ABSTRACT
I don't remember when I met Gill. Must have been the late '50's. There were few climbers in the Tetons in those days, mainly people from the eastern colleges, Dartmouth, Harvard .... Climbers on their way to expeditions in Alaska or somewhere would stop through the Tetons. A handful of people were intensively climbing in the Tetons and lived there the whole summer, scrounging on fifty cents a day, eating oatmeal .... At that time, Gill was doing some climbs on Disappointment Peak. After grabbing whatever climbing partner he could find, he'd do some little arete that often wouldn't lead anywhere, because Disappointment Peak is just a big flat thing on top. Kamps and I did Satisfaction Buttress, and it was the hardest climb in the Tetons when we did it, yet the American Alpine Journal refused to publish anything about it because it didn't have a summit. That was where climbing was, in those days. If it didn't have a summit, you really didn't do a climb. Gill was getting even more ridiculous and was doing things just for the sake of pure climbing, going nowhere. These were absurd climbs, as far as the Alpine Club was concerned.
