Warren J. Harding
Encyclopedia
Warren Harding was one of the most accomplished and influential American rock climbers
of the 1950s to 1970s. He was the leader of the first team to climb El Capitan
, Yosemite Valley
, in 1958. The route they climbed, known as The Nose
, ascends 2,900 feet up the central buttress of what is one of the largest granite monoliths in the world. Harding climbed many other first ascents in Yosemite, some 28 in all, as well as making the first true big-wall ascents in the Sierra Nevada range of California
.
He was nicknamed "Batso", a reference to his remarkable penchant for spending days living on vertical cliffs and his exuberant and iconoclastic character. Harding developed specialized equipment for climbing big walls, such as the "bat tent" for sleeping, and "bat hooks" used to hook precariously on small cut-out bits of granite—examples of his B.A.T or 'Basically Absurd Technology' products. He was known for his doggedness, drinking, and farcing, as reflected in his motto Semper Farcisimus!
Harding authored the book Downward Bound: A Mad! Guide to Rock Climbing. The book contains a description of the ascent of the Nose and the Wall of Early Morning Light (1970) as well as farcical instruction in climbing basics, ratings of prominent climbers of the period, a humorous account of rock climbing controversies and life-styles of the 1960s and 1970s, and a vivid portrayal of Harding's own rebellious and charismatic character.
, in the northern part of the historic gold country near Lake Tahoe
by a family from Iowa that had arrived before the great depression
. Harding grew up entertaining himself, preferring hiking to fishing after he realized that he was a "terrible fisherman". He began mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada in the late 1940s on Mount Whitney
, the Palisades, and the Minarets. He took up technical climbing in 1953; it was, he said, the first thing he was ever really good at, because he "could do only what required brute stupidity".
Within a year, he was an active figure in the nascent climbing community of Yosemite Valley, the huge glacial valley in which big-wall
or multi-day vertical technical or roped rock climbing developed in the United States after World War II. He began pushing the limits of the sport in the 1950s, and quickly became one of the "stone masters" of his day. The hardest climb of the era, the Lost Arrow Spire Chimney
, has a horrible, squeezing, dark and difficult pitch named for his lead: the "Harding Hole". He scrabbled his way up a demanding fissure called the "Worst Error" on Elephant Rock, an early effort which the British Guardian journalist Jim Perrin notes, "bears comparison with the achievements of Joe Brown and Don Whillans", famed contemporaries of his in Britain. He pioneered a famous one-day climb up the East Buttress of Middle Cathedral Rock, today one of the most-climbed routes of its nature in Yosemite Valley.
His first major rock climb lay right nearby: the North Buttress of Middle Cathedral Rock in Yosemite. Beginning "impromptu" with a "stranger" who Harding thought was "nuttier than a fruitcake," he and Frank Tarver soon passed another party. They joined up since one group had ability but lacked equipment and the other had equipment but lacked ability. Together, after four nights out, and 20 or more rope lengths of climbing, they made the top of the long and involved route. They had just finished the longest roped rock climb to date in North America.
Success for Harding in the establishment world, however, was always secondary, or out of reach. The draft board rejected him due to his heart murmur, and after working as a propeller mechanic during World War II, he trained as a land surveyor, holding a union card proudly his whole life. Known for his short size and high voice, his hard drinking and fast cars, his greaser style black hair-do, good looks, and libidinous orientation, Harding recounts in his memoir Downward Bound that he chose the book's title because it reflected the failure of his career as a responsible wage-earner in the face of his urge to go rock climbing.
Harding met the group at the top. "My congratulations," he recounted, "were hearty and sincere, but inside, the ambitious dreamer in me was troubled." He, Powell, and equipment inventor Bill 'Dolt' Feuerer later conspired. "In the fit of egotistical picque, we grumbled around the Valley for a couple of days, trying to figure out what to do. The solution was simple; any climb less than Half Dome was beneath us; only a great climb would do." At this point, as big wall historian Doug Scott notes, Harding was truly exceptional. The 3,000 foot face of El Capitan was so 'appallingly higher' than the other features in Yosemite, it was 'ignored by the majority of climbers.'
Harding, Powell and Feuerer began in July 1957. Unlike the single-push 'alpine' style used on Half Dome, they chose to fix lines between 'camps' in the style used in the Himalaya. Attempting to get half way on the first push, they were foiled by the long hand sized and larger cracks. Frank Tarver cut the legs off of several wood stoves, and gave the team these "proto-type bong pitons. This crack systems later became world famous as the "Stove Legs Cracks".
Compelled by the National Park Service to stop until after Labor Day due to the crowds forming in El Capitan meadows, the team had a major setback when Powell suffered a compound leg fracture on another climbing trip. Powell dropped out, and Feuerer became disillusioned. Harding, true to his legendary endurance and willingness to find new partners, 'continued', as he later put it, 'with whatever "qualified" climbers I could con into this rather unpromising venture.' Feuerer stayed on as technical advisor, even constructing a bicycle wheeled 'cart' which could be hauled up to the half-way ledge which bears his name today, 'Dolt Tower'; but Wayne Merry, George Whitmore, and Rich Calderwood now became the main team, with Merry sharing lead chores with Harding.
In the Fall, two more pushes got them to the 2,000 foot level. Finally, a fourth push starting in the late Fall would likely be the last. The team had originally fixed their route with 1/2 inch manilla lines (use of which sends shivers through the thoughts of later climbers used to nylon); and their in situ lines would have weakened more over the Winter. In the cooling November environment, they worked their way slowly upward, with the seven days it took to push to within the last 300 feet blurring into a 'monotonous grind' if, Harding adds, 'living and working 2500 feet above the ground on a granite face' could be considered 'monotonous.' After sitting out a storm for three days at this level, they hammered their way up the final portion. Harding struggled fifteen hours and placed 28 expansion bolts by hand through the night up an overhanging headwall, topping out at 6 AM. The whole thing had taken 45 days, with more than 3400 feet of climbing including huge 'pendulum' swings across the face; and uncounted 'mileage' of laboriously hauling bags with prusik knots up ropes and sliding by 'rappeling' back down.
The team had finished what is by any standard one of the 'great classics' of modern rock climbing. The Nose Route is often called the most famous rock climbing route in North America, and in good Fall weather can have anywhere between three and ten different parties strung out along its thirty rope lengths to the top. On the 50th anniversary of the ascent, the US House of Representatives passed a resolution honoring the achievement of the original party.
Harding also pioneered big wall ascents in the Sierra Nevada, with routes such as the 2,000 foot face of the 14,000+ foot Keeler Needle on the side of Mt. Whitney and the South West Face of Mt. Conness
in the Yosemite high country.
Harding and climber-photographer Galen Rowell
nearly succumbed to a storm which froze them and their gear solid on the difficult and tedious but strikingly beautiful South Face of Half Dome in 1970. After a rescue and later difficulties, one partner, Joe Faint, abandoned the project. Rowell worried when Harding didn't show up one weekend. "The next weekend," however, "as we hike up the steep trail to Half Dome," Rowell recounts, "I stop feeling sorry for Warren when he limps past me with a huge pack. Half of Warren is still twice the average man." Unsuccessful and unpleasant jaunts working as a contractor in Vietnam and a serious accident—a truck hit him while working at a construction site, leaving him permanently disabled—did not stop Harding from returning and finishing the climb.
Harding also made a much-publicised first ascent of the "Wall of the Early Morning Light", up the tallest portion of El Capitan in its southeast side. With Dean Caldwell, he spent 27 nights on the wall, living mostly in tented hammocks designed in coordination with Roger Derryberry. When a 4-day storm rolled in, the National Park Service decided, after 22 days, that the two needed to be rescued. Ropes were lowered, but after much shouting back and forth, retracted. Harding, in his book Downward Bound, recounts what might have happened had the rescue persisted:
Harding is the most notorious tippler in the history of modern rock climbing famous for its working class public house and campground tradition. Harding preferred gallon jugs of the very cheapest variant of red, and named the creaky ledge holding their hammocks, and from which they were supposed to be rescued, "wino tower". "Had the rescue team been overzealous," he continues, "a wild insane fight with piton hammers might have ensued. For we were very determined not to be hauled off our climb." Seven days later, after 27 nights on the cliff, they pulled over the top to a throng of reporters, well-wishers, the curious and the critical.
Harding was always controversial as well because he was more willing to utilize artificial aids which become a permanent part of the environment, especially expansion bolts. These take a long time to put in, but are not removable, and as they can be put anywhere, take some of the skill and the risk out of rockclimbing. Some felt, such as historian Steve Roper, English Mountain magazine editor Ken Wilson, and southern Californians like Robbins and Yvon Chouinard, that Harding's flamboyant willingness to use expansion bolts took some of the adventure away from climbing.
Harding granted that some of those climbers had more skills then he, but always disputed their "zealotry" and "purity". He also argued that it was hypocrisy to accuse him of publicity hounding, as many of them developed lucrative mountain climbing businesses, making tens of thousands, if not millions of dollars a year selling clothing and equipment. This controversy reached a high point when Harding's chief rival, Robbins, began the second ascent of his Early Morning Light route, hanging in Harding and Caldwell's bolt and bat-hook holes, and then cutting off the hangers, declaring he wished to restore the rock to its pristine state—and making a third ascent unlikely. The irritated Harding called the southerner Robbins a "Carrie Nation" of rockclimbers, and felt vindicated when Robbins eventually decided the climb was harder than it looked and then respected it by not cutting any more bolts as he and Don Lauria completed the second ascent.
After the 1980s, Harding did little more climbing, retiring to the northern hills of the Sierra Nevada, going hot-air ballooning with his close friends Mary-Lou Long and Roger Derryberry, and continuing his love of cheap red wine. He died in 2002.
Harding on his legendary endurance:
Harding, on drinking, satirizing the American Alpine Club's "Accident Reports":
Harding's "Reflections on a Broken Down Climber":
Rock climbing
Rock climbing also lightly called 'The Gravity Game', is a sport in which participants climb up, down or across natural rock formations or artificial rock walls. The goal is to reach the summit of a formation or the endpoint of a pre-defined route without falling...
of the 1950s to 1970s. He was the leader of the first team to climb El Capitan
El Capitan
El Capitan is a vertical rock formation in Yosemite National Park, located on the north side of Yosemite Valley, near its western end. The granite monolith extends about from base to summit along its tallest face, and is one of the world's favorite challenges for rock climbers.The formation was...
, Yosemite Valley
Yosemite Valley
Yosemite Valley is a glacial valley in Yosemite National Park in the western Sierra Nevada mountains of California, carved out by the Merced River. The valley is about long and up to a mile deep, surrounded by high granite summits such as Half Dome and El Capitan, and densely forested with pines...
, in 1958. The route they climbed, known as The Nose
The Nose (El Capitan)
The Nose is one of the original technical climbing routes up El Capitan. Once considered impossible to climb, El Capitan is now the standard for big-wall climbing...
, ascends 2,900 feet up the central buttress of what is one of the largest granite monoliths in the world. Harding climbed many other first ascents in Yosemite, some 28 in all, as well as making the first true big-wall ascents in the Sierra Nevada range of California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
.
He was nicknamed "Batso", a reference to his remarkable penchant for spending days living on vertical cliffs and his exuberant and iconoclastic character. Harding developed specialized equipment for climbing big walls, such as the "bat tent" for sleeping, and "bat hooks" used to hook precariously on small cut-out bits of granite—examples of his B.A.T or 'Basically Absurd Technology' products. He was known for his doggedness, drinking, and farcing, as reflected in his motto Semper Farcisimus!
Harding authored the book Downward Bound: A Mad! Guide to Rock Climbing. The book contains a description of the ascent of the Nose and the Wall of Early Morning Light (1970) as well as farcical instruction in climbing basics, ratings of prominent climbers of the period, a humorous account of rock climbing controversies and life-styles of the 1960s and 1970s, and a vivid portrayal of Harding's own rebellious and charismatic character.
Youth
Harding was raised in Downieville, CaliforniaDownieville, California
Downieville is a census-designated place in and the county seat of Sierra County, California, United States. Downieville sits at an elevation of...
, in the northern part of the historic gold country near Lake Tahoe
Lake Tahoe
Lake Tahoe is a large freshwater lake in the Sierra Nevada of the United States. At a surface elevation of , it is located along the border between California and Nevada, west of Carson City. Lake Tahoe is the largest alpine lake in North America. Its depth is , making it the USA's second-deepest...
by a family from Iowa that had arrived before the great depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
. Harding grew up entertaining himself, preferring hiking to fishing after he realized that he was a "terrible fisherman". He began mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada in the late 1940s on Mount Whitney
Mount Whitney
Mount Whitney is the highest summit in the contiguous United States with an elevation of . It is on the boundary between California's Inyo and Tulare counties, west-northwest of the lowest point in North America at Badwater in Death Valley National Park...
, the Palisades, and the Minarets. He took up technical climbing in 1953; it was, he said, the first thing he was ever really good at, because he "could do only what required brute stupidity".
Within a year, he was an active figure in the nascent climbing community of Yosemite Valley, the huge glacial valley in which big-wall
Big wall climbing
Big wall climbing is a type of rock climbing in which a long multi-pitch route, so sustained that an ascent normally requires more than a single day, is climbed. Big wall routes require the climbing team to live on the route often using portaledges and hauling equipment...
or multi-day vertical technical or roped rock climbing developed in the United States after World War II. He began pushing the limits of the sport in the 1950s, and quickly became one of the "stone masters" of his day. The hardest climb of the era, the Lost Arrow Spire Chimney
Lost Arrow Spire Chimney
The Lost Arrow Spire Chimney in Yosemite National Park is the first technical climbing route to ascend the entire Lost Arrow Spire. This route shares the last two pitches with the Lost Arrow Spire Tip route which can also be reached by rappelling from above...
, has a horrible, squeezing, dark and difficult pitch named for his lead: the "Harding Hole". He scrabbled his way up a demanding fissure called the "Worst Error" on Elephant Rock, an early effort which the British Guardian journalist Jim Perrin notes, "bears comparison with the achievements of Joe Brown and Don Whillans", famed contemporaries of his in Britain. He pioneered a famous one-day climb up the East Buttress of Middle Cathedral Rock, today one of the most-climbed routes of its nature in Yosemite Valley.
His first major rock climb lay right nearby: the North Buttress of Middle Cathedral Rock in Yosemite. Beginning "impromptu" with a "stranger" who Harding thought was "nuttier than a fruitcake," he and Frank Tarver soon passed another party. They joined up since one group had ability but lacked equipment and the other had equipment but lacked ability. Together, after four nights out, and 20 or more rope lengths of climbing, they made the top of the long and involved route. They had just finished the longest roped rock climb to date in North America.
Success for Harding in the establishment world, however, was always secondary, or out of reach. The draft board rejected him due to his heart murmur, and after working as a propeller mechanic during World War II, he trained as a land surveyor, holding a union card proudly his whole life. Known for his short size and high voice, his hard drinking and fast cars, his greaser style black hair-do, good looks, and libidinous orientation, Harding recounts in his memoir Downward Bound that he chose the book's title because it reflected the failure of his career as a responsible wage-earner in the face of his urge to go rock climbing.
The Nose
Within the year, Harding was teaming up with Mark Powell, one of the premier Yosemite climbers of the 1950s. After Harding had been part of a group which failed to climb the magnificent and vertical Northwest face of Half Dome, he and Powell found themselves in the Valley, too late by a couple of days to make the first ascent of that feature as another group, led by Harding's southern Californian rival, Royal Robbins, had just completed it.Harding met the group at the top. "My congratulations," he recounted, "were hearty and sincere, but inside, the ambitious dreamer in me was troubled." He, Powell, and equipment inventor Bill 'Dolt' Feuerer later conspired. "In the fit of egotistical picque, we grumbled around the Valley for a couple of days, trying to figure out what to do. The solution was simple; any climb less than Half Dome was beneath us; only a great climb would do." At this point, as big wall historian Doug Scott notes, Harding was truly exceptional. The 3,000 foot face of El Capitan was so 'appallingly higher' than the other features in Yosemite, it was 'ignored by the majority of climbers.'
Harding, Powell and Feuerer began in July 1957. Unlike the single-push 'alpine' style used on Half Dome, they chose to fix lines between 'camps' in the style used in the Himalaya. Attempting to get half way on the first push, they were foiled by the long hand sized and larger cracks. Frank Tarver cut the legs off of several wood stoves, and gave the team these "proto-type bong pitons. This crack systems later became world famous as the "Stove Legs Cracks".
Compelled by the National Park Service to stop until after Labor Day due to the crowds forming in El Capitan meadows, the team had a major setback when Powell suffered a compound leg fracture on another climbing trip. Powell dropped out, and Feuerer became disillusioned. Harding, true to his legendary endurance and willingness to find new partners, 'continued', as he later put it, 'with whatever "qualified" climbers I could con into this rather unpromising venture.' Feuerer stayed on as technical advisor, even constructing a bicycle wheeled 'cart' which could be hauled up to the half-way ledge which bears his name today, 'Dolt Tower'; but Wayne Merry, George Whitmore, and Rich Calderwood now became the main team, with Merry sharing lead chores with Harding.
In the Fall, two more pushes got them to the 2,000 foot level. Finally, a fourth push starting in the late Fall would likely be the last. The team had originally fixed their route with 1/2 inch manilla lines (use of which sends shivers through the thoughts of later climbers used to nylon); and their in situ lines would have weakened more over the Winter. In the cooling November environment, they worked their way slowly upward, with the seven days it took to push to within the last 300 feet blurring into a 'monotonous grind' if, Harding adds, 'living and working 2500 feet above the ground on a granite face' could be considered 'monotonous.' After sitting out a storm for three days at this level, they hammered their way up the final portion. Harding struggled fifteen hours and placed 28 expansion bolts by hand through the night up an overhanging headwall, topping out at 6 AM. The whole thing had taken 45 days, with more than 3400 feet of climbing including huge 'pendulum' swings across the face; and uncounted 'mileage' of laboriously hauling bags with prusik knots up ropes and sliding by 'rappeling' back down.
The team had finished what is by any standard one of the 'great classics' of modern rock climbing. The Nose Route is often called the most famous rock climbing route in North America, and in good Fall weather can have anywhere between three and ten different parties strung out along its thirty rope lengths to the top. On the 50th anniversary of the ascent, the US House of Representatives passed a resolution honoring the achievement of the original party.
Later Climbs and Controversies
Following his climb of El Capitan, Harding put up the overhanging East Face of Washington Column in Yosemite, renamed "Astroman" after it was climbed without aid, the first of a row of serious routes he did with his partner of this period, photographer Glen Denny. This was followed by: the wildly overhanging Leaning Tower, also done with Denny and still one of the most popular big-wall routes in Yosemite; the North Face of the 'Rostrum' just outside Yosemite Valley, again with Denny (a notoriously hard and spectacular later one-day testpiece as a free climb); and the beautiful and isolated 2500 foot face of Mount Watkins across from Half Dome, done with Yvon Chouinard and Chuck Pratt (with 'hard man' Harding famously refusing water on the parched last days of the climb to save it for those doing the final leads).Harding also pioneered big wall ascents in the Sierra Nevada, with routes such as the 2,000 foot face of the 14,000+ foot Keeler Needle on the side of Mt. Whitney and the South West Face of Mt. Conness
Mt. Conness
Mount Conness is a mountain in the Sierra Nevada range, to the west of the Hall Natural Area. Conness is on the boundary between the Inyo National Forest and Yosemite National Park...
in the Yosemite high country.
Harding and climber-photographer Galen Rowell
Galen Rowell
Galen Avery Rowell was a noted wilderness photographer and climber. Born in Oakland, California, he became a full-time photographer in 1972.-Early life and education:...
nearly succumbed to a storm which froze them and their gear solid on the difficult and tedious but strikingly beautiful South Face of Half Dome in 1970. After a rescue and later difficulties, one partner, Joe Faint, abandoned the project. Rowell worried when Harding didn't show up one weekend. "The next weekend," however, "as we hike up the steep trail to Half Dome," Rowell recounts, "I stop feeling sorry for Warren when he limps past me with a huge pack. Half of Warren is still twice the average man." Unsuccessful and unpleasant jaunts working as a contractor in Vietnam and a serious accident—a truck hit him while working at a construction site, leaving him permanently disabled—did not stop Harding from returning and finishing the climb.
Harding also made a much-publicised first ascent of the "Wall of the Early Morning Light", up the tallest portion of El Capitan in its southeast side. With Dean Caldwell, he spent 27 nights on the wall, living mostly in tented hammocks designed in coordination with Roger Derryberry. When a 4-day storm rolled in, the National Park Service decided, after 22 days, that the two needed to be rescued. Ropes were lowered, but after much shouting back and forth, retracted. Harding, in his book Downward Bound, recounts what might have happened had the rescue persisted:
Harding is the most notorious tippler in the history of modern rock climbing famous for its working class public house and campground tradition. Harding preferred gallon jugs of the very cheapest variant of red, and named the creaky ledge holding their hammocks, and from which they were supposed to be rescued, "wino tower". "Had the rescue team been overzealous," he continues, "a wild insane fight with piton hammers might have ensued. For we were very determined not to be hauled off our climb." Seven days later, after 27 nights on the cliff, they pulled over the top to a throng of reporters, well-wishers, the curious and the critical.
Harding was always controversial as well because he was more willing to utilize artificial aids which become a permanent part of the environment, especially expansion bolts. These take a long time to put in, but are not removable, and as they can be put anywhere, take some of the skill and the risk out of rockclimbing. Some felt, such as historian Steve Roper, English Mountain magazine editor Ken Wilson, and southern Californians like Robbins and Yvon Chouinard, that Harding's flamboyant willingness to use expansion bolts took some of the adventure away from climbing.
Harding granted that some of those climbers had more skills then he, but always disputed their "zealotry" and "purity". He also argued that it was hypocrisy to accuse him of publicity hounding, as many of them developed lucrative mountain climbing businesses, making tens of thousands, if not millions of dollars a year selling clothing and equipment. This controversy reached a high point when Harding's chief rival, Robbins, began the second ascent of his Early Morning Light route, hanging in Harding and Caldwell's bolt and bat-hook holes, and then cutting off the hangers, declaring he wished to restore the rock to its pristine state—and making a third ascent unlikely. The irritated Harding called the southerner Robbins a "Carrie Nation" of rockclimbers, and felt vindicated when Robbins eventually decided the climb was harder than it looked and then respected it by not cutting any more bolts as he and Don Lauria completed the second ascent.
Retirement, Influence, Legends and Anecdotes
Lito-Tejada-Flores, whose essay Games Climber's Play, was influential at the time of Harding's exploits, viewed Harding as 'outside' the game as it was played by most. Harding was rather 'inventing new ones' and 'from time to time, even a masterpiece.' That was how he described the 28-day Dawn Wall event: 'a great climb whose greatness is...in the experiential content of such extended life on a wall.'After the 1980s, Harding did little more climbing, retiring to the northern hills of the Sierra Nevada, going hot-air ballooning with his close friends Mary-Lou Long and Roger Derryberry, and continuing his love of cheap red wine. He died in 2002.
Quotations
Harding describes reaching the top of El Capitan:Harding on his legendary endurance:
Harding, on drinking, satirizing the American Alpine Club's "Accident Reports":
Harding's "Reflections on a Broken Down Climber":
1950s
- 1954 Harding's Chimney & Harding's Other Chimney, Sugerloaf, Lake Tahoe, CA, with Jim Ohrenschall.
- 1954 Upper & Lower Phantom Spire, Lake Tahoe, CA, with Jim Ohrenschall.
- 1954 North West Books, Left & Right Water Cracks, Lembert Dome, Tuolomme Meadows, CA, with Frank de Saussure, friends.
- 1954 East Buttress, Middle Cathedral Rock, Yosemite, CA, with Jack Davis and Bob Swift.
- 1954 North Buttress, Middle Cathedral Rock, Yosemite, CA, with Frank Tarver; Craig Holden and John Whitmer.
- 1956 East Arrowhead Chimney, Arrowhead Arete, Yosemite, CA, with Mark Powell.
- 1956 Promulgated Pinnacle, Sentinel Rock, Yosemite, CA, with Bob Swift.
- 1957 East Arrowhead Buttress, with Wally Reed and Mark Powell.
- 1957 The Worst Error, Elephant Rock, Yosemite, CA, with Wayne Merry.
- 1957 East Side, Bridalveil Fall, Yosemite, CA, with Mark Powell.
- 1958 Northwest Buttress, Ahwiyah Point, Yosemite, CA, with Wayne Merry.
- 1958 The Nose, El Capitan, Yosemite, CA, with Wayne Merry and George Whitmore (47 days in several pushes).
- 1959 Beverly's Tower, Cookie Cliff, Yosemite, CA, with Gerry Czamanske.
- 1959 Merry Old Ledge, Three Brothers, Yosemite, CA, with Gerry Czamanske.
- 1959 Southwest Face, Mt. Conness, Yosemite High Country, CA, USA, with Glen Denny and Herb Sweedlund.
- 1959 East Face, Washington Column (later 'Astroman'), Yosemite, CA, USA, with Glen Denny and Chuck PrattChuck PrattCharles Marshall Pratt was an American rock climber from California, best known for big wall climbing first ascents in Yosemite Valley...
.
1960s
- 1960 Keeler Needle of Mt. Whitney (14,000+ ft), with Glen Denny, Rob McKnight and Frank Gronberg.
- 1961 West Face, Leaning Tower, Yosemite, CA, with Glen Denny and Al MacDonald.
- 1962 Delectable Pinnacle, El Capitan, Yosemite, CA, with Brian Small.
- 1962 North Face, The Rostrum, Yosemite, CA, with Glen Denny.
- 1962 The Flue, Sentinel Rock, Yosemite, CA, with Bob Kamps.
- 1964 South Face Route, Mt. Watkins, Yosemite, CA, with Yvon ChouinardYvon ChouinardYvon Chouinard is a rock climber, environmentalist and outdoor industry businessman, noted for his contributions to climbing, climbing equipment and the outdoor gear business. His second company, Patagonia is known for its environmental focus...
and Chuck PrattChuck PrattCharles Marshall Pratt was an American rock climber from California, best known for big wall climbing first ascents in Yosemite Valley...
. - 1968 The Good Book, The (Right Side of the Folly), Yosemite, CA, with Tom Fender.
- 1968 West Face or Direct Route (NCCS VI F8 A3), Lost Arrow Spire, Yosemite, CA, with Pat Callis.
- 1969 Southwest Face, Liberty Cap, Yosemite, CA, with Galen RowellGalen RowellGalen Avery Rowell was a noted wilderness photographer and climber. Born in Oakland, California, he became a full-time photographer in 1972.-Early life and education:...
and Joe Faint. - 1969 Firefall Face, Glacier Point, Yosemite Valley, CA, with Galen Rowell.
1970s
- 1970 South Face Route, Half DomeHalf DomeHalf Dome is a granite dome in Yosemite National Park, located in northeastern Mariposa County, California, at the eastern end of Yosemite Valley — possibly Yosemite's most familiar rock formation. The granite crest rises more than above the valley floor....
, Yosemite, CA, with Galen RowellGalen RowellGalen Avery Rowell was a noted wilderness photographer and climber. Born in Oakland, California, he became a full-time photographer in 1972.-Early life and education:...
. - 1970 Wall of the Early Morning Light (Dawn Wall), El Capitan, Yosemite, CA, with Dean Caldwell (28 days in one push).
- 1971 Porcelain Wall, Yosemite, CA, with Steve Bosque and Dave Lomba.
- 1975 Rhombus Wall, Royal Arches, Yosemite, Ca, with friends.
- 1976 West Arete, Mt. Winchell, Sierra Nevada, CA, with Galen Rowell.
- 1978 Forbidden Wall, Yosemite Falls, Yosemite, CA, with Dave Lomba, Christie Tewes and Steve Bosque.
External links
- Obituary from Vagabond Surf
- Recollections
- Obituary by Roger Derryberry at Hueco Tanks webpage
- Pictures of Warren Harding from Yosemite Climbing Association
- Pictures of Nose 1st Ascent from Yosemite Climbing Association
- More pictures of Yosemite Big Walls in the 1960s by Harding's Early 1960s Partner Glen Denny