View Full Version : Jim Bridwell Passed Away
Chair-man
02-18-2018, 00:25
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/16/obituaries/jim-bridwell-mountaineering-maverick-is-dead-at-73.html
Saw a few news articles recently about this fellow. I never heard of him but he seemed to have lived life to the fullest. rip
Jim Bridwell was one of the heroes in the tales that swept over the ocean in the late 70ies, early 80ies and greatly influenced, later finally changed the old-school square attitude in climbing here in the Alps into modern sports climbing.
His stories (and those of and about his Stonemaster mates) led me to sports climbing myself.
Rest in peace!
rocketsocks
02-18-2018, 08:04
A true legend, thanks for posting.
Time Zone
02-18-2018, 08:16
Valley Uprising, mentioned in the NYT obit, is really worth watching.
colorado_rob
02-18-2018, 10:34
RIP JB, you were something! And important to the US (and international) climbing community. Thanks for the post chairman, I hadn't seen this anywhere else.
chknfngrs
02-19-2018, 11:06
Never understood drugs and athletics, but this fella made it make the most sense of it I guess
Stories tell that they did their daily 100 pullups whatever stoned they were.
A flamboyant climbing maverick. Can't say it was prudent climbing on hallucinogens though. I agree with others that was reckless no matter how "good" the "drugs."
I spent 2 summers climbing in Yosemite in the early 70's and knew most of the big name climbers who frequented the place then.
There is a lot of mythology out there about them and much has been embellished. They were big instigators of this phenomenon as you can imagine. That being said there was a fair amount of craziness which was worse than the stories commonly known as well. It was a crazy time and place to be young.
Bridwell was clearly a man of immense talent and impact and a huge personality. He was also a man with huge faults as those big personalities generally come with two sides not one.
There is that old age sadness thing going on here. I see my time coming in the passing of those who showed me the way. I was not friends with Bridwell for a variety of reasons but I still feel a loss. When Robbins died recently I mourned as we were friends and he was one of the more influential people in my early life.
Stories tell that they did their daily 100 pullups whatever stoned they were.
Well that I would put up as one of the embellishments in the mythology. The vast majority of the great climbers from Robbins and Bridwell's generations absolutely never exercised at all. They climbed and bouldered - a LOT. And they drank a lot, did drugs a fair amount (but less than people think), and were mostly athletic hippies (for want of a better word). When I climbed with Robbins I am not sure there was not a day we were not drinking something. We used to take beer in our packs when climbing. Not to mention a doobie or two.
When you got to the younger guys from my generation and younger than that (Robbins would have been considered 2 gens from me and Bridwell 1 gen as we were all about 10 years apart) we actually did work out a fair amount. Running and pullups, situps, lots of stretching, manteling exercises, etc - I never saw most of the older guys doing any of that stuff. Now when Ron Kauk showed up on the scene he really changed how people approached getting prepared. He worked out like no one had ever seen. He was a physical monster. It changed how everyone approached getting ready.
As said above, it was tales and stories that swept over the ocean.
The first time I got knowledge about the modern sports climbing scene in Yosemity was the great book by Reinhard Karl, "Time to Breath" (1980) about his multiple visits to the US.
He wrote all those numerous anektodes about the world famous guys up there.
He told about the basic sports climbing philosophy, that the climb (and its difficulty and/or elegance) should be the main point, not the summit.
He also brought the idea that the rating of leads should be open-ended.
Those were all new ideas, and it led to serious discussions (up to fistfights) in the Alps, but finally climbing in the Alps took over the philosophy of Yosemity sports climbing (at least a good portion of it).
When I first visited Yosemity in 1986, many things had changed in The Valley.
Sunny Side had been renamed and all the bums kicked out, no drugs that I could hear, see or smell of.
But the rocks were there, as they will be forever.
What a touch to stand beneath the then-famous "Midnight Lightning" without the tiniest clue how to get off the ground. To know, all the stories we had read with hot ears had taken place exactly there.
We finally packed our stuff and moved to cooler areas, to escape tha late-autumn heat wave, and finally found our climbing paradise in Yosuah Tree months later.
Another place full of history. John Long comes to mind here.
Congrats that you had been involved personally in this world-famous scene then.
BTW, I took the anectode about the 100 pullups serious then, and decided to feel myself ready to go to the US and The Valley only if I could pull them myself, too.
Today, 40yrs later, Im fighting to do 10.