Clawed on Everything Vulgar
 

Clawed on everything Vulgar................


I believe that Jack Hansen , CVT ( Chief Vulgarian Terminologist) who applied the appellation Vulgarian to the rowdy bunch - who first ever brought this word into public consciousness to be applied to a group or individual as a proper noun with a CAPITAL V, - yes - Jack Hansen was on the Kookens expedition
shivering his ass off and a friend of Jack's, Hans something or other, was also along.

Jack Hansen, who drove a Triumph and was an Engineering Physics major @ NYU and who lived in Yonkers near Wick Dilliams, first brought Dick to the cliffs in late November or early December 1957. Dick did not reappear until 1961, it is said by him, after prowling below the north polar ice cap in his nukey-poo for a 4 year stint. It is believed that he occasionally came up for air and other supplies but not rock climbing while still in the Subs. Dick was a NY State parallel bars champion in high school and soon had a Triumph of his own. It is probably best, if historical rather than hysterical accuracy is the goal, to corroborate this with Wick.

I don't remember exactly anymore but I have a vague recollection of actually being able to climb better than Wick for at least a few weeks. I also vaguely recall taking HIM up one of his earlier climbs - like maybe High Exposure or some such climb. Pretty quickly Williams surged ahead - on out there but for one brief educational set back. He was leading some piece of crap down in the Nears (Loose Goose?) and was light on the pro-I think he was climbing with Art. Last night, at THE Vulgarian dinner @ Pete Geiser's, Dick alluded to the aftermath of this incident in being unable to climb for a while whilst recovering from his fall from grace (Grace was pretty cute and insurmountable - in the biblical sense). He drifted down the base of the Nears accompanied by a six-pack so he could hang with his buddies but safely on the ground and pulled Pete Geiser's chain by TEMPORARILY tossing his emptys down the talus slope which caused Pete to erupt massively and loudly. After th e fall and subsequent pro-pull Dick went into a serious program of study as an apprentice to  Art Gran's school of piton placement (AGSOPP) and to this day does not forgo the pro unless it is a conscious deliberate decision (or if he forgets AGAIN).  The Vulgarian Gran Prix Hall of Fame  has enshrined both Dick and Roman Sadowy as having the most wins - Dick in his Triumph and Roman in his Plymouth Valiant. It is said that those who drove this primarily dirt road race course drifted away , but only on the sharper turns. The starts were LeMans style in the vicinity of what is now the Mountain Brauhaus and was Emil's then. It was important to get a lead or at least be first up around the hairpin turn below Shockley's and then under the steel bridge and down into the Clove Road, because the Clove Road was dirt. A hole shot was imperative, for once on the Clove Road only the leader could see. We drove at night so that following cars could see any on coming non-race car through the dust cloud by its headlights and of course, unless the on coming cars were equally crazy-they would have their headlights on at night and we could see them through the dust. Experiments were carried out where headlights were turned off and one followed the then visible tail lights of the car in front. Headlights were useless for following cars - one had to draft right on the tail of a car in front and hug the visibility of the tail lights or else drop way back and position oneself in where the dust cloud abated enough to be able to follow the side of the road. On up the back side of Mohonk - still dirt back then - and under several wooden overpass carriage roads until , by the gate house pavement was rejoined. The shrieks of angry tires and moans of over revved engines pierced the flaccid night as cars laden with crazed and stupified passengers careened down the mountain towards the hard right at the bottom- and then on to the finish across route 299 past Jenkins-Leukens apple orchard.  Many famous people from other climbing areas have trembled as passengers in these now legendary episodes- one night Art Gran spun out into the hay field on the way up the backside of Mohonk with Joe Fitschen, of El Cap fame, huddling in the passenger side of his  fierce Volkswagen.
 
Actually this was the more stuff I promised above AND most importantly, we all had THE RIGHT STUFF. I am sure Tom Wolfe , who wrote the astronaut book by that name would agree. We were experts at drinking and driving and if you crashed and burned on the road or on the rock , well - you had fucked up and had better start over again with a more better attitude.
And then there were repeated guerilla SF like raids on the Minnewaska water towers - V Force night raids. It is said that the V Force does not exist - plausible deniability - but ancient sagas inscripted on to rusted beer cans - for beer cans back then were made of steel as were those who drank from them...............................
several years later we would frequently be joined by  Cy Williams at our festivities. Thus it was revealed by the father of Dick Williams as to where his son's drinking capabilities stemmed from-and who could stay up really late and party hearty.......................................................
 
I am tired again and must go get some coffee and breakfast.
 
but I do vaguely recall traveling in the trunk of a car several times- the incident mentioned by Wick Dilliams with Gary Hemming must have been in the trunk of Art's Rocket 88 - I believe Werner Von Braun had designed the trunk - it was very large and comfortable ------------------from the trunk one can avoid police surveillance and gain a new perspective on life and it is safer than trying to hang on the outside - like when with Art gran, Jeff Foott (I just was re - remembered of his witness last year in Moab), and some other clowns in Yosemite, drove to go signout for a climb. I rode on the outside of Art's VW - we were travelling at about 15 mph- just peacefully wending our way down to dutifully sign out when - from the Ranger Office a savage stern Police Ranger from Brooklyn assaulted our driving habits - he wanted to arrest me for violating some city street like rules - I verbally Neitzschified him by "negating his authority" - he pulled out his handgun and started waving it in the air and belligerating -  several days later while being transported from jail to the courthouse and then back I bolted from between 4 rangers and surged like a gazelle into the middle of the vast shrub infested meadows where  I crawled into the base of a large bush - soon , as sirens wailed throughout the valley and spinning red lights could be seen on all roads surrounding this vast area and as bloodhounds began to bay in hot pursuit of my trail........................................... Wayne Merry (first ascent of El Cap with Warren Harding) must have pulled some strings , he was by then a Ranger, .....................I was released a few days later - I returned as a proud dirt bag with torn pants to eviscerate amongst the torpid boulders and paparazzi of Camp 4.
 

Dick Williams on parties, Vulgarian Grand Prix & climbing ..................


There were so many. One of the first times I'd come up here we had a big party the night before. Gary Hemming was here, Art, Claude, and a whole bunch of us. Gary, Art, Claude and I wound up in Art's car. We were all just drinking like fish, you know. Claude was in the trunk, I was in the back seat, and Hemming was in the passenger seat. And Art's racing down Clove Road and goes, "Ha, ha, no one's ever taken this turn at 70 miles an hour!" Of course we didn't make the turn, we went off the road and into the stone wall. Fortunately the car wasn't damaged too badly. Just the fender. The fender was into the tire, so we tried to pull it out. Hemming's pulling on it, I'm pulling on it. The lug wrench slips and bashes my hand, wrecks my finger. Then of course we stayed up much later that night. We used to stay up 2-3:00 in the morning, get totally wasted and get up at 8:00, 7:30, go into town, get some breakfast, come out and start putting in new climbs, you know.

So, that particular morning we were all at the base of Never Never Land and McCarthy is trying to do the direct finish. So anyway he's up there - I don't think I'd ever belayed anybody before - it was my first time, so I'd been watching some people belay and they'd belay over the shoulder with the rope under your armpit, like this, you know. Well, McCarhy yelled down, “That’s not the right way to belay someone.”. So I got pissed off, dropped the rope on the ground and said “Ok, get someone else to belay you then.”  I think Pete Geiser (old reliable - ha ha) grabbed the rope and thus Jim lived to climb another day.


Roman interjects................

Vulgarians had a habit of heckling each other when especially on a difficult first pitch. I remember once trying to do some climb which was near my limit with a crowd of beer drinking friends tossing their empties at me. It was like trying to climb through a mortar barrage. You can’t really be serious.........
 
 
Clawed continues......................

"Truth? You want TRUTH?    You can't handle the truth......."   Nick Jackel-son
 
My first day of climbing involved being picked up by Art Gran at some collection point in Manhattan, early April 1958. Along with Roman Sadowy, Al DeMaria, Peter Geiser and perhaps some other CCNY Outing Club  members.  As an aside, a few years ago there was a grade school 57 year reunion for a bunch of my former classmates - as e-mail discussions and remembrances expanded exponentially - one formerly young lady expounded on how in those days an Outing Club had nothing to do with revelations regarding sexual preferences.  Anyway I am sure several other CCNY folks and other college folks were represented at my first rock climbing foray - but none of them persisted in this activity over the ensuing decades. Although one, John Blenninger,  is responsible for banjo picking some outrageous childishly filthy songs with which my daughter has earned great honor by passing on to her grad school friends. John B can still be found occasionally visiting the carriage roads  for a hike. And, of course, our token black, Ted Walker, now geologist for the USGS in California- who astounded early Gunks World by marching in to the Bavarian Inn ( now defunct - up the road from the Mountain Brauhaus)- marching in, before we sat down to several pitchers of beer, playing MacDonald's Lament on his bagpipes!!  Piercing.
At Breakneck we climbed, in brilliant sunshine, with no leaves, several easy slabs of dark stained grubby rock and gazed longingly to the north- west at the queen of rock - the Gunks. I recall crawling upwards dragging my then flat stomach across the slab and being advised by Art to use just hands and feets as points of contact with the rock.
A few weekends later - also in brilliant sunshine I arrived at the Gunks with same crew. We parked on the side of the road below the Uberfall where one could camp back then. Throughout the weekend three (3) cars were it- that was all of the weekend crowd.
My third Gunks climb was with Lester Germer. I also remember doing the Baby with Al D and Roman and exclaiming that this was strenuous and I would have to do more pullups for training if I was going to keep this up - which I fully intended to do. Not too many months later CCNY Outing Club alumni Bob Seigel  took a big SECOND FALL on the Arch - Anka Angrist, many years later, was dropped by famous Boyd Everett - so much for the dangerous and deleterious effects of name dropping in the climbing world.
 The biggest adventure of 1958 was our spring trip to West Virginia where we applied our climbing techniques to caving - Schoolhouse Cave- which involved rappelling into a 300 foot pit and swinging over to a pinnacle 120 feet down - then precariously groveling over to a vertical mud wall rendered climbable by rebar jammed in to the mud wall - capped by a 30 foot overhang of chockstones that one could tunnel through. We used hemp ropes for caving because one's headlamps , which burned carbide generated acetylene, would not burn through like they might burn through nylon as one prussicked back up. Roman lead the overhang /mud wall and began to belay everyone else up. As we newbies groped our way up the terrifying vertical mud crusted rebars with scooped out mud footholds Roman sang melodiously and appropriately. Resonating through the acoustically enhancing cavern, emanating from where a feeble flickering carbide flame high above indicated his belay stance - Roman rendered the refrain from a beautiful song then very popular: "He's got the whole world in his hands - he's got the whole world in his hands......". As we timidly followed up we all appreciated Roman's elevated responsibilities-none of us were dropped. Further traverses along the edges of deep pits with more rappels - then on the return rappels became prusicks. Prominent amongst us was George Bloom who has supplied many of the early days photos and later introduced Elaine Matthews to the climbing world from the ivory tower of U of Minnesota as Al DeMaria, myself, and Pete Geiser came by to pick George up for our Alaskan Cathedral Peaks expedition in 1965.
 
My earliest and perhaps favorite near death experience  was with George, Al D, Pete Geiser, Ted Walker and some others not remembered now, in Kookens Cave, near Penn State , in Kutztown, Pennsylvania.  It was Thanksgiving before global warming- the farmer, on whose property the cave lay, let us sleep out in his hay barn the night before. We entered the cave down a long wire/rope ladder at 8AM - it was about 15 degrees outside and windy blowing light snow.  After incredible tight grovels alternating with deep pitside traverses we rapped into the top of an inverted funnel pit. Mud with shale fragments drooled down our rope behind us like raspy chocolate chip ice cream. It was cold for a cave - perhaps 45 degrees. We attacked a wall on the otherside thinking it new - "virgin cave" - above beckoned a little tunnel opening perhaps leading to the promised land or maybe mammoth Cave in Kentucky? After fumbling for a while with our bolt kit it became apparent we were trashed and that we had better start the evacuation. It took untold hours for everyone to prussick out over the spinning mud crusted rope even after we had tied loops to supplant having to prussick.Those who were not ascending had to huddle together to mitigate hypothermia. 24 hours after we had started we raced up the rope ladder as fast as we could into ever decreasing temperatures. As we emerged from the cave through a wooden trap door into high winds and 15 degree temperature we staggered about a quarter mile to where the farmer had magnificently supplied us with his basement AND a hot water hose. One by one the survivors crashed through the door and collapsed - our muddy coveralls had turned to steel casings - frozen and impermeable.  Each subsequent arrival was immediately hosed down with hot water by naked cavers who cut the frozen coveralls off. Some of us got a hold of our dry clothes over by the barn - others donned stuff the farmer had lent us.  
Without farmers we would all be DEAD! - even today that holds true.
Pete has a great story about barely hanging on with one hand , high above a shaky piton, with his belayer, Steve Larsen, below not very securely anchored, while off route on the North Face of Okie's Thorn on the East Ridge of the Grand Teton.
After having placed a bolt on Turdland whilst hanging on belay from McCarthy, to diminish the dangerous aspect of leading that climb, I myself tottered briefly then cascaded down the face, pulling that meager bolt, when I attempted to lead it a few weeks later. In my forty foot descent I dislodged a huge flake which followed me down, As I passed by Roman, my belayer, and started to be pulled up short by the rope , the block came to a rest in my lap. I tossed the big rock overboard. Roman received the most damage - his wrist and hand had rope burns.
It is believed both of the preceeding incidents caused psychological scars in the perpetrators which increased the fear levels in subsequent climbing attempts.
 
Frequently when Pete returns to his New Paltz house from Boulder, as he just has, he cooks a great dinner and usually Al D, dick Williams, Elaine, myself and others will be present and accounted for. Roman has a little cabin not too far from here and comes up occasionally - he recently finished sailing around the world. Roman smokes between heart attacks and having chunks of his intestine removed because of diverticulitis- that is true although possibly a distortion - but a distortion like that we Vulgarians revel in for it paints a very dramatic image.
 
hi, I'm Clawed Sool      and I approve this mucelage