Damien Gildea reports the death from heart problems of Charlie Porter, the legendary American big wall climber and Alpinist. Porter was the first ascentionist and inspiration behind a series of hard new routes on El Capitan in 1972-73: Mescalito, Zodiac, Tangerine Trip and The Shield. All are now major classics (and vastly easier than when they were first done). Porter was a master of subtle aid climbing, on the groove pitch on The Shield he placed 35 RURPs in a row. Royal Robbins said at the time ‘He has gotten inside a RURP and is looking out’. These routes were a psychological breakthrough, taking climbers out of the crack and corner systems and onto the great blank walls that epitomise climbing on the El Cap.
Kevin Worrall, an excellent climber himself gives some idea of the impact of these routes: “I'll never forget seeing Charlie up on those rurp cracks and being basically dumfounded. I grabbed some binos and couldn't believe how thin the line was - and how spectacular. I feel lucky to have witnessed it. The Shield was a big leap forward for wall climbing, made by a man who was probably the most unassuming climber of that era.”
Porter also soloed the first ascent of ‘New Dawn’, biviing 7 nights wrapped in a foam pad after dropping his sleeping bag. He took these abilities to climb and suffer to their logical extreme by soloing the first ascent of the 40 pitch 5.10 A4 North West Face of Asgard in 1975, one of the all-time great achievements of mountaineering. His solo of Denali’s Cassin ridge in 1976 was years ahead of it’s time. After this brief but astonishing career he disappeared from climbing, by the time I arrived in Yosemite in the early eighties he was long gone. Occasional reports filtered north from his new base in Patagonia. He had kayaked around Cape Horn. He had disappeared for months, was presumed dead, but was then "...discovered alive and well, living with a tribe of Patagonian Indians (and a common law Indian wife) on Tierra Del Fuego." The legend grew.
In recent years he had been
piloted a boat around the Tierra del Fuego, supporting scientific research into global warming and the occasional climbing expedition.
In some ways I hope the report, unconfirmed but from a reliable source, is another example of the Porter myth and he turns up a few months later after another escapade. If the report is true he will have lead an amazing life.
Interview in Rock and Ice, via Supertopo.
Some great stories in
this Supertopo thread.
Steve Sutton on the 3rd ascent of the Shield.
