What it also is, is some of the worst mapping I've ever seen. While Steve Edwards' maps to the Brickyard and Lizard's Mouth were, ahem, not good, Reese went one better in confusion out here at Pine Mountain. No doubt Reese definitely had prodigious talents, but cartography was not even close to being one of them.

After Steve put out his Falcon guide in 2000, which had overlooked a lot of Reese's Pine Mountain information and re-named a number of problems, I went back and tried to set the record straight, which was a complete nightmare because of the atrocious maps. After many long hours of walking the area and trying to figure out what Reese had called what and what Steve had called what, I feel fairly confident that I got it [mostly] correct, but Kee-Rist it wasn't easy.

This guide was put out as an extra in the old SoCal mag "Mother Rock", which sort of carried on where Allez had left off and I believe remained in print from 1996 until 1999 or so??

On a side note: Reese Martin, a prolific first ascentionist and tireless worker for the Access Fund and climbing related issues, as well as a charming ladies man and all-around good guy, passed away in a paragliding accident in 2004. Reese, shown below on the far right in black, at The Players Ball 1997.

(from l-r: Steve "Emmanuel Overdrive" Edwards, unknown dame Edwards picked up at The Agave the night before - "We're having a party tomorrow, you should come.", Shandor "Condor" Madjar, The Bruce, a hidden Reed Bartlett (in (p)leather and (p)ink pants), and Reese Martin)

Pine Mountain Bouldering - Climbing - May 1998
One of the best magazine style mini-guides I've ever seen was this one for Pine Mountain that Wills Young put together when he was living in Ojai and doing very little except for scouting new problems and climbing his ass off.

This thing covered about 7 pages of the May issue encompassing a couple hundred boulder problems, most of the ones that people are still climbing on exclusively today (meaning the plums had been picked by a VERY motivated crew). It's true that there's a lot more bouldering out on Pine Mountain still, but it's also true that you could take this 13 year old mini-guide out there and come away 100% satisfied with what is truly one of my all-time favorite areas.

Another bit of trivia is the notation of Whiplash, which was likely at the time one of the top 5 hardest problems in California. Wills' original rating for the problem was V11, as it was logged in the Edwards guide to Santa Barbara Bouldering. Knowing that this mini-guide was going to see a MUCH larger audience, Wills chose to bump the grade of Whiplash down to V10 in a show of humility. Sadly, these days most climbers would bump their first ascent ratings "up" (probably "way up"), and never "down". After shutting down all takers, including myself for over 5 years, I put Whiplash back to it's original V11 rating when I put out Ocean's 11. And I might add that it has seen VERY few confirmed ascents in the last 13 years.


Rock Climbing Santa Barbara and Ventura
- Steve Edwards - October 2000
I've already expressed my distaste for these hideous Falcon guides. They remind me of some weirdo Communist book publisher where everything looks exactly the same and is homogenized down to the last dot. I hate the way they look on my bookshelf and I hate what climbers have allowed them to do to the climbing guidebook publishing game. A lot of the older climbing guides had a shitload of 'flair' for lack of a btter word. I miss that. I miss it a lot. And then there came these big publisher house sanitized guides with 300 pages of enormous areas of coverage that I can pretty much wipe my ass with. Pffft.

That said, Steve put out the best Falcon guide I've seen because he somehow managed to get them to allow a little of himself in it (read: a little, had he self-published it would've been WAAAY better).

The other funny thing about this book is that in the 13 years it's been out, I don't think I've ever used it. My copy still looks like the day I got it. By the time this book came out I had done the old Santa Barbara lines I was interested in and had switched to bouldering nearly full time and was already working on my own book.


Climber's Learn A Leg Up - Greg Crouch - SB News Press - Fall 1998?This was just a short newspaper article that I came across in some stuff that I had cut out and couldn't resist revisiting it. Written by Santa Barbara native cum bitchin' outdoor adventure author and badass Patagonia sufferer Greg Crouch, it's your standard puff piece to get the masses psyched on climbing. The genius of this piece is that when Greg went to Goleta Valley Athletic Club to visit their newly built climbing wall, the guy at the desk (who knew very little about climbing and didn't know Greg was friends with Steve) kept telling him that "Steve Edwards runs the climbing program here at GVAC and he is a world renowned climber". The brilliance of this didn't escape Greg, who mentioned it a couple of times in the article, including the photo caption at right. I think at the time, after we all got in some good-natured jabs at Steve "Mr. World Famous", Steve replied, "Well, I guess I know people from all over the world, right?"





Ocean's 11: Bouldering Around Santa Barbara
- Some Jackass Wrote It - April 2003
I'm not going to say much on this one, for obvious reasons. And I'm sure that every critical comment I've given on someone else's project could likely apply to O11.

There are things I'd do different on it now, but overall I am still pleased with how this book turned out and I remain quite proud of it. For me, it was mostly a little time-capsule detailing a pretty good few years of climbing history in Santa Barbara. Carrying on the SoCal tradition of "hot chick on not-so good route" on the cover, along with the gratuitous inclusion of the best dog that ever lived on the cover shot with her, and also more photos of a dog inside the book than of any of the humans, how could I go wrong?

The question now is, what's next, and who does it, and how?

I hate to think that physical guidebooks are a thing of the past, but that may be the case. Since I only sell about 5 copies a year, I have enough O11 in stock to last for a while and it's still relevant, but certainly not "up-to-date". Stacks of stuff has been done, new areas have been discovered. Hopefully someone will step up and document their own little time-capsule in some way, because I, for one, would like to read about it.

Santa Barbara Climbing History In Print: III

Note: Recently I've spent some time compiling and scanning as much printed medium that I could find that covers climbing in the Santa Barbara area. Originally intended to be one post, I've broken it up into what will be several, with some [I think] cool stuff that appeared in books, magazines, and newspaper articles over the years.

Part III: 1990-1995

SoCal Bouldering - Craig Fry - First Edition 1990

1990 brought us what was to become the bible of Socal bouldering for many years, Craig Fry's original volume covering areas from Santa Barbara to the Mexican border. A true achievement in good information and number of areas covered, this is a really great book. Regarding Santa Barbara/Ventura in particular, we have the first printed mention of a newly discovered bouldering area called "The Brickyard" along with a note that "the Lizard's Mouth is not that great for bouldering", hmmmm, tell that to folks these days.

Mostly, the Santa Barbara/Ventura chapter is taken up with topos of Painted Cave and a nice photo of a very young and mustachioed Rob Raker busting out the Old Soft Hsu, padless of course, although sporting a thick 'stache like Rob's is a form of toproping and totally cheating. If Raker were to fein falling off of anything that day, his mustache would have prevented it, and at the very least, caught him. Also of note is the infamous notation on the old Jonny Woodward line left of Static Eliminator, "Flake Broke Doesn't Go". Static Eliminator itself is erroneously noted as Finger Cank (sic) 5.11+, while The Baby's Head is noted as "Static Eliminator 5.10+".

Pine Mountain, although mentioned in Tucker's 1981 guide, is completely overlooked, although I'm guessing that this has more to do with remoteness and a lack of any real information on it. Overall, a great guide.


Climbing! - Stephen Tucker/Kevin Steele - 1994

Thirteen years passed on after Tucker's first "real" Central Coast climbing guide before the next rendition of a comprehensive guidebook for the area appeared in late 1994. This time in the form of another excellent tome by Tucker, with Kevin Steele assisting.

Rock climbing had undoubtedly become much more popular in the time between the first guide in 1981 and this one, so the updated edition arrived with much anticipation and was quickly swept up. In fact, by the time I moved to Santa Barbara in late 1996, the Tucker/Steele book was sold out.

One of the things about this book that I've noticed (and liked) is thumbing through the index by looking at star ratings, which shows a dirth of stars practically anywhere, evidence that the authors actually had their heads on straight and weren't trying to lead people to some fucking pile of shit in the hills just by giving it a star. If a route in this guide has a star rating, it likely deserved to be done, the rest of the routes, well, it's Santa Barbara choss, if you dig that sort of thing then, maybe you'll dig the route.

While greatly expanding on the hundreds of new routes put up since the original guide, this one also happened to come out on the cusp of even more development, missing out on a lot of the new bouldering in the area, and roped routes at newly discovered chosspiles like Silly Rock up in north county and The Playground on West Camino Cielo. Overall, an excellent book filled with an excellent local history and a lot of information that is still completely relevant and useful today. On a sentimental note, when I moved to town, this was "the book", and I love it just for that.

Stone Crusade - John Sherman - 1994

When John Sherman did his grand bouldering tour of America in the early 90's for his upcoming book, Stone Crusade, he was unimpressed with the Santa Barbara areas that were seeing more development at the time (The Lizard's Mouth and The Brickyard in particular), however he was more than impressed with what he saw at The Swimming Hole outside of Fillmore in the Sespe wilderness.

Right up Sherman's alley, The Swimming Hole was a maze of a gargantuan boulders climbed by a select few guys with equally gargantuan gonads, and Sherman practically created the legend of The Swimming Hole in his excellent piece written for it, highlighting the two main activists of the area at the time, Jeff Johnson and Paul Anderson. The write-up on The Swimming Hole was my favorite part of the book before I even decided to move to the area and remains one of my favorite climbing write-ups ever. While it created a sort of legendary status to the two climbers featured (Jeff and Paul), and having gotten to climb and know both of them quite well over the past decade, their legendary status in the history of American bouldering is more than deserving. The outstanding photo of Johnson on the epic crux move of Tar Face says it all about our beloved Swimming Hole.

Rock and Ice - Guide to Santa Barbara by Steve Edwards - 1994

Perhaps thinking that the long promised 'new' Tucker guide to Santa Barbara would never come, Steve Edwards, owner of "Just Another @#$%$ Video Shop/Climbing Boutique", jumped into the fray with this nice article in Rock and Ice. It briefly covered several areas with hand drawn topos and selected routes (basically the good ones, or at least ones that he put up).

The best part about the piece isn't the information though. It is the excellent, funny intro that Steve wrote, which, especially looking back, brings back fond memories. I mean, the guy references Carl Jung in a fricking climbing magazine...EPIC. And he also says that if you come there you "can stay at my place". He wasn't joking (I did), and up to this very day he pretty much has the same open invitation.

Another great tidbit in the article is the often forgotten fact that local mutant Phil Requist once climbed at a place that wasn't The Owl Tor. And he climbed at that place, Cold Springs Dome, with the same habitual schedule that he now climbs at the Tor. Steve brings up Bambino's $100 Challenge to follow him for a day at the steep Cold Springs wall, which no one ever collected on, 30 laps being his record (at the time). On another note, the Silly Rock area was discovered and bolted later on in 1994/1995 and I'd be willing to bet that Phil has never been back to Cold Springs since. Click on the photo for the article.

The Swimming Hole - 1994
In the Swimming Hole section of Stone Crusade, Sherman hinted that 'an underground guide is in the works'. Well, that guide actually did happen, but precious few ever saw a copy of it, because it was kept very low profile. And, no, you weren't on the list.

Achieving something of a legendary status because of John Sherman's "Stone Crusade", the Swimming Hole was still largely under the radar, mainly because people were completely scared off by it, and rightly so. Lines at The Swimming Hole were big, hard, and bold and were put up in an era/area where toprope inspection and pad-stacking were decidedly not accepted.

The underground Swimming Hole guide to bouldering is the kind I absolutely love, pure local. Hand scribbled topos, a handful of action shots and short but entertaining route descriptions: The Handicapper B2- R/X "...more than scary", or on the notoriously scary and rarely repeated Paul Anderson testpiece A Touch Too Much, "Touchy."

Put together on a Xerox machine, folded up and handed out to a handful of friends. Just perfect.

Hot Flashes - In the Light of Day - Climbing Magazine, November 1994

Just a short one (albeit with a nice photograph) to note the first ascent of the best route in Santa Maria (still), Phil "Bambino" Requist's awesome Better Than Life at The Owl Tor. Has it really been almost 17 years? Jesus. The best part about this piece in the Hot Flashes section is that it is placed directly next to another short piece, one describing an attempted ascent of Yosemite's notorious Southern Belle, a route which could not possibly be more opposite. Drilled pockets on sport bolted steep choss on one side, while sparsely protected slab/near vertical with death fall potential occupies the other side of the page. Oddly enough, I think these two routes have seen very close to the same number of ascents over the last 17 years. Go figure.

Bambino

Allez - Southern California's Crag Mag

In mid-1994, Santa Barbara climbers Steve Edwards, Phil Requist, and Binky Greene got together to produce the short lived SoCal climbing rag, Allez. The focus of Allez was primarily on hard sport-climbing, competitions, training, and [increasingly] by the 4th issue, varying degrees of oddities often having absolutely nothing to do with climbing (at left, the uber-classic "Sharp Stick Instructions' by Belt Potter).

Encompassing summer 1994 until fall of 1995 for a total of 5 issues, the first four issues were printed and distributed old school, the fifth and final issue was available exclusively online (pretty visionary back in 1995). Unfortunately, that final issue is gone forever, as it was lost off of a hard drive many hard drives ago. Of the printed copies of Allez (vol. 1-4) there are undoubtedly few of them left in existence (I think Phil is the only one with a complete set) so I took the time to scan them all recently and post them up for download. Enjoy.

Trivia Question: What is the significance of the website name "King-Dino". I'll buy a beer for the first one to get the correct answer.

Allez #1



Allez #2




Allez #3



Allez #4