Warren Harding (climber)

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Warren Harding (June 18, 1924 – February 27, 2002) 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 many other 'classic' 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', referring both to his remarkable penchant for spending days living on vertical cliffs as well as 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!. ('Batso' was also an ironic play on his similarity to the 'Ratso' Dustin Hoffman character in the movie 'Midnight Cowboy.')

Harding authored the book Downward Bound: A Mad! Guide to Rock Climbing. The book describes Harding's first ascent of the Nose on El Capitan (1958) 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.

Contents 1 Youth and First Climbing Experiences 2 Historic Ascent of the 'Classic' Nose Route on El Capitan 3 Later Climbs and Controversies 4 Retirement, Influence, Legends and Anecdotes 5 First Ascents 6 Publications 7 References 8 Bibliography 9 External links

[edit] Youth and First Climbing Experiences

Harding was raised in Downieville, in the northern part of the historical 'gold country' near Lake Tahoe by a family from Iowa that had arrived before the great depression. Harding grew up entertaining himself, preferring just hiking to fishing when he realized, as he recalled, that he was a 'terrible fisherman.' The draft board rejected him for a 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. He began mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada in the late 1940s - peaks such as 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', as he 'could do only what required brute stupidity.'^[1] Success for Harding in the establishment world, however, was always secondary, or out of reach. Notable, and eventually legendary, 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.

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. He quickly, and despite his small size, joined the 'stone masters' of his day. The hardest climb of the era, the 'Lost Arrow Chimney', still 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.^[2] He pioneered a famous one-day climb up the East Buttress of Middle Cathedral Rock, today one of the most-climbed route of its nature in Yosemite Valley.

His first major rock climb lay right near by: 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.^[3] They joined up since one group had ability but lacked equipment and the other had equipment but lacked ability.^[4] Together, after four nights out, and 20 or more rope lengths of climbing, they made the top of the long and involved route.

The accomplishment marked one of Harding's distinctive attributes, his emphasis on 'companionship' and willingness to be generous and climb spontanously up spectacular lines with just about anyone willing to go along.^[5]

[edit] Historic Ascent of the 'Classic' Nose Route on El Capitan

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,' Harding 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.’^[6] 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.'^[7]

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 huge cracks, and 'Dolt' Feuerer was required to form new rock spikes or 'pitons' by cutting off the legs of wood stoves. This gave the name to the crack system leading to the half way point, the 'stove leg 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.'^[8] 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, 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.'^[9] 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 has become the scene of innumerable later achievements, including female-climber Lynn Hill's climb of the route without artificial aids, and before any male climbers managed the ascent. (The Harding group had done almost 90 percent in the artificial, hanging-on-things fashion). 'Speed' climbers like Hans Florine and Steve Schneider have competed with each other to race up the route: as of spring 2009, the record stands at less than three hours. And one notable solo climber, Dean Potter, with nothing more than a 30' rope, a few pieces of gear, and fingers the size of bananas, climbed it as an 'outing', ascending the terrifying stove legs and most of the rest with no assistance from rope or other aids at all, freaking out other climbers populating the route along the way in the process.^[10] On the 50th anniversary of the ascent, the US House of Representatives passed a resolution honoring the achievement of the original party.^[11]

[edit] Later Climbs and Controversies

Harding continued to push both the envelope of rock climbing and his iconoclastic opposition to climbing conventions in the wake of his climb up El Capitan. He put up the famous 'test piece' on the overhanging East Face of Washington Column in Yosemite, later renamed 'Astroman' when it was climbed without aid, and since then climbed completely without ropes by Peter Croft. This was followed by the wildly overhanging Leaning Tower, still one of the most popular big-wall routes in Yosemite, and the beautiful and isolated 2500 foot face of Mount Watkins across from Half Dome.

Harding pioneered big wall ascents in the Sierra Nevada, with such visionary routes as the 2,000 foot face of the 14,000+ foot Keeler Needle on the side of Mt. Whitney, highest peak in the range, and the 'South West Face' of Mt. Conness in the Yosemite high country.^[12] One of the four members of the Keeler project, named 'Desert Frank' in some guidebooks, was actually named Frank Gronberg, a fellow that had been picked up on Route 395 hitch-hiking by Harding. He had never climbed before.

Harding and climber-photographer Galen Rowell nearly succumbed when caught in a storm which froze them and their gear solid on the difficult and tedious but strikingly beautiful 'South Face' of Half Dome in 1970.^[13] 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 him from returning and finishing this beast of a climb, even after the experience of being rescued and then even more crazy antics as he slid later back down the ropes attempting to retrieve piles of expensive climbing gear.

After the epic rescue and later difficulties, one partner, Joe Faint, had already 'bailed' on the project, walking off into the sunset mumbling, 'Those who fail to heed the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them.' Harding's remaining partner, Rowell, worried, when he didn't show up one weekend, that he was all washed up. '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.'^[14]

In those years, Harding garnered the most attention when he managed, in one-push 'alpine style', to climb the vertical and overhanging 'Wall of the Early Morning Light' up the tallest portion of El Capitan in its southeast side. With Dean Caldwell, they spent 27 nights on the wall, living mostly in tented hammocks designed in coordination with Roger Derryberry.

This caused controversy when a 4-day storm rolled in and 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:

'Good Evening! What can we do for you.'

'We've come to rescue you.!'

'Really? Come now, get hold of yourselves - have some wine.'^[15]

Harding is the most notorious tippler in the history of modern rock climbing famous for its working class public house and campground tradition.^[16] 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.'^[17] 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.

Like Harding's original 47-day adventure on El Capitan, this one too quickly gained attention, if not notoriety. Like the North Face of the Eiger in the Swiss Bernese mountainlands, El Capitan is readily visible by tourists, and many accused Harding of seeking excess publicity.

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.^[18]

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 climbing 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. The irritated Harding, in anti-nomian form, 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 erasing any more as he and Don Lauria made the second ascent.^[19]

[edit] Retirement, Influence, Legends and Anecdotes

After the 1980s, these old disputes largely died away in their original form, but nearly every rock and mountain climbing region has seen similar clashes between those who were willing to use more or less fixed equipment, making routes safer and less difficult. These are two aspects of a 'game' whose rules are thoroughly conventional and which are permanently in tension with one another. A very similar and interesting dispute has occurred in the more recently developed Red Rocks area outside of Las Vegas. Here longtime local climbers Joanne Urioste and George Urioste have been accused of overly 'engineering' climbing routes in the wild sandstone area^[20];on the other hand, no one can dispute that the routes they have found and developed, with lots of love and hard work, are amongst the most beautiful, enjoyable and safe to climb in the Red Rocks area - much like the famous but longer earlier efforts of Harding and his friends.

As social inequality in the United States grew, so did the disposible incomes that brought into the country a tradition of 'guiding' and clientalism that was characteristic of the pre-World War II era, but which was largely alien to the 1950-70s world of Harding and his rivals. Rock and mountain climbing became big business. The style of 'sport climbing', like 'alpine-style' climbing, also ironically inspired by Europeans, made use of artificially introduced expansion bolts a regular aspect of the sport, while the equally baroque character of the 'extreme' sports idea brought both high-technology and high-risk ever greater visibility.

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.'^[21]

When Tejada-Flores predicted that this model would one day be seen on the 'great walls of Patagonian and the Karakoram', he was right. In 1992, big wall climbers such as Swiss-born Xavier Bongard and Yosemite 'wall rat' John Middendorf took the techniques to Pakistan and climbed the longest vertical face - 4,800 feet - of the Great Trango Tower. Like two El Capitan's stacked atop one another, it took them more the twenty days to get up, and five to rappel back down, hauling a giant tent and six vast haul bags. Ironically, Middendorf, in an earlier near-disastrous climb caused by an horrific storm, had to be plucked by helicopter from near the same spot on Yosemite's Half Dome where Harding and Rowell got stuck, fifteen years before. He noted thoughtfully in his account, after dangling from the bottom of the helicopter cable after have been told to 'cut the ropes', that 'the original Harding rescue' was 'itself a pioneering event in technique.'^[22]

Vowing never to climb something like that again without decent rain gear, Middendorf later developed the models of hanging tents or 'porta-ledges' which are modern versions of the original less-than-waterproof designs Harding and his companions got soaked in during earlier decades on Half Dome and El Capitan. Middendorf and Bongard used an early version of these ledges, one they called the 'Yellow Submarine', on their 'Grand Voyage' up the Trango Tower.^[23] Middendorf's cimbing gear company, 'A5 Adventures', realized the kind of project 'Dolt' Feuerer had started with his 'Dolt Works', engineering specialized gear for vertical adventures.

Meanwhile, the big walls of Yosemite look like great sky scrapers covered with window washers. Porta-ledges can be seen hanging from any one of dozens of routes of El Capitan, the 'stone monkeys' happily living up there, pushing the limits and continuing the extravagant tradition that Harding pioneered.

Against this backdrop, the rebellious, beatnik and dionysian character of Harding's rock-climbing looks different. In lists of the most influential big wall climbers from the United States, such as those at the Big Wall site 'Super Topo', it is not surprising that Harding's name appears on more than any others, with only Robbins close behind, and none other even rivaling these two.

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 and Roger Derryberry, and continuing his hedonist's love of cheap red wine, albeit, no longer with his California driver's license. Harding died, gregarious and flamboyant to the last, in 2002, having lived past his three score and ten despite all the Thunderbird. Robbins' rope-partner on the famous 'bolt cutting' ascent of the Dawn Wall, Don Lauria, wrote a moving obituary of the few that appeared.

---

• Lauria on Harding's Financial Trip Planning:

One summer day in 1954 it seemed too hot to climb in the Valley (isn't that always the truth in summer) so Harding and I decided to climb the Mt. Hoffman Thumb. No great climbing challenge but a great excuse for a Jag ride. We got up to the filling station and found neither of us had any money! At least the folding kind. So Warren reaches behind the seat and pulls out a bag (it might have been buckskin) that was full of silver dollars! I must have looked surprised or asked some silly question about banks. Harding said, "I look so suspicious I wouldn't be able to cash a check at my own bank even if I had an account there!"

• Harding Describes Reaching the Top of El Capitan:

I SUPPOSE this article could be titled The Conquest of El Capitan. However, as I hammered in the last bolt and staggered over the rim, it was not at all clear to me who was conqueror and who was conquered: I do recall that El Cap seemed to be in much better condition than I was.

• Harding on Harding's Legendary Endurance, as recounted to Snider:

Oh, God, I was always a total mess. ...I hate climbers like Royal Robbins who are so superior. He doesn’t mean to be, he just is. He’s methodic, scientific, capable, and so competent it makes me envious. I was climbing with some hotshot Brit in Yosemite once, and he said, ‘My God, Harding, you can’t do anything!’ I said, ‘I know, but I can do it forever.

• Drinking Account by Climber Russ Walling:

Warren: Hey Fish.... you got a wine opener? Me: nope. Warren: sure ya do..... (then in a flash he busted the top off the bottle against the door jamb of my VW van). Warren: thanks! and then he shuffled away......

• Harding Drinking Account by Harding, satirizing the American Alpine Club's 'Accident Reports' in his 'Descent' Magazine:

It has recently been demonstrated that drinking leashes can be useful in preventing needless tragedies in the home was well as on the rock. For example, at the gathering of friends in the DESCENT office in Fresno, Batso was into his cup (as he is liable to do). Becoming insenced over some topic of conversation (as he is liable to do), he staggered off blindly, apparently heading for the upstairs bedroom. However, he referred to the wrong door and fell down the cellar stairs. Fortunately he was unhurt, wedged between the stair case and the hot water heater. Needless to say, he could have been very seriously injured, and although this wasn't the case, a drinking leash could have spared him the indignity of such an accident.

• Harding's 'Reflections on a Broken Down Climber,' in Rowell, op cit.:

My once-keen analytical mind has become so dulled by endless hours of baking in the hot sun, thrashing about in tight chimneys, pulling at impossibly heavy loads.... so that now my mental state is comparable to that of a Peruvian Indian, well stoked on coca leaves...^[24]

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[edit] First Ascents

• 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 Pratt.
• 1960 'Keeler Needle' of Mt. Whitney (14,000+ ft), with Glen Denny, Rob McKnight and Desert Frank.
• 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 Chouinard and Chuck Pratt.
• 1968 'Good Book', The (Right Side of the Folly), Yosemite, CA, with Tom Fender.
• 1969 'Southwest Face', Liberty Cap, Yosemite, CA, with Galen Rowell and Joe Faint.
• 1969 'Firefall Face,' Glacier Point, Yosemite Valley, CA, with Galen Rowell.
• 1970 'South Face Route', Half Dome, Yosemite, CA, with Galen Rowell.
• 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.
• 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.^[25]

[edit] Publications

• Harding, Warren (1990 (reprint, original Prentice-Hall 1975)). Downward Bound, A Mad! Guide to Rock Climbing. Birmingham, Alabama, USA.: Menasha Ridge Press. ISBN 0-89732-101-4. 

[edit] References

1. ^ Burr Snider, 'The Life of Warren 'Batso' Harding', San Francisco Examiner Image Magazine, March 9, 1986.
2. ^ Jim Perrin, 'Warren Harding', The Guardian, March 7, 2002.
3. ^ Snider, op cit.
4. ^ Steve Roper, Climber's Guide to Yosemite Valley, Sierra Club, 1971. p. 258.
5. ^ 'Shortly after meeting Warren in 1975, we went climbing... [After a day of mixed results, it was] getting close to dark and we were out of water. I mentioned that maybe we should head back down because I was really thirsty. He suggested that we have a beer and start a campfire to cook up some hot dogs. He proceeded to empty his pack and pulled out the contents. He had four cans of beer, two wine glasses and a bottle of red wine, a package of hot dogs with coat hangers, a full loaf of bread, and a large jar of mustard. We made a fire and ate and drank while watching the sunset. After our meal we stumbled back down the hillside in darkness and miraculously found my truck. I had sobered up enough to drive back to Sacramento. This is a memory I will always cherish. This was what climbing and companionship in the mountains was really about.' 'Chicken Skinner', 'Harding's Wit,' emphasis added SuperTopoForum
6. ^ Doug Scott, Big Wall Climbing, Oxford UP, 1974, p. 147.
7. ^ Ibid.
8. ^ Warren Harding, 'Chronology of First Ascent of El Capitan,' American Alpine Journal, 1959.
9. ^ Ibid.
10. ^ Cf YouTube - 'Potter El Capitan'!
11. ^ Michael Doyle, 'House Honors First Climbers to Scale El Capitan', McClatchy News Service, Oct. 1, 2008.
12. ^ John Moynier and Claude Fiddler, Sierra Classics: 100 Best Climbs in the High Sierras, Chockstone, 1993, pp.14f.
13. ^ Cf Galen Rowell, The Vertical World of Yosemite, Wilderness Press, 1979.
14. ^ Galen Rowell, 'South Face of Half Dome,' American Alpine Journal, 1971.
15. ^ Harding, Downward Bound, 1975, p. 151f.
16. ^ Ibid, pp. 46-8, 178ff. Cf Steve Roper, Camp IV, p. 7f; Dick Williams, The Climber's Guide to the Shawangunks, Vulgarian Press, 1996, pp.11ff; Tom Patey, 'Red Pique', 'Last of the Grand Old Masters' and other drinking songs, One Man's Mountains, Victor Golancz, 1986; Joe Brown, The Hard Years, Victor Golanz, 1967; Red Rope Club.
17. ^ Ibid.
18. ^ Harding, Downward Bound, pp. 86ff, 183ff; Roper, Camp Four, pp. 124ff.
19. ^ Harding's Downward Bound, Rowell's Vertical World, Scott's Big Wall Climbing, as well as the periodicals Mountain and Ascent all contain varying accounts. The most amusing are in Harding's own obscure satirical publication, Descent, if one can be located. Snider, op cit., writes that Harding 'spent a couple of weeks in New York doing the big talk shows, had a story in Life, an interview with Howard Cosell on “Wide Wide World of Sports,” and there was talk of books and a movie. He became a hot ticket on the lecture circuit, and, of course, a willing social lion. And, Batso being Batso, he never made a dime out of any of it.' Harding recounted to him, 'I think that after expenses, which were rather extravagant, we lost $300 on the lecture tour. ...So after this stint of swimming in fame-iosity, all the partying and notoriety, before you knew it, I was back working construction. And the Valley Christians were complaining about how we were commercializing climbing! Christ, I’ve done a lot of nutty things in my life, but I never tore up my union card. I wasn’t just some climbing bum. I’ve always worked.'
20. ^ Jerry Handren, Red Rocks: A Climber's Guide, Handbook Publishing, Las Vegas, 2007, pp. 12-14.
21. ^ Quoted in Scott, op cit., p. 161.
22. ^ John Middendorf, 'Rescue on Half Dome', Big Walls Site
23. ^ John Middendorf,[1] The Grand Voyage.
24. ^ Sources of the anecdotal quotations: Don Lauria's obituary, SuperTopo discussion thread; Harding's account of the 'First Ascent of El Capitan', American Alpine Journal, 1959; Snider, 'The Life of Warren Batso Harding', op cit.; Russ Walling's quotation, as well as those from from Harding's 'Descent' magazine, are found on the 'Warren Harding' SuperTopo discussion thread; 'Reflections of a Broken Down Climber' appears in Rowell, The Vertical World of Yosemite.
25. ^ Reid, Don (1993). Yosemite Climbs: Big Walls. Evergreen, Colorado, USA.: Chockstone Press. ISBN 0-934641-54-4. 

[edit] Bibliography

• Moynier, John and Fiddler, Claude, Sierra Classics: 100 Best Climbs in the High Sierras, Chockstone, 1993.
• Roper, Steve, Climber's Guide to Yosemite Valley, Sierra Club, 1971.
• Roper, Steve, Camp IV, Mountaineers, 1996.
• Rowell,Galen, The Vertical World of Yosemite, Wilderness Press, 1979.
• Scott, Doug, Big Wall Climbing, Oxford UP, 1974.
• Snider, Burr, 'The Life of Warren 'Batso' Harding', San Francisco Examiner Image Magazine, March 9, 1986.

[edit] 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
• Pictures of Yosemite Big Walls in the 1960s by Harding's Early 1960s Partner Glen Denny