A night With Ingalls and Erickson

Two top Colorado climbers from the ’60s and ’70s talk styles, routes and boldness

After introducing Jim Erickson, 69, and Huntley Ingalls (older but age withheld; “I don’t engage in numbers”) to Vietnamese pho, we headed back to Huntley’s to swap stories. The room feels like a narrow hallway. On one side are stacks of books ranging from psychedelics to calculus and mathematics. The other side sits a white l amp, stacks of magazines i n plastic wrap, a small, square computer screen and two gallons of water in jugs; one has a gray sling girth hitched through the handle. We’re here for several reasons. One is to celebrate the life of Jim Bridwell, the legendary Yosemite climber who we’ve learned is gravely ill. His light is dimming and soon – we know – all that will be left are memories and his legacy. Ingalls, who often climbed with Layton Kor in the ’ 60s, lost Kor in 2013. Someday these men, too, will be gone. Last year, Erickson and I visited Ingalls in the hospital after he took a fall. And in recent weeks Erickson suffered a heart attack.

More importantly, and living in the present, I know how special it is to have these two men together and to listen to their stories.

Before they were climbers, both men were cavers, a sport that, like climbing, is a see-it-f irst-hand-to-get-it experience. “To learn about a cave, you have to climb inside it,” Ingalls said between bights of wet noodles and chicken he scooped up with a fork during dinner. His hands are badly arthritic and clamped shut, knuckles oversized. “I have about as much dexterity as a bear,” he said before staring me in the eyes as if to extend the punch line.

Ingalls, from Potomac, Maryland, began climbing at the age of 19 and scaled 30- metre cliffs near his home. He caved

“Layton had an insatiable appetite for climbing, and he didn’t give a shit if it was free or aid,” Erickson half asks, half tells to Ingalls. Then he adds, “In my generation, everything had been climbed, it just could have been done a little bit better, free.” A “Raising the standards,” Ingalls adds. “Back then, people didn’t quibble too much about style. Kor put in a piton, maybe a crappy one, and kept going. You’ve seen photos of him climbing these routes with metal aid ladders, and no one thought anything of it.” One notable route – one that later went free – was Psycho, established by Kor and Ingalls in 1962. It was the most dangerous