``..Patagonia, purveyor of high-quality outdoor duds and gear, is making some waves in the outdoorsy community with its Vote the Environment..''
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Only in Colorado, Wyoming and Idaho, where outdoors means private lease forever federal land, mine tailings, and glo-in-the-dark cattle.
In the long ago lore of Yosemite, I used to run into Chouinard and Frost occasionally. One late spring afternoon about six, I watched him lead After Six a very easy climb. He had a rich client in tow. Chouinard is about five foot two and build like a fire plug. Patagonia used to be called Chouinard and it sold climbing equipment.
Their logo was a C inside a diamond shaped border. He made his first million re-designing climbing gear to fit US and Yosemite climbing in particular. The whole design philosophy was devoted to leaving as few marks as possible on the rock. Chouinard re-designed a UK invention called nuts---which were literally machine nuts with slings through the hole where the machine threads were filed out. Chouinard's invention was the hexcentric nut, an aluminium eccentric shaped hexagon with holes drilled through the cross section for the cord or sling to attach to a carabiner. He also produced small aluminium wedges with swaged wire cables. These wedges are called `stoppers.' You place them in cracks and then yank on the wire to set them in place. The second comes up and yanks them in the up direction to get them out. They fit very well in small cracks. Using hexcentrics and wired Stoppers instead of the traditional pitons that are hammered into cracks, was called `clean' climbing. Chouinard, Frost, and Robbins pioneered the development and use of these clean climbing techniques. Another guy, Ray Jardin, another Yosemite climber from a slightly later generation in the late 70s invented another very cool device called `Friends'. These are a rotating cam with springs that can be inserted into a crack by pulling a trigger. When released the spring loaded cams open and lock themselves into the crack. To get them out, you pull the trigger again and the cams rotate pulling inward and release their pressure on the inside of the crack. There is a handle that is connected to the pin on which the cams are mounted. The handle has a hole in it to fit a sling, and a carabiner clips into the sling and the running rope goes through the carabiner.
If you consider that a climb like After Six is done by at least ten parties a day from about March to November for thirty-five years that kind of use adds up to heavy impact. There would be nothing left of the climb if it had been done with pitons all this time. One of my spring adventures this year was to solo this route with nothing by shoes and chalk bag---not much of a feat if you know how to climb, but a beautiful experience none the less. I thought about Chouinard and Robbins as I did the route. They all used to solo this climb on a routine basis.
Chouinard is a straight ahead capitalist, no doubt. But originally he did his best to design equipment that really did lessen the impact of climbing on the landscape. Whether later generations of climbers pay any attention is another story. Starting around the middle to late 80s, climbing ethics changed. While some climbers like John Backer pursued unbelievable solos (5.11-5.12) with no equipment at all, others started to ignore the older ethics of free climbing that Chouinard, Frost, Robbins and others had developed.
There were mixed results. On one hand, climbing got a whole lot safer. But it also got a whole lot harder. Less experienced climbers pushed the standards up, so beginners were doing 5.9's and 10a's right out of the car. On the other hand, there were a lot more bolts, a lot more climbers hanging on the rope, a lot more noise, boom boxes, and a more careless attitudes toward the environment.
Not without some justice, the French were blamed. French climbers pushed gym and bouldering standards and techniques developed at Fontainebleau and blew the stogy eco-minded English and Americans out of the water. Le modern was back in the 90s. Bolts were cool, Euro, etc.. It was fascinating to see that something obscure like climbing almost exactly matched or paralleled the development of the literature, art, and politics scene...
CG