Stewart M. Green's Blog, page 6

Garden of the Gods with a New View: Gazette Newpaper Article

I sort gear with Brian Shelton before climbing South Gateway Rock at the Garden of the Gods.Photo @ Kelsey Brunner/GazetteHere's an article Garden of the Gods with a New View by reporter Seth Boster that appears in the August 13, 018 edition of The Gazette newspaper about rock climbing at the Garden of the Gods, one of my favorite places to climb and hang out...something I've been doing since I was in high school back in the dark ages.The article is about climbing to the rocky top of the Garden's highest summits, the Garden of the Gods climbing experience, and some of the local lore and vertical history detailed by Brian Shelton , Phil Wortmann, Bob D'Antonio, and myself.Brian and I took Seth and Gazette photographer Kelsey Brunner, also a climber, to the tabletop summit of South Gateway Rock, third highest formation at the Garden of the Gods. I guess it's one of my favorite places to stand since I've climbed it over 75 times.We had a fun ascent, except for the graupel that began to fall when I reached the top, and then a deluge of rain that engulfed us on the mile hike back to the parking lot...all the makings of a fun Garden epic!Read Garden of the Gods with a New View from the August 13, 2018 issue of The Gazette newspaper in Colorado Springs.

Dateline 1858: First Anglo Woman to Climb Pikes Peak

Julia Archibald Holmes, the first Anglo woman to climb Pikes Peak, was born in Nova Scotia, Canada, in 1838.On August 5, 1858, 160 years ago this year, 20-year-old Julia Archibald Holmes reached the airy 14,115-foot-high summit of Pikes Peak, perhaps America's most famous mountain. On that clear day, Miss Holmes became the first recorded woman to climb the great Peak and also the first known woman to climb a Fourteener or 14,000-foot mountain in Colorado. It wasn’t for another 23 years that another Anglo woman climbed a Fourteener. It's important to remember, of course, that Native American women undoubtedly trekked to the top of Pikes Peak and other Colorado Fourteeners but their feats were never recorded.First Glimpse of Pikes PeakThe newlywed Holmes, originally an immigrant from Nova Scotia in Canada, ascended Pikes Peak over several days with James Holmes, her new husband, and a couple other miners, J.D. Miller and George Peck. The group, headed for the newly discovered Central City goldfields west of Denver, had trudged 500 miles west across the Great Plains from Lawrence, Kansas. Holmes first saw Pikes Peak on June 28, 1858 near Bent’s Fort, a Santa Fe Trail trading post along the Arkansas River in southeastern Colorado. Excited by her first glimpse of the distant mountain, she wrote, “This day we obtained the first view of the summit of the Peak, now some seventy miles away. As all expected to find precious treasure near this wonderful Peak, it is not strange that our eyes were often strained by gazing on it. The summit appeared majestic in the distance, crowned with glistening white.”Holmes Wears BloomersThe party traveled northwest and encamped at today’s Manitou Springs below Pikes Peak. To climb the peak, Holmes, a women’s rights advocate, wore Bloomers. This scandalous outfit, a symbol of women’s liberation in the 1850s like the burning of the bra was in the 1970s, was named for Amelia Bloomer, another activist who urged women to wear a short skirt over a pair of loose trousers or “Bloomers.” Besides her billowing Bloomers and a skirt, Julia also wore moccasins and a hat, dubbing the outfit her “American costume.”View from the SummitOn that dazzlingly clear August day, the young woman sat, read poetry by Ralph Waldo Emerson, and wrote several letters, using a flat slab of granite as her desk. Julia Holmes wrote to her mother: “Extending as far as the eye can reach, lie the great level plains, stretched out in all their verdure and beauty, while the winding of the grand Arkansas is visible for many miles.” She also noted, “Nearly everyone tried to discourage me from attempting it, but I believed I should succeed; and now, here I am, and feel that I would not have missed this glorious sight for anything at all.”Holmes Divorces Abusive HusbandAfter climbing Pikes Peak, Julie Archibald Holmes and her husband kicked around Colorado but he didn't find a mother lode of gold so they walked south to Taos, New Mexico where they lived for several years before moving to Washington D.C. with their two daughters Phoebe and June. Despite what seems like a carefree life, traveling about the West and climbing Pikes Peak, Julia was tormented and abused by her husband for years before she divorced him in 1871 for "wife beating" and whipping. History books and articles seemingly ignore this part of Julia Archibald's life. One article simply said that "Her marriage was an unhappy one" and the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame article about Ms. Holmes called her "a single working mother." The abuse she eventually escaped is, however, an important part of her inspirational story.A news article in the Daily National Republican on October 13, 1871 related court documents that told a desperate tale of "whippings and habitual .tyranny," "neglect and total abandonment for months at a time," and being "knocked down by her husband and pounded while prostrate on the floor, the villain kneeling on her stomach." Mr. Holmes also imported a "concubine" from New York, who lived in their house and also "persecuted her younger unmarried sister with his lecherous proposals...."The court affidavit filed by Julia A. Holmes says that "for three or four years past she has experienced very cruel and abusive treatment from her said husband and that in consequence of his violence towards her she has believed her life to be in danger." Another affidavit filed by Miss M.C. O’Brien says that she "found Mrs. Holmes and her children almost destitute of food, fuel and clothing, having nothing to eat but corn bread; that to her personal knowledge Mrs. Holmes and her children remained in this condition for months, while Mr. Holmes was living in idleness and refusing to get a situation as a clerk...." She also said that Mrs. Holmes told her that she feared that "her husband would murder her."The divorce was granted.Holmes became a SuffragetteAfter getting her life back after those years of abuse, Julia Archibald Holmes became a reformer, slave abolitionist, and suffragette for women’s rights. She worked as the first woman member of the Bureau of Education and eventually became the chief of the Spanish Correspondence Division. She also worked for the National Woman Suffrage Association, was friends with famed suffragette Susan B. Anthony, and attempted to register to vote in 1871. Women Allowed to Vote in Colorado in 1893Colorado, like most of the Rocky Mountain states, was ahead of the curve on women's voting rights. The Wyoming Territory allowed women to vote in 1869, followed by the Utah Territory in 1870 and Washington Territory in 1883. In 1870, Colorado Territorial Governor Edward McCook recommended that women be given the vote but the legislature rejected his proposal. It wasn't until November 7, 1893 that women won the right to vote in Colorado. Holmes Died in 1887Julia Archibald Holmes would have been happy to see the women's vote come to Colorado if she was still alive in 1893, but she had died on January 9, 1887 at age 48 in Washington D.C. She was buried in Oak Hill Cemetery next to her younger sister June, who passed three years previously. Julia, inducted in the Colorado's Women's Hall of Fame in 2014, began her quest for justice and equality with her landmark ascent up Pikes Peak. Moonset behind Pikes Peak on a spring morning. Photo @ Stewart M. Green

1971: The Third Ascent of Standing Rock at Canyonlands National Park

Stewart Green at the first belay stance on Standing Rock in Monument Basin, Canyonlands National Park, Utah. I did the third ascent of the tower with Jimmie Dunn and Billy Westbay in November 1971. Photo @ Stewart M. Green CollectionI'm writing a book of climbing stories right now. One of the chapters is called "Tale of Three Towers." It's about a climbing trip I made to the Moab area with Jimmie Dunn and Billy Westbay in late November, 1971. The canyon country was truly the back of beyond in those days. Moab was still a dusty uranium-mining town, and there were few tourists and no climbers, mountain bikers, or other maniacs like you see out there now. Eric Bjornstad was the only climber there, and that was for only part of the year. The three towers we climbed were the 3rd ascent of Standing Rock, the 5th or so ascent of North Sixshooter Peak, and the 8th ascent of Castleton Tower, via the FA of the West Face. Here's a photograph of me at the first belay on Standing Rock taken by Jimmie Dunn with my Instamatic camera, a tiny plastic thing that used 110 film cartridges. It was Thanksgiving Day and we were doing our best to give thanks in our own way. Here's an excerpt about Standing Rock from that chapter: "The next day, a gray, cloudy Thanksgiving Day, we found a step in the rim on the south side of the basin, fixed a short rope over it, and ran down scree slopes to the spire. Layton Kor’s unobvious route began below a muddy dihedral on the north side of the slender spire. I led to a roof, carefully hammered a knifeblade piton in a thin crack behind a two-foot-wide block pasted below the right side of the roof and bounce-tested it. Both the blade and the block promptly pulled, scattering Billy who was belaying and Jim for cover. I stepped back in my one-inch red webbing aiders, overdrove a baby piton into a seam, and lowered to the ground—handing over the reins to Jim, who swarmed up the dihedral, passed the roof, and tapped bongs or wide pitons above into a wide sandy crack that we dubbed The Vertical Sandbox."

Photo of Smokey the Chewbacca Dog Goes Viral

Smokey the Yorkie as Chewbacca on the front seat of Ian Green's truck in 2010. Photo @ Ian Spencer-GreenMy son Ian Green had a Yorkshire Terrier named Smokey when he lived over in Palisade in western Colorado. He adopted the little furball in 2007. Smokey was a wild one. Seriously wild. He was a runner. If you opened a car door or window, even just a crack, he was out of there and off and running. And never looking back.Here's a photograph that Ian shot of Smokey on the front seat of his big pickup truck on October 13, 2010. He had brushed Smokey's fur back and put a bandolier of sorts on him, making him look like a miniature Chewbacca from Star Wars. Later I took the image and enhanced the colors and put it through an app called Pic Grunger to give it a retro look.Here's the kicker about this photo--the freaking pic went viral and has had millions of views worldwide. The success of this silly photo makes me laugh. Smokey as Chewbacca gone viral. The photo is on Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, all kinds of Star Wars fan sites, websites, online magazines and newspapers like HuffPost and the Daily Mail. Just insane. Bloody insane.The Daily Mail published the photograph in an article called "Meet the dog that is a dead ringer for Star Wars character."The article, published in 2011, says, "Little is known about the daft dog - not even its name or where it comes from."But now you know the rest of the story!P.S. Smokey was killed by a car while playing in traffic a few years ago. RIP Smokey...errrrr Chewbacca. Smokey's sister Mimi, with a completely opposite personality from her famous brother, still lives with Ian in Fort Collins, although she likes to play in traffic too.Ian and Smokey in Escalante Canyon in October, 2007. Photo @ Stewart M. Green

Finally Met Legendary Climber Jim McCarthy

Jim McCarthy and I visit at a roadside cafe in Ridgway in mid-July.I finally met legendary climber Jim McCarthy a couple days ago in Ridgway. I was over in western Colorado doing some research for an article and camping on the back forty at my sister Frances' pocket farm near Olathe. She said, as many times before, "You need to call Jim and get together with him. He wants to meet you."Frances has known Jim for quite awhile since she goes down to his house every couple weeks and gives it a thorough cleaning. "He's a really nice man and he knows everyone that you do. We were at a party at his house a couple weeks ago and everyone there knew you." Okay, okay, I told her, I'll call Jim. And I did.Jim McCarthy is a climbing icon. His past partners, dating back to the 1950s, are a who's who of world climbing: Layton Kor, Royal Robbins, Yvon Chouinard, Don Whillans. The list goes on and on as do Jim's achievements. He's a past president and now honorary president of the American Alpine Club. He was the first climber to be on the cover of Sport Illustrated (October 20, 1958), a shot of him dangling from the big roof on the first ascent of Foops at the Gunks in New York. The only other climber was Jeff Lowe after the FA of Bridalveil Falls.He did the first ascent of the Arctic big wall Proboscis in the Cirque of the Unclimbables in Canada's Northwest Territories in 1963 with Kor, Robbins, and Dick McCracken. "Layton almost killed me on that climb," he told me. Layton had led around an edge high on the route and, out of sight of Jim, took a fall. Jim was belaying beneath a roof and the force of the fall yanked him up, cracking his helmet against the roof. Not feeling well, he ceded the belay to Royal.Jim said I was about the only one of the 1970s Springs cadre that he hadn't met. "That was a really talented group in Colorado Springs," he said. "There haven't been many places with so many good climbers that did so much." Jim told me stories about climbing with Billy Westbay and Doug Snively in Estes Park in the mid-70s, and meeting Jimmie Dunn, Mark Hesse, Dan McClure, Earl Wiggins, and others of our merry band.We talked for about three hours and I promised I would give a ring next time I was back in the neighborhood. We still have a lot to talk about....Jim McCarthy aids across the big roof on the first ascent of Foops in the 1950s. John Stannard later free-climbed the eight-foot roof after five days of work in 1967.

A Pikes Peak Prospector Photograph by William Henry Jackson

"A Pikes Peak Prospector" by William Henry Jackson.This amazing portrait from 1900 by 19th-century pioneer photographer William Henry Jackson, entitled "A Pikes Peak Prospector," offers lots of detail of a miner's life in the Cripple Creek Mining District. The miner, a man of about 50 with sunken cheekbones and a smart forehead, wears checked pants, cuffs rolled up and braced suspenders. He holds a miner's tools--two sledgehammers and a couple chisels. His dog licks a paw under a rough-hewn table. The ever-full coffee pot sits atop a gleaming almost-new wood-fired cookstove, its feet shimmed with planks. Inside the open cabin door is an eight-hole muffin tin, grater, rolling pin, drainboard with an upside down white cup, and large flour tin on the floor. The cabin itself is made of sawn spruce logs topped with a split log roof and bark shingles. A wide trail, obviously made with a lot of care, heads away from the cabin toward a half-hidden structure on the opposite hillside, possibly the miner's pot of gold.An amazing image filled with details and nuance that transports us back to 1900 and the halycon days of the Cripple Creek gold rush.

Discovery of Supercrack in 1971

Here are a couple paragraphs excerpted from "The Perfect Crack: The First Ascent of Supercrack," a chapter from a book I'm working on. The photograph is of Brett Green leading the crack in 1996, twenty years after the 1976 first ascent by Earl Wiggins, Ed Webster, and Bryan Becker. "Supercrack was discovered in late November 1971. The week before Thanksgiving, Billy Westbay and I had skipped our Monday through Wednesday classes at the University of Colorado extension in Colorado Springs and had driven my white 1963 Volkswagen Bug that night through a blustery winter squall parked over Monarch Pass on the Continental Divide and down along Tomichi Creek to Gunnison. Jim Dunn, then a botany student at Western State College, awaited us at his little fourteen-foot caravan parked in a shabby trailer park on the western outskirts of town. It was cold, a cough-splitting chill that made it hard to breathe deeply." "Four miles northwest of Newspaper Rock, a spectacular southwest-facing buttress loomed above the road and the bare cottonwoods that lined the creek. A singular, solitary crack split the outer face of the salmon-colored buttress above a yellow cattle guard and a rock-strewn talus slope. I stopped the car on the road and we scrambled up to the base of the sheer Wingate sandstone wall. This was the best crack we had ever seen. It was splitter perfection. It was a super crack. And that’s what we called it: Supercrack. We longed to sink our hands into its parallel perfection, especially Billy who had large mitts amply suited for hand jamming."Brett Green jamming Supercrack in 1996, 20 years after it's 1976 first ascent and 25 years after it's discovery and naming in 1971. Photo @ Stewart M. Green

Dateline 1982: Photographing Annual Reports

The Leisure Life spread in the book Denver: America's Mile High Center of Enterprise, a state of the city report by the Denver Chamber of Commerce in 1983. Photo is of Ed Webster climbing at the Garden of the Gods. Photo @ Stewart M. GreenI've been reducing my library of thousands of books over the past few years, either giving them away or selling them on Amazon. This morning I went through a big box filled with coffee-table books, large format books filled with lavish photos.In the bottom of the box was a large book called Denver: America's Mile High Center of Enterprise. It came out in 1983 to celebrate the Denver Chamber of Commerce's 100th anniversary. Until I saw it nestled between a David Muench book on Arizona and a classic book of Eliot Erwitt photographs, I forgot that I made most of the photos for that book.In the 1980s I did a lot of annual reports for different organizations, including the Denver Chamber. I photographed their report for six years. One of the projects I did for them was to photograph everything in the anniversary edition that they couldn't get stock shots for.I spent a couple months in the fall of 1982 driving all around Denver shooting images on Kodachrome and Ektachrome with my Canon F1 for the book. Images of hospital labs, clean labs for computer manufacturing, housing developments and construction, cool new buildings, schools and colleges, as well as skylines and sports. Some of these places would say, "Well, I guess you can come in for photos, but only one camera and film and you need to wear this cleanroom suit and booties. Oh, and you can't use flash or talk to the employees. You'll have 10 minutes to get your photos...."Here's the opening spread for the chapter on outdoor recreation, featuring a full-page photograph of Ed Webster climbing the North Ridge of Montezuma Tower at the Garden of the Gods with snowy Pikes Peak behind him. Ed didn't have a problem with me talking to him during the shoot...

Flag Day 1911: John Otto Climbs Indy

Rob Masters, Brian Shelton, and CJ Sidebottom toast John Otto on the summit of Independence Monument in Colorado. Photo @ Stewart M. GreenFlag Day. June 14, 1911. We salute you, John Otto, pathfinder, patriot, trail-builder, first superintendent of Colorado National Monument, climber, and crazy bastard, on your first ascent of 450-foot-high Independence Monument.Otto was a cheerleader and prolific letter writer who almost singlehandedly got Colorado National Monument preserved and protected. After President William Taft signed the park into being, Otto was appointed custodian of its 13,583 acres for the grand sum of one dollar a month. Otto was a tough SOB, building most of the monument's trails with a pick and shovel and the occasional stick of dynamite. He lived in a tent in Monument Canyon for 30 years, except for a few summers when he built trails on 10,000-foot Grand Mesa.John Otto set about climbing Independence Monument by building a pipe ladder to the summit. Two-inch-wide holes were drilled a foot deep with a handheld miner's drill. Pipes were an assortment of sizes picked up at a Grand Junction scrap yard.The Grand Junction Daily News described John Otto’s work in a newspaper article: “Inch by inch, foot by foot, daring intrepid John Otto, creeping up the giant sides of Independence Monument, the highest and most noble eminence of rock in all Monument Canon, rising a sheer 557 feet from the base of the summit. He writes The News that he expects to reach the top before the end of the present week. It is a perilous piece of work he is doing and he should receive great recognition for his feat when he reaches the summit.”“He is calm about his work and takes it easily, never rushing, just keeping at it steadily, ceaselessly, working toward his goal. He will be the first man, white, red, or black, ever to set foot on the great obelisk, and it is doubtful if many will ever venture to the summit, even when the ladderway is completed. The view from the top will undoubtedly be awe-inspiring and somewhat terrifying."After completing the pipe ladder, Otto finally flew the Stars and Stripes from the summit of Indy. In the chapter about Otto's ascent in a book of climbing tales that I'm working on, I wrote: "On Flag Day in mid-June, an honor guard carried the flag to Otto at the base of the tower. He scrambled to the summit, tied the flag to a pole, and hoisted it into a drilled hole on the northern edge of the table-flat summit. People below cheered both the grand flag and John Otto as Old Glory flapped in the summer breeze. A rain squall passed overhead as Otto began descending his pipe ladder and spectators below watched agape as he cautiously stepped his way down the slippery rungs."Years later I sat on Indy's summit with Brian Shelton, Rob Masters, and CJ Sidebottom and we toasted Otto's amazing feat with mini-bottles of whiskey. Yep, here's to you Otto. You were one crazy redneck!Brian Shelton, belayed by Bana McMaster, leads the last pitch of Otto's Route on Independence Monument in Colorado National Monument. Photo @ Stewart M. Green

The Moab Mastodon: Did the Big Beast Once Roam Utah?

The Moab Mastodon was pecked on a Navajo sandstone cliff face on a bench above the Colorado River. Photo @ Stewart M. GreenThe Moab Mastodon, a petroglyph on a cliff band bordering a wide bench above Hys Bottom on the Colorado River south of Moab, Utah, possibly represents a long-extinct mastodon that was created by a PaleoAmerican artist thousands of years ago. The image was discovered in 1924 by Moab newspaperman John Bristol. After a photograph of it appeared in Scientific Monthly in 1930, some scientists called it a modern hoax and fake. The article noted: “Were it the work of some itinerant cowboy or other person wishing to establish a hoax, it doesn’t seem that he would have deliberately placed the figure in a position where the likelihood of its discovery would be so remote.”Since then the mastodon petroglyph has been a riddle. Is it old? Or was it made by a recent joker? It is impossible to determine its age since the image occurs on a rock face with no accompanying cultural material or nearby datable artifacts. This is what is known: the petroglyph measures 42 inches from trunk to rump, and has a short upturned trunk, short tail, and three toes on its four feet. The image is solidly pecked and appears, at first glance, that it could be a mastodon. It has an elephant-like appearance and could also be a mammoth. Again, it is hard to know what animal the petroglyph represents since the design is inconclusive and the artist's intent is unknown.Naysayers also looked at the desert varnish, thin layers of dark patina that build up on an exposed rock surface over time on the petroglyph. The mastodon does have some varnish but it is difficult to know how long it took for the patina to darken the image at this specific site. More recent visitors have enhanced and refreshed the petroglyph by pecking it and chalking it so it stands out better for photographs. There is also a hole between the rear legs caused by a bullet shot by some damn fool.So how old is the Moab Mastodon? Did early Paleo-hunters roam the area, hunting big game and drawing their images on a sandstone cliff over 10,000 years ago? Or did some drunk cowboy spend a day laboriously pecking out the image on a hidden face rather than riding into Moab for the day? Or maybe it is a bear or tapir or a hallucination of a Fremont Indian shaman 1,500 years ago. No one knows.My newest book Rock Art: The Meanings and Myths Behind Ancient Ruins in the Southwest and Beyondwill be released on September 28, 2018 by FalconGuides. This section on the Moab Mastodon was originally written for the book as a sidebar but not included because of space considerations.