Stewart M. Green - the Man, Myth and Magic of climbing

 

Stewart on the summit of South Gateway Rock, Garden of the Gods

The American icon, Stewart M. Green is synonymous to the challenging arena of rock climbing for over half a century, especially in and around Colorado, Utah, and anywhere else that has a vertical piece of rock. I doubt if there is any rock climber in the US who doesn’t know this legendary, larger than life individual, or haven’t consulted his climbing guide books. Despite coming from the two polar opposites in climbing; he climbing rocks from sea level to up to around 15000ft, and I climbing ice and snow from 15000ft to up to literally the top of the world. In short where his climbs ended (in altitude) mine began. Yet we became the closest of virtual friends more than a decade back. We have many things in common: we share the same zodiac sign (Aquarius) our birthdays separated by only 9 days. Our names start with the same alphabet. But primarily what bonded us was our shared similar views of climbing, life and the sheer joy of living. He is many things rolled into one and it is hard to summarize Stewart within few words, yet to me he is just a little kid having fun. And when you see him and instantly drawn into his sparkling eyes full of excitement you know that this is one man who lives each day to the fullest.

Finally during my current trip to the US, I (along with my friend Belinda, a Swiss-American adventurer) had the opportunity of visiting him at his humble abode in Colorado Springs. The region’s highest peak, clearly visible from his kitchen and verandah, we had an incredible time over two and half days, sharing our common passion for the mountains and adventures. We went hiking along with his wife Martha (a climbing guide as well) through the Red Rocks and then on an easy climb in Garden of Gods (both places that he pioneered for the world to climb). I cooked Indian food, glanced through his books and just felt so humbled in the presence of this great man, at his humility, his quiet presence. He has countless stories to tell and I just couldn’t find enough time to hear even a fraction of them. While bidding goodbye, I felt as if I was leaving a lifelong friend and mentor. Nearly seventy, Stewart continues to climb, write, photograph and guide spreading the sheer joy of climbing to all of us especially to those who cannot themselves travel to the mountains and reminding us that life is meant to be lived and only our dreams can shape our life. So, dream big, dream the impossible and live to the fullest.

Here’s a short interview I did with Stewart. To the man, myth and legend of being Stewart M. Green. Since I posed 12 questions to Stewart, it is aptly titled as follows:

A Dozen with Stewart M. Green

How did you get into rock climbing? Who or what inspired you?

Stewart - I grew up in Colorado Springs at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, with Pikes Peak scraping against the western sky. My father, who had immigrated from England to the United States with my mother after World War II, had climbed in North Wales while an RAF pilot, so I grew up with climbing and mountaineering books on our bookshelves. I often walked up to North Cheyenne Cañon in summer from our home and watched rock climbers ascend big granite cliffs. I thought, “Wow, I really want to try doing that.” My chance came when I was 12 years old in 1965 and my older brother Mark invited me to belay him up the three-pitch Army Route on the Pinnacle in the Cañon. The adventure was both thrilling and scary. I remember he picked up a fist-sized hunk of granite from the route’s base and told me to stick it in my back pocket. I was supposed to use it to knock out pitons he had hammered in cracks. The hunk promptly broke apart when I tried to loosen a Lost Arrow piton.

Stewart on the summit of Remnants Tower in Colorado National Monument with Ed Webster and Ian Green 

Who had the greatest impact upon you as a climber and as a person?

Stewart - I was fortunate to have climbing mentors as I grew up since Colorado Springs had an active climbing community. The city was actually one of the first places in the United States for technical climbing after Albert Ellingwood returned from a couple years as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford in 1911. He learned rope and protection techniques learned in Britain and the Alps back to Colorado and was the best rock climber in the country at that time. My first mentor was Al Henshaw, a Scottish engineer who taught me how to do a waist belay and took me up routes in North Cheyenne Cañon and the Flatirons in Boulder. Another early mentor was Spencer Swanger, a mountaineer who was the first person to climb Colorado’s 100 highest peaks. One of my best climbing partners and a long-time friend that influenced me was Jimmie Dunn. I learned tenacity and boldness from Jimmie, the first person to solo a new route on El Capitan.

Three most meaningful climbs of your life so far? And why were they meaningful?

Stewart - People ask me, “What’s your favorite route?” I usually reply, “The last one I did.” I’ve climbed on cliffs, big walls, and towers around the world, so it’s difficult to say which were most meaningful since I’ve loved so many rocks. Three of the most meaningful climbs I did were three desert towers near Moab, Utah in late 1971—Castleton Tower, Standing Rock, and North Sixshooter Peak. I did those with Jimmie Dunn and Billy Westbay when we were mere lads following in the footholds of great climbers like Layton Kor. We did early ascents of all three towers and saw no other climbers, let alone tourists, in that amazing week. Other meaningful climbs were in the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, on The Diamond of Longs Peak, long free routes up immaculate limestone cliffs at the Verdon Gorge, old-style routes on Britain’s grit-stone edges like Stanage Edge, and, of course, the gleaming big walls in Yosemite Valley.

When you climb, what do you look for? Why do you climb?

Stewart - Why do you climb? is the perennial and unanswerable question we climbers are often asked by earthbound people. There are many answers. These include to see the world with eagle eyes, to visit high and untrodden places, to rise above the common human world, and to feel close to the sun, sky, and heavens. I began climbing as a child, wanting to see and experience the world from above. Now I climb to feel part of the earth, to touch hands and feet to hard stone, the building block of islands, canyons, and mountains. I like to climb to forget the human world, to bond with nature, and to live in the moment—in precious moments of being present with myself, the rock, and my climbing partner. Nothing else matters when I’m high on a cliff or atop a lofty peak, surrounded by rock, snow, and solitude.

What have you learnt from the mountains and from the outdoors?

Stewart - Life-long climbers learn much from the outdoor world. I learned to move on terrain that most people view as impossible and in doing that, I learned how to read the terrain, to search for ways to ascend a cliff or mountain, how to find handholds and footholds, and where to place gear to protect myself from the dire effects of gravity. One of the best things I learned from climbing was how to control fear. We’re all afraid when we climb because we know bad stuff can happen. Learning to control fear and anxiety were important lessons that the rock taught me. I learned to move with deliberateness to control fear by breaking down a pitch into manageable parts, by stopping to look ahead instead of plunging forward, and to not think about the consequences of bad decisions. Instead, I learned it was important to be present in the moment and not let my mind wander to past memories or to think about anything else besides the important task of moving upwards with safety and grace. These were lessons that were also applicable to other areas of my life.

You are one of the most prolific climbing writers in the world that I know; churning out nearly fifty climbing books and innumerable articles and essays. How do you do it? Is writing about your climbs harder than the climbs?

Stewart - I became a published writer when I was 14 years old after selling an essay on preserving the environment to the Colorado Mountain Club magazine. After I received $20 for that article, I knew I was going to be a writer. I started writing about my climbing adventures and mountains when I was a high school student, selling occasional articles to Summit Magazine in the late 1960s. Later, after going to university for a few years, I worked as a newspaper writer and photographer, learning how to write about anything, how to interview people, how to string words together into stories, and also learning how to no obsess over my writing since I worked on regular deadlines. In 1986 I got tired of my hard work ending up in the bottom of someone’s bird cage, so I began writing books for Falcon Guides in Montana. Since then, I’ve worked almost exclusively for them (now the largest guidebook publisher in the United States) and churning out books every year. Since I prefer working alone, this was an ideal career for me. I could pick what to work on, answered only to myself, and I was able to do “research” by going to places to climb, write about cliffs and routes, and photograph cliffs for topos. I’ve never looked on writing and photography as work. It’s simply what I do. I view my guidebooks like the best-selling Rock Climbing Colorado, which first came out in 1994, as books of dreams, books to lead other people to venture outside and have life-changing experiences on rock and snow.

You have climbed with some of the greatest climbers of the world, past and present, please tell us about some of them. How was it to be with them, literally holding each other’s lives.

Stewart - I grew up climbing with my friends in Colorado. Some of those friends became legendary climbers. Jimmie Dunn, who I first met at Graduation Rock in Colorado Springs in 1969, is a person that I have known longer than anyone else except for family. We became fast friends and climbing partners back then, seeking high adventure. Jimmie, like all great climbers, was motivated to do his best, to make first ascent, to climb hard rock. I learned never to give up from Jimmie.

At the same time, I was friends with the late Billy Westbay, who went on to do the first one-day ascent of El Cap’s Nose as well as other big first ascents like the Pacific Ocean Wall on El Capitan. I met Billy when I was 10 years old when we played on the same youth hockey team. In the early 1970s, Billy, Jimmie, and I were the team, traveling all over and doing great climbs. Earl Wiggins was another Colorado great that was a bosom friend from the mid-1970s until his death. I did ascents with Earl, who was a modest but driven climber. I met Ed Webster when he came to Colorado from his native Massachusetts to attend Colorado College. We made numerous desert trips where we climbed, or I shot photographs of Ed on extreme routes. Later I met and climbed with so many great climbers that I still count on as friends, like Eric Hörst, Harvey Miller, Bryan Becker, and Steve Arsenault.

I also became fast friends with Layton Kor, one of America’s greatest rock stars. I had first met Layton with Billy Westbay on Anthill Direct in Eldorado Canyon in the early 1970s, but I only became good friends with Layton during the last years of his life when his body was wracked by kidney disease. During those years, I often traveled down to his Arizona home to visit with the “Great One;” to go climbing, hiking, and exploring with him in the desert; and to eat at his favorite restaurants in Kingman. I also raised money to help with his decimating medical bills.

Over the past fifty years of your climbing career, you must have witnessed a massive change in climbing styles, objectives, gear, equipment, etc. How have you adapted to them? Or are you still the classic old school?

Stewart - Like you, I was born in the sign of Aquarius, the sign of future and technology and change, so I’ve always been open to using new gear. I started climbing as a kid in the mid-1960s, wearing sneakers with the rope tied around my waist with a bowline-on-a-coil or tied into a Swiss seat made from one-inch webbing. My rack was a hand-tied sling of pitons, steel and aluminum carabiners, and a trusty Salewa piton hammer. In the 1970s, after nailing big aid routes in Yosemite with pitons, I embraced the clean climbing ethic and began using Hexentric and stopper nuts to protect our fragile cracks and then Friends or camming devices when they came out. While I love bouldering, the purest form of climbing, with just shoes and a chalk bag (I still don’t use a crash pad!), I found it was also important to climb bigger routes with gear that protected and preserved the places where we recreate. That’s especially true now with more people heading outside and scrambling up rock walls. That said, I also have owned a succession of Bosch hammer drills to put up sport routes at cliffs without cracks that offer natural protection. However, I don’t place bolts, which are permanent alterations of the rock surface, indiscriminately. Placing a bolt next to a usable crack is usually the result of laziness.

Do you still have an unfulfilled climb/route/a line somewhere in the world you would like to go for?

Stewart - Yes, of course. There are so many climbs and so little time. I tell my younger friends and climbing partners to go for it now. Do the routes you dream about while you are young, strong, and have the time. I have a life tick-list in my head and will, of course, never complete all of those routes. Some of my dream climbs are some unclimbed and remote sandstone towers hidden in the Utah desert; to return to climb again at the Verdon Gorge in France, Meteora in Greece, and the wild, unclimbed granite walls in Norway. Also, I would love to go to the Himalayas with you to climb some lesser peaks and explore remote mountain sanctuaries.

Any advice for the climbers and would be climbers, how they should go about it?

Stewart - Being a climber is about seeing the world differently from the earthbound person that lives in cities and steps on sidewalks and roads. It’s important to not only be a climber of rocks and mountains but also a lover of wild places, of finding and preserving places far from pavement and throngs of people. We leave our souls in those places. Those places where we climb change us and teach us great lessons.

Yes, it’s important to reach the summit, but that is not always the most important part of the climbing journey. I tell young climbers to enjoy that journey; to be with your friends and partners outside; to not always talk but to look and be in the natural world. That’s more important than climbing a hard route or obsessing about difficulty and naming routes. Climbing is not about ratings and names. It’s about challenging yourself to be a better person, to learn the hard lessons from cliff and peak; and then to bring those lessons and challenges back to your tribe.

Stewart on the summit of Castleton Tower in Utah after the first ascent of the West Face

We all have lost close friends and climbing partners in the mountains and have faced unimaginable risks, hazards, and dilemmas as well as witnessed people die right in front of us. Still you are one rare individual that refuses to quit. It is said that there is a very thin almost non-existent line that separates bravery from stupidity. Are you brave or are you stupid (pun intended)? How do you deal with fears, risks, dangers and the possibility of death?

Stewart - Climbing makes us aware of our mortality, of the brief time that we walk this earth and experience the wonder of being human, and it reminds us of the world’s beauty and to make the most of our lives. I have had friends die in the mountains. Others died by their own hand. I often think that those who killed themselves were, like me, social misfits and that the community of climbers was their family and a way that they could fit into our little climbing culture.

For me, I just keep going. I’m a lifelong climber, I have the love of climbing and high places. A few years ago, my daughter said to me, “Stewart, I hope you don’t mind that I don’t climb anymore. I just don’t have the love.” Some people lose the love. Other things, perhaps music or work or biking, consume their love. And that’s all right. But me, I still have the love.

Climbing is often difficult and strenuous, and you think you want to give up on it, the rewards just seem too ephemeral. Climbing is moving upwards on a rock face, always finding balance, always making hand and foot movements, always being afraid of falling and failure. But you keep moving up. That’s what I do. It’s the same as climbing a mountain. You know there are thousands of steps to be made, each one a step upward, each one a struggle on steep icy slopes, each one an opportunity to tell yourself, “This is too much work, I want to go down.” And then you reach the summit, and you realize that this too is a fleeting moment. All the hard work to climb and mountain and you sit up there for perhaps a half an hour at the most and then you go down.

Every climb, no matter how trivial, you deal with fear, risk, danger, and death. Both my children began climbing at an early age. I told them from the start, “Climbing is dangerous. Every time you rope up, no matter how much fun you are having, there is the possibility that you or your partner will die.” I have always told clients that I have guided the same thing. Beginners need to know what they are signing up for when they go out for a day on the rocks or in the mountains. Bad stuff happens to good people. I deal with that bad stuff and do everything possible to mitigate danger. I know that I am responsible for my own safety and judgment.

Your name is synonymous to many things like climbing, photography, writing, guiding, traveler, explorer, adventurer, father, son, etc. still you are a mystery to most. How would you describe yourself?

Stewart - Those are all things that I do. They are not who I am. If I meet someone new, they might say to me, “Oh, you’re a climbing photographer and writer.” I will reply, “No, I’m a person.” I’m a modest and humble person, so I don’t seek accolades and praise from others. I’m secure in what I do and what I’ve accomplished and what I am working on so that I don’t need external reinforcement.

Work, climbing, travel, exploring—they are my passion, they fuel me to continue what I’ve done my entire adult life. There is no retirement or rest home for me at the end of the rainbow, just keeping on, following the trail, and moving upward.

I’m a motivated person. I get things done. I learned that from climbing. If you want to accomplish anything, whether climbing a high peak, swinging up a 5.12 route, or writing a book, you have to put the time and effort into doing that task and doing it well. There are no shortcuts to anything worthwhile. You can’t wait to be discovered, instead, you make your own luck. When people ask me how to write a book, which is something I know about, I tell them what the great writer Mark Twain said when asked the same question: “You put the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.”

I found early that there is no easy way to climb or live. Instead, I live by my personal mantra: You become what you dream. I dream big and small, and then begin the job of actualizing my dreams, one handhold at a time, one step up at a time.

Thanks a lot Stewart for your time and letting us take a peek inside your mind and life. Keep on climbing and writing and for sure whenever you are ready for the Himalaya let me know. As I often say, if you haven’t seen the world from above 20,000 ft, you haven’t seen a thing.

My dear readers, I hope that you learned some deep insights into living and life from Stewart. And I hope that he inspired you to explore not only the mountains of the world but also to explore deep within yourself to find who you truly are and what you are truly capable of. If you have more questions for him or would like to know anything about rock climbing, especially in the US, do drop him a line through his website, link below. And all his books are available in Amazon too.

https://green1109.wixsite.com/stewartmgreenphoto

https://www.amazon.com/Stewart-M.-Green/e/B001JSAFU2%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share