After I chatted with Dean Fidelman for this story on his favourite unpublished work this summer time, a bundle arrived within the mail sizzling off the press from Stone Grasp Books. Throughout our name, he advised me Stone Grasp founder Mike Graham — his writer and lifelong buddy — would ship over just a few of the newest titles. One was Tobin, The Stone Masters and Me 1970-1980, which is Rick Accomazzo’s half biography of Sorenson, and half autobiography. I wrote about it right here. Tobin, The Stone Masters and Me was submitted to the Banff Movie and E book Pageant. The second is a reprinting of The Stone Masters, California Rock Climbers within the Seventies, compiled by Dean Fidelman and John Lengthy, which incorporates a whole bunch of gorgeous pictures. It has contributions from varied authors, together with Lengthy, John Bachar, Lynn Hill, Bruce Adams, Tobin Sorenson, and plenty of others.
[Editor’s note: The photos in this story are collected works by Rick Accomazzo, Dean Fidelman and Mike Graham]
Dean texted me Graham’s quantity, and I figured, if I had been fortunate, we’d chat for 20 minutes about his publishing enterprise. He picked up immediately, and that 20 stretched into two hours as we dove deep into his clothes firm, Gramicci Merchandise, importing the primary sticky rubber sneakers from Spain and partnering with John Bachar for distribution. We mentioned Mike’s lifelong dedication to climbing and browsing — he began each sports activities whereas nonetheless in highschool — and the way he not often tried a route greater than thrice and all the time strived for the onsight. “I may most likely depend the bolts I put in on perhaps my digits. It was all the time the final resort.”
His crew was tight – the game’s elite – and climbing these exhausting routes left an enduring impression on him. They lived and breathed climbing and their futures had been carved out of those early experiences. Lengthy spent a lifetime writing the whole lot from articles to books to screenplays about that impressionable interval. Lynn Hill grew to become the primary lady to climb 5.14 and the primary particular person to free The Nostril. Accomazzo co-founded The Entry Fund and continues to pen tales on the Stone Masters. Fidelman amassed one of many world’s largest Yosemite climbing picture collections and printed a number of coffee-table-size books. Graham took the gusseted crotch fashion lower present in martial arts pants and utilized it to climbing pants, constructing Gramicci right into a mainstream model.
As I write this, I’m wanting over at my inexperienced velvet chair with all 4 Stone Grasp Books piled on it. Titles which have come out for the reason that starting embrace: The Stone Masters, California Rock Climbers within the Seventies (2009 and reprinted in 2024); Stone Nudes, Artwork in Movement (2010); The Valley Climbers (2011); and Tobin, The Stonemasters and Me (2024).
Throughout my name with Graham, we talked in regards to the many large partitions he climbed and doing the boldest routes of the time, experiences so important to him that to this present day, he remembers the precise day and the accomplice he climbed them with. These experiences had been so lasting that he went again to essentially the most important strains along with his oldest son, Ian. This included one of many first 5.11s within the U.S. Valhalla, the three-pitch 5.11a that, when you may do it again within the early 70s, you’d earn your self a spot as a Stone Grasp.
He advised GQ in 2016: “It was a cockiness, a confidence that you’ve got since you survived this pitch when nobody else had been in a position to do it, and when you fall, you perhaps may have damaged your self for the remainder of your life, or died, and also you survive it.”
“It was 1974, and it was actual well-liked in Yosemite for European climbers to return over and declare the primary, you already know, French ascent of the Nostril or the primary Italian ascent of Salathé,” Graham tells me as we begin the interview.
“We had an actual kick over it,” Graham tells me from his house in Santa Paula in Southern California. “We thought, okay, what sort of ascent may we declare? And that’s once we got here up with the concept of the primary clear Italian ascent of Half Dome.”
Dennis Hennek, Doug Robinson, and Galen Rowell had made the primary clear ascent of the RNWF of Half Dome in 1973. Their daring feat earned them the duvet of Nationwide Geographic. Graham wished the coveted second clear ascent.
It was mid-summer, a time when afternoons had been heat and nights cool. Graham, seventeen on the time, and his companions Gib Lewis (18) and Rick Accomazzo (18) racked their hexes and nuts in Camp 4 beneath a thick haze of campfire smoke. “There may need been some beer or perhaps one thing else (I’m guessing pot),” they began joking about making up their Italian names. “Rick didn’t must do something along with his title as a result of he was Italian. We determined to name Gib Lewis Antonio Gibbo. And I’d all the time actually admired Emilio Comici, so, you already know, I’m Michelangelo Gramicci.”
“Everybody round Camp 4 began calling me Gramicci as a result of we claimed that ascent, and that title simply caught from then on.”
In 1983, Graham started buying the primary sticky climbing sneakers, Calzados Boreal S.L (Boreal for brief) Fires from Spain and importing them to the U.S., the place Bachar would then ship them to climbers from the again of his automobile.
“Bachar and I labored with a producer in Spain to introduce sticky rubber climbing sneakers to the world, which modified climbing footwear without end. In a bizarre manner, I believe it, like, ruined folks’s footwork,” Graham says of the distinction between Fires and the non-sticky choices of the time, together with Tremendous Graton EB’s, Calcaire, PA’s, and RD’s. Earlier than Fires, “you needed to be tremendous exact together with your ft.”
“I’m laughing whereas saying this, however all of us had good footwork due to climbing in these early sneakers. You get somebody with tremendous footwork, and then you definately put them in Fires, and, boy, the sky was the restrict with what you may do. Yeah, it modified issues a lot for good and dangerous.”
Everybody wished Fires and shipments had been purchased up even earlier than they arrived. “I’d get the shipments in from Spain,” Mike says, “and we had been normally offered out about three or 4 shipments forward. So, John would all the time simply always have some in his automobile that he gave to the individuals who had ordered them.”
In 1977, at age 21, Graham began making customized merchandise for folks, together with portaledges and alpine backpacks. He used them for the second and first steady ascent of Son of Coronary heart on El Cap and the second ascent of Horse Chute.
Earlier than utilizing his portaledges on Horse Chute (with with Ron Kauk) and The Son of Coronary heart (with Dale Bard), he made fifth ascents of Zodiac (with Ron Kauk) and the Defend (with Bachar and Kauk), additionally on El Cap, however he did these with hammocks. Graham remembers inserting ten RURPS in a single pitch on The Defend headwall.
Halfway up Son of Coronary heart, which parallels the Salathé Wall and ascends the proper aspect of the Coronary heart function, full with an enormous roof, the group deployed their ledges for the primary time. “They’re straightforward to place collectively, actually, when you understand how to do it. I may put mine collectively in, I believe, lower than 45 seconds,” Graham remembers.
Dale Bard struggled exhausting the primary time he used Graham’s portaledge. “We had been within the large arch overhang above the center,” Graham remembers. “I simply keep in mind Dale couldn’t put his ledge collectively, and man, he was cussing me out large time. He couldn’t determine learn how to do it. However we bought it collectively for him, and the following morning, he says, ‘Man, I had one of the best sleep in my life.’
Graham added, “I wouldn’t have wished to be up there with anybody however Bard. Dale was one of the best off-sized climber round, and that’s what that chimney stuff is up there. It was inconceivable to guard, particularly as this was earlier than massive cams. Dale was an excellent assist climber, too, so there isn’t a doubt about it. We’re actually near this present day.”
Through the late 70s, Graham adopted the climbing circuit from the U.S. to the French Alps. He remembers all the time operating into Yvon Chouinard throughout his travels, and Chouinard had even heard good issues about Graham’s portaledges. Impressed by his designs and realizing Graham was excited by stitching out of doors items, “he simply form of off the cuff mentioned, ‘you already know, when you ever come to Ventura and also you wanna arrange a stitching store,’ He goes, ‘I’ll throw you all of the enterprise you need.’”
Unannounced, Graham confirmed up in Ventura, California in 1978 along with his girlfriend. He remembers, “I walked within the Pacific Ironworks, and he was at his retail retailer there, and I got here up behind him, tapped him on the shoulder. He turns round, stunned I even confirmed up, and I am going, ‘right here I’m.’ Then he asks, ‘So What do you wanna do?’”
Chouinard recommended that Graham begin a stitching manufacturing unit, and at first, Graham helped him make his first climbing harnesses adopted by making packs. For a few years, he labored as a contractor for Chouinard Gear, and in 1980, Graham began dabbling in his personal designs. When Chouinard launched Patagonia, Graham continued serving to him make Polypropylene underwear.
“The very first thing I did was a sweatshirt. I additionally had some T-shirts and stuff and put some distinctive sample designs within the underarms so you may attain nicely with out your shirt mountain climbing up. That was the beginning of, like, the liberty of motion clothes.”
“By 1982, I began experimenting with clothes concepts. I wished to design one thing for climbers, and that’s how Gramicci’s gusseted climbing pants took place.” Graham carried over the ankle cuff and gusseted inseam designs from martial arts clothes.
When it got here to naming his firm, “I used to be torn between what to name it, and the title Stone Grasp got here as much as my head. However I assumed that it’s a bit of extra private if I simply name it Gramicci Merchandise.”
Subsequent got here the Gramicci avenue pants. Right this moment’s well-liked model is a trim, straight-legged model.
By 1998, REI knowledgeable Mike that Gramicci had turn out to be the primary model of their shops, outdoors their label. In 1999, when the corporate was doing $27 million in annual gross sales, Graham left the corporate and ten years later – after constructing his house and huge warehouse on his ranch and beginning a model in Asia known as Rokx – he began Stone Grasp Books.
To this present day, Graham resides in the identical space in California as he did when he began working for Chouinard.
“Dean Fidelman, John Lengthy, and I had been engaged on the Stone Masters California Rock Climbers within the Seventies manuscript,” Graham says. They had been “accumulating pictures and tales from that period, however they couldn’t discover anybody to publish it.” Patagonia Press wasn’t ; neither was Mountaineers Books. “ So, I mentioned, ‘Let’s do it ourselves,’ and that’s how Stone Grasp Books began.” It was nonetheless a tough manuscript, and nobody wished to publish it earlier than Graham bought concerned.
The trio would go on to make three books collectively. Their first title, The Stone Masters, California Rock Climbers within the Seventies, obtained the Grand Prize and Greatest Mountaineering Historical past Award on the 2010 Banff Movie and E book Pageant. Fidelman’s Stone Nudes, Artwork in Movement was subsequent, adopted by The Valley Climbers, Yosemite’s Vertical Revolution.
The place The Stone Masters showcases the 70s climbing period, with two free soloists ascending the 5.10a Reeds Direct in Yosemite, Valley Climbers is trendy, with Kevin Jorgeson on the 5.14d Daybreak Wall at sundown.
The gathering of pictures and essays is in the same format as Stone Masters however with a contemporary take. Pictures included are of Sean Jones on his latest 5.12s with rainbows and waterfalls within the background, Alex Honnold soloing 5.13, and tales by Beth Rodden, Paul Piana, Peter Croft, Hank Caylor, the late Scott Cosgrove, and the late Sean Leary. Lots of the tales are favorites from previous problems with Climbing Journal. Photograph credit embrace Mikey Shaefer, Ben Ditto, Jimmy Chin, and others.
Graham additionally did an e-book model of Lengthy’s basic title, Gorilla Monsoon.
“Not since George Meyer’s iconic Yosemite Climber (1979) has a single quantity captured the trendy ethos, in phrase, picture, and design, of the “Mecca” of world mountain climbing,” says the Stone Masters Books web site of Valley Climbers.
However not like Stone Masters, Valley Climbers didn’t promote as shortly as Graham anticipated. “We printed fairly just a few copies, but it surely didn’t begin to dump the shelf. And I may by no means actually clarify it,” Graham remembers.
For some time, as he checked out his monumental palette of Valley Climbers books in his warehouse, he thought they’d by no means promote out, nor would he even think about making a reprint. “These books, it’s a labor of affection,” he says. “You get to work together with your oldest pals and produce one thing that appears stunning, which is superior.”
Valley Climbers continues to be obtainable, however solely 400 copies stay out of a print run of 4,500. Nonetheless, because of renewed curiosity in his Stone Masters title, Valley Climbers is promoting once more. Graham tells me folks worldwide are shopping for all three books, and there’s a resurgence of curiosity in Valley Climbers.
“They’re treating it like a trilogy or a group,” he says.
