EDITION 58 - JUNE 7, 2026
Your window into the stories, history, and ongoing work to preserve Yosemite’s climbing legacy.
A Note from the Editor
After the storm at the end of last week cleared, the Valley quickly started to heat back up again. Temperatures reached into the low 90s at the end of this week, and will continue to hover in the mid 80s through the weekend. Most climbers have made their way up to Tuolumne and the High Sierra to seek cooler temperatures, with only a few determined wall teams still down in the Valley.
Search and Rescue has been keeping busy with the heightened visitation to the park. This week there were two major technical rescues within a 48 hour period - both for stranded hikers who had become cliffed out and called for assistance. One rescue occurred on Grizzly Peak and the other rescue occurred on the Sub Dome.
A huge new free route was completed on the north face of Middle Cathedral this week: Borealis (VI 5.13a, 23 pitches, 2200 ft.). Brandon Adams, accompanied by Trish Matheney, Brett Wines and Lance Colley for five days, finished the route from May 29 to June 4. The route begins on the first seven pitches of Gaia and then follows mostly independent free variations to the summit. Adams prioritized developing a high quality product for many to enjoy after him, putting in multiple seasons of effort establishing the route and finding the best free climbing path to the top. The route is a modern, well equipped, technical, bolted face route on high quality Middle Cathedral rock.
Also of note, Jordan Cannon sent all of Mt Watkins in a day on Monday June 1st, belayed and supported by Adam Monkaba. Cannon had put in a lot of work rehearsing and chalking / ticking the route and prehanging draws on the 12d pitch prior to their ascent. He also added rappel rings to most of the anchors to better facilitate retreat from the route.
For this week’s Founder’s Log, Ken Yager reminisces about time he spent together with the late great Walt Shipley and recounts some of his lightheartedly rebellious antics. Shipley was a prolific figure in Yosemite in the 80s and 90s, establishing bold big wall routes including the Pacific Ocean Wall on El Capitan, the Kali-Yuga on the northwest face of Half Dome, and Southern Belle on the south face of Half Dome.
Miles Fullman
Editor, YCA News Brief
Walt in a portaledge on Half Dome. Photo: John Middendorf
Walt Shipley
I first met Walt in 1985. Werner Braun introduced us in the parking lot of Camp 4. Walt had semi-curly sandy brown hair and a receding hairline. His eyes had a mischievous twinkle in them and his nose was slightly turned to the side. I would often see Walt at Degnan’s Deli which was still in its heyday. It was a climber’s hub at the end of the day. A place to find a partner, a place to celebrate one's climbing achievements, but also a place to share gossip over a beer or two. There was a popular saying “be there or be slandered”. The Deli was the only place in the Valley that sold Olde English 800 referred to as PCP in a can. There were many wild nights until they closed the Deli earlier to shut down the evening slander fests. Walt was the most animated storyteller I have ever met. Walt’s stories were legendary. He could remember every little detail of every experience. When he told a story, you felt like you were there. We would hang on every word.
Walt showed up at the Deli with Troy Johnson one day looking for someone to work the next day. He asked me if I was willing to go up to the El Cap Tree area and help switch a Peregrine Falcon egg with a laboratory hatched fledgling. He offered $200 and it sounded interesting and I said yes. It was quite an experience, both exciting and terrifying, and was the first time that I had shared a rope with Walt.
I told Walt about a thin steep finger crack next to a prominent tree that Grant Hiskes and I had checked out a year or two previously. We had hiked up the talus on the right side and rappelled down to the tree at the base of the crack. We had named it the Shree Tree. Grant and I had decided we didn’t have the energy for it at the time. Walt was intrigued and wanted to check it out. We racked up and went over to take a look. Rather than hiking up the talus and rappelling down, we decided to climb a prominent ramp leading up and left to the finger crack. The ramp looked like three pitches of easier 5th Class climbing. I led the first pitch and remember it being really mellow. Walt started off on the next pitch. It blanked out a bit in the middle and Walt fiddled around getting some gear in and then he continued on after asking me to watch him. It was a ramp and looked piss easy. When I followed the pitch, it surprised me how hard it was. It had a 5.11 section. I led the next pitch uneventfully to the tree at the base of the finger crack. It looked every bit as hard as I had remembered. It was pretty thin. Walt climbed up to me and looked at it. He decided he wasn’t interested in leading it either. We needed to get down. I dangled the 60-meter ropes down the overhanging wall below us and they didn’t quite reach. Uh oh, a bad sign. They appeared to be dangling right above the talus. I hoped it was close enough that rope stretch would be enough to reach the ground. At this point Walt tells me that I would have to figure it out on my own and go first. He had eaten some acid, and it was starting to hit him hard. Great!
I rappelled down and even with rope stretch was still about twenty feet short which was a huge disappointment. I did not want to prusik back up. There was a downed tree laying at an angle on the hillside about 25 feet away. I started kicking my legs up and down to start swinging back and forth. It took a while, but I was able to get enough momentum to swing over and grab the downed tree. With relief I unhooked from the rope and watched as they swung back underneath Walt. He had been watching me and wondered what the hell I had been doing. I yelled off rappel and he descended to the end of the ropes. I was still in the tree and was level with him as he was gently spinning 20 feet above the talus. He looked at me with a wild look in his eyes. He asked, “What did you do here, Yager?”. He didn’t like it. I told him I could either run down to get a rope to throw to him or he could start swinging and I would grab him when he got close enough. He started pumping his legs and was able to reach my outstretched arm as I hung from the downed tree. It had turned into quite an adventure. Jokingly, we named it the Rajneesh Ramp and called the area Bhagwan Buttress after our mutual friend Werner Braun. Bhagwan was Werner’s nickname at the time. Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh was the name of a prominent cult leader known for having 94 Rolls Royce’s.
I was working the tail end of a prevailing wage construction job in the Valley and needed someone to help me finish the punch list of items to finalize the contract. I was able to get Walt hired to help me. He was a great employee and worked hard. Walt had worked as an aeronautical engineer for Lockheed until he decided he would rather spend his life climbing. He was extremely intelligent. Walt was saving money for a climbing trip to Patagonia. After that winter he tore it up and had a fabulous climbing season. He climbed both Cerro Torre and Fitzroy.
Walt was quite a climber. He was a solid partner. He could climb hard aid and also free climb at a hard level. He soloed big walls, did first ascents, and free soloed at his limit. I never knew him to get into bouldering.
We were soloing at Manure Pile one day doing laps on After Six. He convinced me to solo behind him on Fecophilia, a 5.9 route I had never done before. I got crossed up with my hands on the crux of the first pitch and was trying to figure out how to extricate myself without falling. Walt dangles his foot in front of my face and says, “Grab my leg Yager”. I asked him to please move his leg. I did not want to pull him off too. I was able to climb down a move and reset my hands. I made it without any further problems. That was the last time I followed him on a free solo. Wasn’t really my thing.
I lived on a remote 80-acre parcel on the edge of the park boundary called Hazel Green for a couple years. To get to it, I parked in a turnout on 120 and either skied or hiked in about ¾ of a mile. Walt visited more often than anyone else. One evening my father and stepmother were visiting after it had snowed about 6 inches. As it was getting dark, we heard a knock on the door, and it was Walt. My dad was a physicist. Walt and he hit it off immediately and they had a long and animated conversation about Physics. After a couple hours Walt said goodbye and trudged back in the dark to his vehicle. My father asked me afterward, “Who’s Walt’s pharmacist anyway?”. My father was fascinated by him.
Walt was a good person, though often misunderstood. He stood up for his friends. If you needed help, he would be there. He sympathized with the underdog and was angry at any injustice. He was not afraid to call out a friend or foe if they were wrong. He was honest. He was bold, not only as a climber but in other ways also. He tended to get a little out of hand when drinking, much to the amusement of the others partying with him. Someone coined it the “Walt Show”. Walt always seemed to know what the limit was and how far he could push it. I remember him talking to a woman in the Lodge Bar once not realizing her boyfriend was in the restroom. When he returned, he did not appreciate Walt talking to his girlfriend. He wanted to fight him. Walt took off running out the door with the boyfriend chasing him. About 5 minutes later Walt walked in the door and sauntered through waving to us. The boyfriend entered and Walt took off running again. The boyfriend chased Walt through the Bar three more times before giving it up.
Walt was funny. He had a bit of the class clown in him too. He thrived on making people laugh. We both worked as climbing guides for the Yosemite Mountaineering School. Every two years we had to do a WFR recertification as an employment requirement. Grant Hiskes was teaching it using a meeting room in the Administration offices for Delaware North. It was a boring class for most of us. Walt made it a lot more fun. When we returned to class from a break, the CPR baby doll head was sticking out of the hanging skeleton’s pelvis like it was giving birth. Nobody noticed at first. Grant started teaching and writing on his whiteboard. We suddenly noticed the skeleton behind Grant. We started snickering until it turned to roaring laughter. Grant turned around annoyed and couldn’t help laughing either.
During the hands-on scenario part of the test, we went outside the building. Grant would take some of the students and paint them up as victims and give them instructions. When ready the rest of us would discover the victims and act as if it was a real scenario. We each had to be the team lead at least once instructing the others how to assist treating the person with the tools we had. We were graded on our decision making. Decisions were discussed in front of the class after each event. It became Walt's turn to be the lead and Grant handed him a bag with a few medical items to be Walt’s kit. He took out the items to inspect what he had to work with. Walt took a sling out of his kit and while Grant was talking, he slipped it through his legs and started running it back and forth like he was flossing his butt. Behind Walt was a window that belonged to the President of the concessionaire. Dan Jensen, the concessionaire President, was standing in that window watching Walt flossing. Dan turned, shaking his head and walked out of his office. None of us could hold the laughter in. That was the most memorable CPR class I ever took.
Walt and I did a dozen or so first ascents. One in particular stands out. I climbed a crack on the left side of Parkline Slab in January of 1989 with Grant Hiskes and Pat Ranstrom. We named it Hayley Anna after my eldest daughter that had recently been born. It was several months later as I was putting my rack together for a climb and I was missing half of my cams. After months of searching, I finally realized that they had to be at the base of HayleyAnna or on the ledge at the top of the climb. It had gotten stifling hot and I was having difficulty finding someone that would go up with me. I asked Walt and he agreed.
We went light because of the heat. Hayley Anna was only 5.8 so we decided to bring a nine-millimeter rope and a small amount of gear. We hiked up in a morning warm breeze that promised 100-degree heat later in the day. I was bummed that the cams were not at the base, and I was a little worried that they were gone for good. Walt noticed another possible climb to the right of HayleyAnna. It followed an incipient crack up and left to the arete which appeared to be featured to the big ledge above. It looked challenging. Walt was really into giving it a go. I pointed out that we didn’t have a bolt kit, had minimal gear and a 9-mil rope. Walt was insistent and offered to lead the first pitch and if he could get an anchor in, I could lead the arete. I felt like I was safe because it did not look like there was anywhere to place gear, so I agreed. I flaked out the rope and put him on belay. Walt ran it out shaking through an unprotected 5.10b section and liebacked to the arete. He fiddled around for quite some time and then yelled off belay. Damned if he didn’t get a decent cam placement in a pocket and a tied off knob. I had no choice but to climb up to him. I led the 5.9 arete above without incident. I was only able to get one piece of protection about 50 feet above Walt. I was relieved to find my cams laying right next to the tree I had rappelled off of months earlier. It was an exciting route, and we named it after the Bond movie Dressed to Kill. It could have used several bolts. Several years later, Sean Jones did a direct start to the arete, and it currently does have bolts for protection.
Walt's stories were the best. One of my favorites was with his climbing buddy Hi Zorenz. Hi and Walt were both engineers and had gone to college together where they picked up climbing. They drove up to Yosemite to climb their first wall. They chose the East Face of Washington Column. Walt was leading the 4th pitch off Overnight Ledge. He had just placed a bomber number 10 Hex into the crack and clipped his lead line in. He was irritated because there was a lot of tension on his haul line. He pulled on the haul line and saw that it was stacked underneath the haul bag on the ledge. A little pissed, Walt yanked on it hard to get some extra slack. With horror he watched the haul bag roll right off the ledge. His first thought was dammit now we are going to have to retreat. His second thought was realizing the haul bag was attached to him. He grabbed the Hex and slipped his wrist through the sling. He held on for dear life while waiting for the impact. It fell to the end of the rope straight onto his Swami belt. Walt’s back was injured and they had to retreat anyway.
Walt occasionally did automotive work for a few of the concessionaire employees. Mainly installing new brakes or replacing spark plugs, etc… He did some work on Darlene’s vehicle while she was working at the bar. When he finished, he took the car out to test drive it. For some goofy reason he decided to drive it through Leidig Meadow on the bike path. He drove it over the Swinging Bridge then drove back to the Lodge Bar and gave Darlene her keys back. She found out about it later and was not pleased. Walt liked to push the limits. Mostly harmless stuff, though some didn’t see it that way. Walt tended to do outrageous things, pushing it to the limit but he knew when to back off. People enjoyed most of his antics.
Early in our friendship, Walt worked for WestCon, the contractor that I worked for and the contractor that I had convinced to hire Walt. WestCon had a designated area in the former Camp 6 that was to be used as a work yard to store materials and heavy equipment for the fenced-in construction. Back then, the NPS was lenient and would let the contractor’s employees stay onsite for longer projects. The main excuse being 24-hour security for tools and equipment and partly due to lack of housing within an hour radius. Office trailers were moved in and hooked up with power, phone, and water. The yard was about the size of a football field and was surrounded by 6-foot-high cyclone fencing with green privacy cloth. It was between the employee tent cabins and the river. It was very private and had been used on several construction contracts.
During that contract there were four people living in the yard. I had housing outside the park and would commute as did several of the other employees. Dan Condon was the Superintendent of the job, and he had a single wide mobile home moved in. It was luxurious. Rex Dabling was an equipment operator and the Foreman. He had towed a smaller trailer that he lived in. Keith Guy, a local climber, lived in a camper shell in his pickup truck. Walt had a van he lived in. This worked out well for both Keith and Walt. They had a semi-legal place to stay hidden away from public scrutiny.
Most of the contract involved installing underground primary electric encased in red concrete to protect it from damage during future excavation. We jumped in and out of trenches all day long shuttling 20-foot lengths of conduit to the trench and gluing them together inside the trench and wiring them on racks for concrete spacing. It was brutal work, especially in bad weather. We worked ten hour days and would often gather at the Deli afterwards to share a few beers before we headed home. It often got a little loud and the party would move over to the yard. We had many chicken barbecues and small parties in the yard next to the firepit. One night, a party got a little out of hand. The yard was full of wooden spools or reels that were over 6 feet tall. They had been used to transport the heavy-duty electrical wire that was pulled into the conduit we had installed. There were dozens of empty reels sitting about. At some point Keith and Walt decided to try log rolling on them. We all took turns logrolling them around the yard looking like horseless roman chariots. It was quite entertaining. After mastering that, Walt challenged Keith to a jousting duel. They made makeshift lances and got on their reels. They faced off against each other, and someone yelled to start the bout. It was surprising no one was hurt. It started to get rowdy and I left for home. As things escalated, Walt lit some of the reels on fire and rolled them around the yard. The wood was super dry, and it sent flames 30 feet in the air lighting up the whole yard. It wasn’t long until the Rangers showed up and shut it down. Jobsite camping was shut down on future construction contracts.
Walt took up kayaking while he was working at the Mountaineering School. It was no surprise that he pushed himself and was soon running Class 4 rapids all over California. He ran Yosemite Creek once exiting just past the bridge above Yosemite Falls. He continued to boat until he drowned while running Dinkey Creek in a new kayak. His death hit me hard. We had worked together for years. He and I climbed a dozen routes or more and all were first ascents. He liked adventure and if he couldn’t find any, he would do something zany to relieve his boredom. Just before he passed, he was planning on buying a house in El Portal. I was in escrow on one just down the street and was looking forward to being neighbors with him. Shortly after I moved in, he passed. The community was shocked. Walt had pushed it for so long that we had gotten used to it, it was a surprise to us even though we had accepted the possibility many years previously. Many of today’s climbers don’t know who he was. He was a colorful part of Yosemite’s past. Walt was a LEGEND!
PHOTO OF
THE WEEK
Manley Feinberg and his son, Manley Feinberg on The Shield headwall this week. Photo: Miya Tsudome
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