Oral History Program Steve Johnson Interviewed by Colby Wayment 03 March 2009 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Steve Johnson Interviewed by Colby Wayment 03 March 2009 Copyright © 2014 by Weber State University, Stewart Library ii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. Archival copies are placed in Special Collections. The Stewart Library also houses the original recording so researchers can gain a sense of the interviewee's voice and intonations. Project Description The Weber State College/University Student Projects have been created by students working with several different professors on the Weber State campus. The topics are varied and based on the student's interest or task for a specific assignment. These oral history assignments were created to help Weber State students learn the value and importance of recording public history and to benefit the expansion of the Weber State oral history collections. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to the Stewart Library of Weber State University. No part of the manuscript may be published without the written permission of the University Librarian. Requests for permission to publish should be addressed to the Administration Office, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, Utah, 84408. The request should include identification of the specific item and identification of the user. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Johnson, Steve, an oral history by Colby Wayment, 03 March 2009, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: This is an oral interview with Steve Johnson. It is being conducted on March 3, 2009 at his house, by Colby Wayment. This interview is concerning Mr. Johnson’s experience in the Steinfel Club. SJ: The big blowout was Memorial Day. There was nobody up there. A few locals would come up and picnic on Memorial Day or something. They would come up, maybe one night, and build a fire, cook some marshmallows. I actually have pictures of everything. That's when things all kind of got named. But most of it was just for ourselves. We knew what to call it and where to go. It never occurred to us that someone else may want to know. Who cares? They can come up here and climb it. So, as far as first ascents, a lot of that stuff was first climbed by the early boys and then we finally drug in. CW: The line of bolts you were talking about that two local kids put in , that was on Lost Arrow Spire? SJ: Yep. Go back a little bit before City of Rocks. After the bolts, we ran into that group with Perkins, Narcisean, Townsend, Moore, Frank Cunningham, and they climbed a few years pretty hard and heavy. Perkins got more into his store: clothing. Wasn't really a climbing store; that was on the side. Kent Christianson went to work for Perkins mounting bindings and all that. Hack, I think was on the ski patrol and knew John Moore, too. Got on the ski patrol at Snowbasin. CW: Would you say that skiing was a precursor for the climbing? SJ: The majority of these people were also skiers. CW: So, they got into mountaineering because of skiing, then climbing? 1 SJ: Originally. They met each other via that. Now as things went on, people came in who didn't ski - just wanted to climb. CW: Yourself, did you ski and then climb? SJ: I skied and I knew some of these people. But I wasn't into the rock climbing. I enjoyed skiing more. I backpacked and did these other things in the Wind Rivers. I liked getting out and moving and camping more than the pure rock climbing experiences. My little brother joined in and about six months later said, "You ought to come to the meetings." So, I went and came. I wasn't really that gung ho on the rock climbing first. I enjoyed it. But when I would go to the Wind Rivers to climb at this time, I did other things. "Well, you go climb that. I'm going fishing. I'm going over to this other valley. Go to this peak here and walk up the back of it - take some pictures." CW: Your little brother, what's his name? SJ: Dean. He got into it pretty hard and heavy. CW: He stayed with it? SJ: Yeah. But he doesn't climb any more. We got old. Most of us still ski. I still backpack despite artificial knees and all else, which came from too many falls and too many heavy packs - Wind Rivers too many times. CW: How did most of you guys hear about each other? Did you meet each other randomly in the mountains if you enjoyed it, or was Perkins the focus? SJ: Well, his store down there was kind of a focal point because once he started it up; he did have a section of climbing gear. He was the only guy that really stocked the full line of things around here other than REI. Of course, the original stuff he stocked, there was 2 no chocks or gizmos or all that stuff. You had, basically, pitons made in France or Italy or Switzerland. And most of these were soft and malleable pitons. CW: Chouinard was coming out with more durable ones at the same time. SJ: That's later. That's where he used the old steal chromoly, which were terribly strong. But they were so hard that you left marks in the cracks and that. But they were very safe very strong. The trouble is so strong, that when you climbed sandstone, if you went down to southern Utah - to Zion or Loa or something - that you had to go back to some of the soft malleable to fit in and hold. CW: Did you guys climb down there? SJ: Everybody climbed down there, but minimally. It was not the emphasis because who wants to climb on crummy rock when you can climb up here on granite and quartzite. You want to climb on good rock. You want to climb crummy rock you can go there. Or we could go up to London Spire, in the Willard area, or up the canyon. There's an art to climbing on sandstone. You could climb up at Echo too. We climbed up Echo canyon on some of those walls. I guess we kind of reluctantly went along because Jeff and Greg wanted to learn more about that. And their dad owned a hotel down in Loa too. And right outside the hotel was this big sandstone - harder sandstone - rock and cliff area Capitol Reef . You could walk right over to it and start climbing some of this stuff. We went down to Richfield and cut over to the reservoir and shot down towards the San Rafael Swell, you would get into the Fremont River and all that. We'd reluctantly, once a year, go with them. CW: Did you guys climb in the San Rafael Swell then? 3 SJ: No. Just near Loa. Climbing ought to be on good stuff - good granite and good quartzite. In fact, we always complained about at the City of Rocks. That's crummy granite - flakey and falls off. Little Cottonwood is better and so is the Wind Rivers. But anyway after that group of Perkins, the guys that put it together: Kent Christianson, Bruce Roghaar, Jake Entjes (Crazy Jake), and Mims Barker (Doctor Barker's son), Stew Richards, Preston Richey (who was with Larry Ross when he fell). George Lowe Jr. knew everybody and everybody knew them. He would come to some of our functions and this or that. But he was a little more serious and into big mountains. But he stayed a little more kin with the group from Salt Lake - Wasatch Mountaineering. Larry came in later; he was my age. Larry's dad was a family practice doctor. He was fearless and nearly killed himself a lot of times. But Larry was kind of the same way. He was strong and fearless. Back in the days you didn't buy a harness; you made swami belts. And some people elected to just climb with waist loops which was thirty feet of nylon webbing wrapped around and around and around and finally come to the end and tie it. Put a carabineer through it and you're done. And so that's what he was climbing with when he fell on Haystack. Of course, the trouble with those is that they pull up under your ribs and you can't breathe. You are knocked unconscious. Bad thing is you can't breathe. The good thing is that he probably didn't have to. He probably broke his neck. He caved in half of the left side of his face. That I know because I was up there. I just had my right knee operated and reconstructed for the first time. I was about 20 years old. I wasn't supposed to be hiking let alone climbing. I was up there and I run in with Keith Myers the day they fell. I was with Keith on the back side of Haystack fishing, then came around about six at night and they were hollering up there. We could hear Preston and see him. Then notice the rope 4 going about 150 feet below him and that's where Larry was. Larry had taken almost a whole rope leader fall. Pulled out seven pins - mostly angles. The last thing that held was that one bolt. Preston was sitting in a belay seat. I believe it was one that I made. Two of us used to make equipment too - Stew Richards and myself (RJ enterprises). We would make belay seats, bevy hammocks, slings, rope ladders, and etriers. We would make them in different sizes for whatever people wanted them. CW: Did you sell them beyond this area? SJ: No. Locally. Modifications of everything. You could buy some of this through REI. They would fall apart and we would take them and sew them. CW: Did you make any income of that? Was it pretty modest? SJ: Probably less than 100 bucks for everything. You could buy a belay seat for three dollars. I made a lot of belay seats. Almost everybody in the club had a belay seat. CW: What were you using to belay with at this time? SJ: We made our own brake bars. We did what they call dynamic belays. You planned on letting a little rope through. You didn't want it too loose, but a little bit loose. That was good because you didn't pull so many pins. That's the trouble now with all the braking devices. They pull tight and some cinch up pretty quick. Then you wonder why you pull so many pins. Well, even with the dynamic belay, Larry pulled seven pins. CW: How would you describe the relationship you had with others? Did you only climb with a few people generally? SJ: Well, I climbed with everybody in the club. It would always boil down to you climbing with three or four specifics most of the time. 5 CW: You guys had parties occasionally on weekends? SJ: Oh yeah. We had parties up at the Basin. Had climber's Grog. That was the thing. Also about this time I was working in a lab up at the hospital - the Old Dee hospital - when it was over by Vincent's pharmacy on 24th and Harrison. There's a park there now where the hospital used to stand. Because I worked at the lab I had access to better than Everclear. I could get a gallon of that. We would take it up and have a big old cooking pot. We'd through that in and people would bring up all kinds of wines and dump in orange juice, and grape juice - whatever you had. CW: You would partake in the imbibing yourself? SJ: Sure, I was a good Mormon. I am not going to say I'm proud of it. I'm not ashamed of it. That's just the way it was. Drank enough beer to sink ships. Boy we drank a lot of beer and climbed. There were a few who would sneak in a little marijuana now and then, but that was just within a certain group. CW: The marijuana was a little divisive though? SJ: There were times when they would take it up to City of Rocks, because nobody's going to catch you, and climb. The next day there was some that didn't wake up for a while and you didn't want them belaying you for fear of "are they really with us or not?" As far as beer, the majority of the people drank. Now the Lowes, Greg and Jeff really didn't drink a lot of beer. They were a little more focused on climbing than that. It didn't bother them that some of the others drank a whole bunch. We weren't as rowdy as the motorcycle club. 6 CW: How aware was the community of the Steinfel club? You mentioned the motorcycle club. At least the police knew about it because they had you guys do search and rescue for a while. SJ: We were always doing search and rescue: missing bodies, people falling and getting skinned up above 20th street. The police knew. Of course, that was back then when you just knew more of the police officers. It was smaller and a little more tight knit community. As far as the general public knowing about the climbing club, no. I think the general public impression was, "We go up Ogden Canyon and there's these guys hanging on the side and you know, they're a little off." CW: What about people who hiked along the bench? SJ: There were older folks who walked their dogs along the boulder field. We knew those guys. CW: I've got the impression that you held many of your parties at Hack's house too. SJ: Yeah, and my parent's basement because we had a big basement. Kent Christianson's house was actually a little house by the cemetery on 20th street. His wife Kathy, she put up with us. She was pretty good. But his was just a little one-bedroom house. We would pack in. In the summer, we would meet in Ralph Lowe's house. There was also a little grove up there and we would go down in it and build a fire pit. We had quite a bit of parties at the lodge at Snowbasin, there used to be an A-frame there - a Hill Air Force A-frame. And it's still up there just as you turn to the main parking lot. Some of the guys were married. Some had certain girlfriends. We all, sort of, got religion and calmed down a bit - not that we were wild. 7 CW: Were you aware of what was going on in Yosemite at this time? The dirt bag climbers? SJ: A few of the climbers gathered enough money and went down a few times. Hack went once or twice. We had all seen the pictures. And of course we were met with Chouinard. Chouinard has a heck of history climbing in the Wind Rivers too. More so than most people know about. But he was one of the first to climb Gannett Peak and he did it solo, free climbing. He did that alone. Had he fallen and died, no one would have known. He had a lot of guts. Some people would say that these climbers were overly confident. He was one that was sort of confident within his ability. CW: Your own background, did you come a family that was into the outdoors? SJ: Well, my dad was a fisherman. CW: Did he get into skiing? SJ: Oh yeah, he skied at Snowbasin before it was Snowbasin. And they go up there where School hill is now. The tree is still there. They put an old cable around it and ran it out to a part of an axle with a tire rim with the old spokes. They had a big inch and a half hemp rope. It was fed through that and came down to the other end. They would take an old Packard and jack up the rear end. Take the tire off, put on an empty rim, and then they would put the rope around that. They would put it in reverse because it was geared low and set the car to idle. That was the rope tow. That's what they started skiing with. My dad skied when he was in Alaska in World War II. He would get a private and requisition a half-track. The private would have to drive down with the half-track, pick him up and drive back up the hill. Of course, Alaska during World War II in the winter, things could get boring. 8 CW: Do you remember the clinics, the sponsored events, with Royal Robbins and Art Graham? Did they just each come once? SJ: Chouinard first came in 1967 and then he came about two years later. Roghaar thinks we had Royal Robbins here in 1970 and Art Graham in 1968. When Art Graham came, we met up at the George Lowe Junior's dad's house. Also, we had Chuck Pratt, but we can't remember when. There is some question whether we had Pratt came down as part of a seminar (we invited him) or if he came down to see some of the climbing here. By this time, most everybody in the club had gone to the Tetons in different groups and had met Chuck Pratt up there. I bumped into him on multiple hikes up in the Tetons. Fred Beckey and Tom Frost passed through. CW: What were Robbins and Graham brought here for? SJ: Art Graham brought a lot of films with him and brought a lot of pictures. At that time you didn't have a lot of formal route guides. Art Graham, Fred Beckey, and these earlier guys that did a lot of climbing elsewhere had pictures of their routes. It was a slideshow presentation type thing. CW: What was Robbins brought here to do? SJ: He was free climbing. He wasn't selling pants and shirts and all that stuff. CW: Did you stay with the club? When did it break apart? SJ: Yeah. I guess it's like everything else. You have to move on and get a real life. CW: Well, there was a big disparity in ages I hear. 9 SJ: Grow stayed in it a long time. But he was married and a little more stable. He didn't go anywhere so he could stay in it. The rest as you know, sort of moved out. Jobs sent them away. CW: If Kent Christianson was the focal point, did it break up when he was finished with it? SJ: Kent stayed with it forever and ever and actually would still do a little bit of winter crosscountry skiing, some climbing, but that was mostly mountaineering. He ended up getting a divorce from Kathy, his wife. Then he got a cabin. He hit the bottle a little heavy too. CW: If you had to pin a year on the disbanding of the club, what would it be? SJ: It would have been about 1976. But the more original group had calmed down by then too. 10