Please - A Little Respect!
by SCMA Member Tom Jeter

Editors note: in 1986, the SCMA newsletter (Cliffnotes) was known as Mugelnoos.

While surveying the scene around the SCMA campfire at Tuolumne last month, it occurred to me the SCMA has an image problem! My eyes perceived attractive wives, laughing children, well behaved dogs, table clothes, etc.; all symbols of suburbia transplanted into the wilderness. One SCMA'er was walking a pair of dogs about 5 inches high and 6 inches long, undoubtedly named something like Fifi and Tutu.

Groaning at this, I noticed that Liz Berger also brought a pair of well behaved dogs, but one, named Virgil, was a suitable enormous German Shepard who did his duty by barking ferociously at anyone who came near his van at night! Just then a Park Ranger came up to our site with the unwelcome request that we remove our SCMA arrow signs (What? Polluting the campsite with our signs? All our members hadn't arrived yet!). How annoying, thought I; if the SCMA had the proper image, no Ranger who knew what was good for him would come within 100 yards of our campsite for any reason. The only consolation was, the Ranger came in on horseback, leading me to wonder if he hadn't gotten a look at Virgil (the dog-not the climber) and decided it was better that his horse risk Virgil's retribution rather than himself.

That night, after one too many Sierra Cups of wine, I raved on about all these things around the campfire, but that brings up another subject! Kathy Crandall, Fred Wing, and I had to philosophize around the coals until 2 AM to avoid the shame of an SCMA campfire being abandoned before the wee hours. Old timers like us should be allowed to steel away at a reasonable hour to rest our weary bones, while vigorous "Young Turks" from the previous training class uphold the SCMA campfire traditions! Doesn't everyone know, "early to bed and early to rise make a climber healthy, wealthy, and dull as dishwater"?

Carouse all night and climb all day, that’s the image we seek!!!

Staring into the last of the dying embers, my mind went back to some conversations I'd had just two weeks earlier while climbing in the Scottish Highlands. As my newfound British companions and I drove up the Glencoe Valley on our way to do a classic waterfall climb (The Chasm) on the Buachaille Etive Mor, they pointed out two small stone cabins, a mile apart at the base of Stob Dearg. One cabin, they said, belonged to the Scottish Women Mountaineering Club, the other to the infamous Creag Dhu, a climbing club composed of "blue collar" workers from Glasgow. My companions informed me that such was the reputation of the Creag Dhu, that they never bothered to lock up their cabin for the simple reason that no one would dare go in there! In contrast, they suggested the Scottish women mountaineers must have to barricade themselves in each night with two by fours in defense against periodic raids by the Creag Dhu. I was further told that one had only to walk into any climbers pub in Britain and ask to hear some Creag Dhu stories; which stories would then be forthcoming, hour after hour until the pub closed. Example :

" Glen Cunningham was driving his van home from a climb along a narrow Scottish country road and found himself annoyed by some chap following him in a tiny French made automobile, constantly honking (bleat - bleat) wishing to pass. Cunningham's response was to stop the van, whereupon he and a half dozen other burly Creag Dhu men piled out, surrounded the little car (like so many hulking NFL linemen) and lifted it up off the roadbed - driver inside. Cunningham then stuck his head in the window. and asked gently if there was anything the driver wanted to talk to him about? There wasn't, so the car was lowered back to the road, headed in the opposite direction; the Creag Dhu men clambered back into their van and drove leisurely on."

Ah, the Creag Dhu, a climbing club that gets respect! Just think, a whole club full of Don Whillans types, or at least enough of them boozing and brawling that everyone in the club benefits from the reputation. I'd had another conversation with a pair of Scottish climbers I met on the Trilleachan Slabs in Glen Etive, illustrating the significance of image in the climbing world. While giving me a lift to Ben Nevis, my friends told me about walking into climbers pubs in England and finding the English lads clearing space for them at the bar after hearing their Scottish burr, while whispering among themselves "here come the Scottish hard ice men". My friends confided they themselves had never touched crampon to steep ice, but such is the reputation of Scottish winter climbers!!

Getting back to the SCMA; how are we perceived by others? I've heard that our detractors describe us as aerobic inadequates, who routinely drive up to the crags and using the front bumper as a belay anchor, ascend a few pitches, wheezing and coughing, then come off and call it a day. Now we know that's poppycock! We SCMA'ers are capable of bagging more peaks, in better style, on better routes, and have more fun doing it than any other climbing club; but that's substance, what we're talking about here is image. It’s too bad we can’t print photos in Mugelnoos; we could stage a shot of SCMA'ers in camp eating raw meat with their bare hands and throwing the bones over their Shoulders to be devoured by our pack of big vicious dogs in the background. Any children in the photo would be loaded with bandoliers of hardware; no small dogs allowed.

Need I remind you that in this age of media, image is everything; or to paraphrase Vince Lombardi - image is not the main thing, it is the only thing! One of the few among us to realize this and do something about it is Virgil (the climber-not the dog). As recent Mugelnoos readers know. Virgil has been plotting and scheming on a grand, even outrageous scale, leaving our detractors aghast! It pains me to confess that I myself in recent months turned down more than one of Virgil’s approaches to accompany him on his projects. Scrutinizing his proposals with an engineering mentality, they seemed zany - farfetched - doomed to failure; but in reality I can see them now as beautiful, magnificent, sublime like the mountains themselves. That these schemes fail only adds to the nobility of the attempts.

Yes, Virgil is following in the footsteps of men like Charlie Porter, the legendary Yosemite climber known for (among other things) pioneering gigantic rurp aid ladders up incipient vertical cracks (no bolts or chalks, just rurps; if the top one pulled loose the resulting fall would zipper them all out clear to the bottom. Charlie was thought dead for several years, lost at sea while attempting to paddle a kayak, solo, from the Atlantic to Pacific Ocean, around Cape Horn. Early this year, Charlie was discovered alive and well, living with a tribe of Patagonian Indians (and a common law Indian wife) on Tierra Del Fuego. Yes - people like Cunningham, Whillans, Shields, and Porters; climbers with heart! Our two Virgils stand out as Defenders Of The Faith, one with barred fangs, the other with a brilliant conceptual mind. But the latter stands virtually alone, trying to save us from ourselves; a Don Quixote like figure, dreaming the impossible dream. With his ambitious marathon fell running and jumaring up his ‘Towers to Nowhere' he is truly a 'Conquistador of the Ridiculous' in the finest tradition. Carry on Virg, you deserve our support, for without members like you we're all too likely to become the Rodney Dangerfield Climbing Club!!!

Addendum: The above article was composed before the annual SCMA business meeting. Now we find, 10 and behold, Virgil Shields is our new chairman! Looking forward to the coming year with eager anticipation, I would offer two ‘modest proposals' for Virgil' s consideration as Head Cheese:

1. Quadruple, the annual SCMA subsidized rum ration.

2. Acquire a climbing hut at Tahquitz (a la Creag Dhu).

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