Lennon, McCartney and Robbins, Chouinard

Royal Robbins is handing the sling of climbing gear to Yvon Chouinuard. The weather is marvelous. The air is not to cold, the wind has no bite, and the sun is a friend warming their backs. It’s the kind of glorious day that makes California famous and Yvon Chouinard revels in its comfort. He flies up the wall, more a bird than a man, as the North American Wall of El Capitan falls away to the Yosemite Valley floor 1,500 feet below.

Yvon Chouinard

My love of history has snuck its way into the fire that climbing has lit in my soul. I’ve geeked out over the great books on climbing history and culture: Mark Jenkin’s The Hard Way, John Krakauer’s Into Thin Air and Clint Willis’ The Boys of Everest to name a few. From my reading, I have found two heroes from the enormous and colorful cast of climbing history.

Royal Robbins and Yvon Chouinard were contemporaries during the pioneering days of climbing in Yosemite Valley. Both were exceptionally principled men with innate respect for the world they explored. I deeply respect each man for the integral role they played in bringing “clean climbing” ethics to the mainstream American scene.

In reading about Robbins and Chouinard I have begun to seek out a superior. Which was the better of the two? Who was better on rock? Who pushed the boundaries of the sport further? I find myself making such comparisons regularly, most often between favorite musicians.

Royal Robbins

The most reliably and enjoyably of these self-debates is without question the choice of a favorite Beatle. I’m usually a John Lennon fan myself; I enjoy his avant-garde surrealism and creativity. However, Paul McCartney has been gaining ground on Lennon of late, thanks mostly to a new appreciation for rocky Raccoon and the Abbey Road medley.

The Beatles discussion is so enjoyable in fact, that I’ve even roped a friend into it. Kaitlin Defoor and I used to go to school together. She’s been somewhat of my hippie mentor, and she seems to have the rare ability to mercilessly quash my more moronic flights of fancy.

Kaitlin is a George Harrison fan. And in that she is a collegiate debater, she has done an admirable job in winning me over. However, in the course of my ponderings on Royal Robbins versus Yvon Chouinard, I realized that there is a certain level of excellence at which preference becomes almost irrelevant.

I strongly believe that arguments can almost always be made for the superiority of one thing over another. You could very easily say , show that The Doors were a far better band than Nickelback, or that Dean potter is a better rock climber than yours truly. But I think that when athletes or artists or individual works of art reach a certain level of quality, they exist as incomparable equals.

John and Paul

Yvon Chouinard and Royal Robbins were demigods of Yosemite. Sure, they each at advantages in some areas and disadvantages in others. The same goes for John, Paul, George and Ringo, or The Who vs. The Doors, and even for Citizen Kane vs. The Godfather.

So was George Harrison the best Beatle? Maybe, but I’m too busy enjoying Sgt. Peppers to care. And besides, there are issues in the world far more important than Paul vs. John that I should be concentrating on, like putting up some epic routes like Robbins and Chouinard… their way of course, the right way.