ABSTRACT
In August, 1960, I spent two or three weeks in the Tetons, at the climbers' campground on the south shore of Jenny Lake, which the rangers had created a year or two earlier to try to keep the climbing scene out of the sight of the general public. There's no trace of that campground anymore, except maybe the old kilns that Yvon Chouinard and Ken Weeks were sleeping in; or the big tree in the clearing where one night somebody, likely the Vulgarians, lassoed a bear and pulled him down with a rope attached to a truck; and perhaps the large cement slab of unknown origin is still there, on which, for several hours every morning, John Gill and I 60practiced our handbalancing. John was able to do a "stiff-stiff body press, and I kept working on it, getting a little closer every day with encouragement from John, but never quite succeeding until finally, right after he left and there was no one to show off for, I did five of them in a row. For lunch we'd go over to the little general store run by two old ladies, and try to absorb as much protein as possible. John favored a thick, pasty mixture of powdered milk as a good muscle-builder, never mind what it tasted like. Afternoons, we had long sessions of hatchet-throwing, along with Bill Woodruff who had bicycled across from Yosemite and The front lever, early '60's. https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9780429047923/7c667115-89ec-4d1e-92c3-abec7b257f22/content/fig9_40.jpg"/> 61was resting up before riding further east. Later on, John would usually drive over to Blacktail Butte for an hour or two of solo climbing. I never accompanied him there, and few people knew just what he was up to, but Bob Kamps went along once or twice and later told me he couldn't top-rope some of the things John was soloing. As for the little boulders around the campground, there was not one, even if only knee-high, that had not felt the tread of John's tightly-laced climbing shoes on whatever tiny crystals or minute features it offered by way of a bouldering problem.
