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Outside Magazine November 2001

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King of the Dirtbags
Going core with Yvon Chouinard—leery capitalist, walking contradiction

By Mark Jenkins


	Chouinard in the flow on the south face of Mount Arrowhead, Wyoming

YVON IS LEADING. He's guiding his feet along a lip of rock, maneuvering himself out under an overhang. Positioned directly below the obstacle, he slides his hands up into a fissure and leans back. He holds himself horizontal, 700 feet of empty Wyoming air beneath him, studies the problem, and begins to climb.

He doesn't narrate the possibilities, nor does he appear to make any cerebral calculations; he just moves. His body—his hands and his feet coming in direct contact with the rock—will solve the problem.

He's focused; there's no wasted movement. His right hand shoots up and grabs an edge, quickly followed by his left hand, and then he steps up both feet. For a moment he is hanging upside down, crouched like a monkey about to leap for a branch. But he doesn't leap. He pushes out with his legs and pulls in with his arms, and his body smoothly shifts to one side.

It would seem an awkward position for a man, pushing and pulling simultaneously, but somehow it creates a kind of dynamic tension, an internal, counterbalancing opposition. Yvon Chouinard is struggling precariously but also magnificently, paradoxically balanced. He's using a classic climbing technique called the lie-back: a difficult albeit direct solution to overcoming a crux. Another solid handhold, another foothold, and he rises gracefully onto the overhanging face. No hesitation, no desperation. Two more moves and he flows up and out of sight.

Then I hear him roar with delight.

"DON'T BRING THOSE damn cams," Yvon had grumbled over the phone. "Don't need them. A few stoppers and hexes, that's enough. And don't bring those heavy ten-millimeter ropes. Ridiculous!"

He was just back from salmon fishing in Iceland. (Or was it trout fishing in Newfoundland? Or perhaps bonefishing in the South Pacific?) We were planning a climbing trip into Wyoming's Wind River Range. For 30 years Yvon had had his eye on a stunning, unclimbed line on the south face of 12,972-foot Mount Arrowhead. "And we don't need a tent," he bellowed. "I've spent a hundred nights in the Winds without a tent."

When I mentioned helmets, he scoffed at that, too, and said he'd only used one once or twice in his life. How about a headlamp? "I prefer to stumble around in the dark."

On the other hand, the fact that I wasn't intending to bring a fly rod represented a serious problem. "It's practically a crime to walk through the Winds and not fly-fish," Yvon said gravely. And when I suggested that a few cans of sardines and a tub of peanut butter would suffice for the week, he said tersely, "I'll do the cooking."

As a shakedown for an impending Andean expedition, I wanted to try using llamas. I volunteered to be the llama wrangler. Yvon had invited along two brothers from Hawaii, George and Kent Kam, so I figured the llamas could carry all our climbing gear and food, and said so. Yvon's response: "Don't need them."

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Mark Jenkin's first collection of Outside columns, The Hard Way, will be published in the summer of 2002 by Simon & Schuster.

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