EDITION 51 - APRIL 3, 2026
Your window into the stories, history, and ongoing work to preserve Yosemite’s climbing legacy.
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We’re so appreciative of your continued support and commitment to park preservation and stewardship with the YCA. Continue reading below for your weekly Founder’s Log from Ken Yager, remembering the late John Yablonski.
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John Yablonski bouldering. Photo: Ken Yager Collection
Yabo
Founder’s Log | By Ken Yager
One morning I was having a smoke with Werner in the Camp 4 parking lot, enjoying the warmth as the sun hit us. Days were getting longer, but the nights were still crisp. It was late February of 1977 and there were only a few cars in the lot. Werner had his car strategically parked in the NW corner of the lot where the first morning sun hit. A fit young man wearing a blue and white striped polo shirt started walking our way looking like he was lost. He had clean-cut dark hair and looked like a college student on vacation. I figured he was looking for the start of the Upper Yosemite Falls Trail and might need directions, a common occurrence. He saw us and bee-lined right over and said hi to Werner with a chuckling sneer on his face. His eyes had a wild look. Werner was confused at first until he recognized him, “Yabo! What happened to your hair?” So, this was the infamous John Yablonski (Yabo) that I had heard so much about. He was considered to be one of the most hardcore of the dirtbags. Yabo said that he had to get a haircut because his previously long hair was so tangled he couldn’t get a comb through it. He followed that with a sneering snicker as he helped himself to a Camel straight from my pack on top of Werner’s car. He asked me for a light. I envisioned him with long dreadlocks mixed with pine needles and could not get the image out of my mind. Werner introduced us and I listened in as he and Werner caught up.
After a few minutes, Yabo got distracted and started poking through Werner’s stuff in the open trunk of Werner’s car. Reaching in, he found a couple ice axes and grabbed them. He started brandishing them wildly in the air as if he were ice climbing. Then, with another snicker he walked over to a giant cedar tree 20 feet away and sinking the tools into the bark, he started climbing, jamming his toes in the thick bark. He went up at least thirty feet circling the tree then climbed back down. He was strong. He put Werner’s ice tools back in the truck and turned to us with another sneering snicker. Reaching over, he helped himself to another of my smokes and asked for another light. Yabo had the reputation of being a little bit crazy and pushing the limits. He was known to have had several close calls, and some felt he had an angel looking over him. His body shaking solos at his limit terrified his friends. Supposedly, he was soloing the 5.8 1st pitch of Magic Mushroom above Mammoth Terraces trailing a rope. He slipped heading to the Valley Floor. The rope he was trailing miraculously caught in a flake arresting his long fall. I saw him almost daily during the Spring of ’77 and I slowly got to know him. I have no idea where he stayed.
Yabo didn’t have much of his own gear and would often borrow what he needed. He was also known for not returning what he borrowed. I was warned by a lot of people. Yabo asked to borrow my frame pack to carry loads up for a Wall. I couldn’t bring myself to say no. He only wanted to borrow the frame. He took the clevis pins out and removed the nylon portion and put it in a corner of my big canvas tent. I made it very clear that I expected it back in the same shape as when I handed it to him and he assured me he would. A couple weeks later he told me he had put the pack frame back in my tent. He had just thrown the frame inside and I wasn’t happy about it. I hunted him down and asked him to put the pack back together per our agreement and much to my surprise, he did.
My friend Grant and I set up a top rope on Churchbowl Tree on a drizzly day. We were doing laps on the damp rock when Yabo wandered up offering to share a joint with us. Yabo didn’t have much, but he would share whatever he had, when he had it. He expected others to do the same thing. Chatting with him we learned that he had eaten a sugar cube and it was starting to hit him. We offered our rope to him before we pulled it. He stood up and started climbing without tying in. He was in tennis shoes and the rock was still damp. Grant and I watched him with fascinated horror as he climbed, afraid to look away. At the 5.10 crux he started shaking as his feet were slipping on the small footholds. After struggling for a bit, he reached over and grabbed both strands of our rope and hand-over-handed his way back to the ground. Grant and I were relieved. He turned around and with a snicker and asked us for a cigarette. After smoking, Yabo wandered off as I pulled our rope and coiled it.
I would often run into Yabo in the boulders. He was one of the strongest climbers I had ever met. It was impressive. It was sometime during that season that he found Midnight Lightning and realized it was climbable. By now, I was fully trained and knew to offer him a cigarette whenever he walked up. He often said outrageous things to see what kind of reaction he could get. I think it was his way to get attention. He liked to see what kind of reaction he could get. If nothing, he would step it up a notch. I was driving to the East Side with a high school buddy, and I pulled over to pick Yabo up. He was hitchhiking in front of the gas station by Camp 4. He needed a ride to Tuolumne. We squeezed him in and got on our way. He was doing his best to get a reaction from my friend. Not getting the reaction he wanted, Yabo started singing about dead babies. Well, he finally got the reaction he wanted. I think he terrified my poor friend. We pulled over for a restroom break and walked around a bit to get the blood flowing to our legs. My friend whispered asking if Yabo was a serial killer. I assured him he wasn’t and that he enjoyed saying crazy things just for fun. My friend wasn’t so sure, and he was relieved when we dropped Yabo off at the Tuolumne Grill.
In the early 1980’s, several climbers were invited to compete in ABC’s Survival of the Fittest. I watched it on tv in Mammoth Lakes with some climbing friends. Yabo was one of the competitors. He excelled in the talus run. He took off running down skipping along the tops of the boulders and leaving the pack behind. He had a huge lead and took a wrong turn. It took him a while to realize his mistake. He turned around and ran up to the wrong turn and continued to the finish line. During the interview of the winner of the race, the winner was asked who worried him the most during the race. The winner turned and pointed to John and said, “Him!” The camera swung over to Yabo as he rolled around in the dirt panting and wheezing. It was one of the funniest things I had ever seen on tv, and we were all proud of him.
In the late 1980’s Yabo was living in the Bay Area working for the climbing hold company Radwall. I would run into him at CityRock often when it first opened. He was climbing a lot again, mostly at the Pinnacles and at the gym. I saw him at a climbing competition at the Greek Theater in 1990. We spent some time catching up as we watched the competition. I think Yabo was sponsored at that time by 5.10. He had access to the prototype C4 rubber from 5.10 and he raved about how good it was. He gave me a piece to re-sole my shoes with and after that I wouldn’t climb in anything else. It seemed like he was happy and more grounded than ever before.
Yabo’s other love was bike racing. He was good at that too. I heard tales of him from other competitors. When the starting gun went off, a lone bicyclist would pedal up behind the peloton as the race started. The mysterious cyclist was not wearing a bib and the organizers couldn’t stop him. At the finish line, the cyclist wouldn’t slow his pace and kept on riding away. The racers started wondering who this guy was. Yabo consistently finished in the top 10 in every race. He became a bit of an urban legend.
His suicide in 1991 hit me really hard as it did many others. It was a complete surprise to me. He had a job and a girlfriend. I thought he was happy and doing well. I wish I could have seen it coming and done something to prevent it. Yabo was the kind of friend that would share his last cigarette or meal with you. He didn’t own much and never seemed to want to. He was an intense person that had a lot to give. I think his crazy antics were an act to get attention, respect and perhaps love. He, like all of us Yosemite climbers in the 1970’s felt lost in the real world. We were a bunch of misfits. Yosemite was a safe place for all of us to climb and meet like-minded people. Our little group was supportive of each other no matter how odd the person. Writing this, it is hard for me to believe it has already been 35 years since he passed. I still miss him.
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