Oral history interview of Larry Coats, conducted by Tallie Casucci (audio and transcript)

Larry L. Coats (b. 1955) grew up in northwestern New Mexico downhill ski racing, backpacking, and rock climbing. As a college student, Larry moved to Flagstaff to become a better climber. Quickly Larry and his friends started developing new wilderness, minimal impact, traditional climbs in New Mexico, Colorado, and other Western states. In 2004, Larry moved with his wife to Salt Lake City and became an Adjunct Professor in the University of Utah's Geography Department. While in Flagstaff, Larry served as a mountaineering guide for several scientific expeditions in the Grand Canyon looking at condor fossils in caves. As Larry learned more about the science, the Steve Emslie and Jim Mead encouraged him to go back to school for Quaternary Sciences at Northern Arizona University. Larry continues to do research with Steve and Jim in Antarctica and the Snake Range in Nevada related to the Ice Age climates by utilizing remains and fossils from condors, pack rats, and Adélie penguins. Most recently Larry is helping cavers map a massive cave system in Nevada that Larry helped to discover.

LARRY COATS Salt Lake City, UT An interview by Tallie Casucci November 14, 2022 Rock Climbers Oral History Project -1- Tallie Casucci 00:01 Good morning. It's November 14, 2022. I'm Tallie Casucci. And I'm talking with Larry Coats at the Marriott Library in Salt Lake City about rock climbing. So to get started, Larry, will you introduce yourself and tell me about what it was like growing up? Larry Coats 00:18 Okay. Yeah, my name is Larry Coats, as you mentioned, and I grew up. I was actually born in Oklahoma, but I grew up in northwestern New Mexico. And that actually got me started on all sorts of climbing related things because we lived, you know, right on the edge of town and in a cliffy environment. And as kids, we just had the freedom to go wander around and, and go everywhere. So essentially, we were scrambling around on lousy Cretaceous age sandstone really early on and got started there. Probably where I really started thinking about more technical ends of things. My father's was a very avid fisherman, and had a boat and went to Lake Powell quite a bit as the lake was filling up. And we would scramble around obviously on all the sandstone there as well. But after watching a I think it was a Spencer Tracy movie, "The Mountain" I believe it was called, we got some boat rope out and started trying to figure out how to rappel. The fact was that they just let us. Even though we're on a short cliff, and I suppose could have gotten hurt but we kind of wrapped the rope all around us the way we thought these guys were doing it in the movie and rappelled down this cliff. Yeah, about junior high I guess that would have been for age. Tallie Casucci 01:46 Wow. When did you learn to actually rappel and climb? Larry Coats 01:53 So my, my outdoor stuff in high school was downhill ski racing, so Alpine racing and we were part of the Purgatory Ski Team in Durango. So we would travel up that was only like 40 minutes from Farmington. And at the when I finished high school and didn't really have anywhere to go. I went enrolled at Fort Lewis College in Durango, and actually that summer, one of my ski racing buddies had found out how to rappel so I had some Goldline rope and some slings and harnesses and stuff. So we went out onto all the cliffs around Farmington rappelled off and we're doing flips and all the cool things we could think of and pretty much exhausted that in a very short period of time, it was really boring. And then when I went to Fort Lewis one of the first classes I enrolled in was rock climbing with Dolph Kuss, the ski coach up there taught this climbing class. And immediately upon enrolling in this class, I'd already had the Chouinard Catalog and knew all about clean climbing versus pitons and Doff taught old school piton craft. And so I got in this big battle with him about we should be using chocks and not pitons. And so he ended up splitting the class in half and basically giving me half of the class. Even though I was just brand new to climbing myself to, to go teach him how to use chocks. And then he took them and did his usual thing with the other half of the group. And so right away on X Rock and Durango, I started trying to figure out how you protect and how you climb. So that was, and then I pretty much switched over, we were headed skiing one time and didn't go skiing stopped and went climbing instead. And it kind of showed, you know, just through the breaks on my Alpine career and ended up turning into a climber at that point. -2- Tallie Casucci 03:55 What were some of your memories from skiing before you completely swapped sports? Larry Coats 04:03 Well, I mean, our big thing in skiing was downhill. We, at Purgatory that the college team, the Fort Lewis team, who had created this very fast downhill course on Lower Hades, and as high school kids, we were actually training on this course and skiing this course. And it was, you know, essentially way over our heads, it was way too fast. When we first saw it, we thought we could never ski this thing. But eventually it's just like, you know, wiring a climb or something as you work on it. We started sectioning, and then pretty soon could non-stop it and then pretty soon could actually kind of go pretty fast on it. And so that was the one discipline that we were pretty good at when we travel around the state because the other downhill courses were not nearly as fast and so we were, you know, felt completely comfortable with the speeds that these other downhill courses at Buttermilk or Sunlight or something like that and so we did pretty well at downhill. In slalom. I always was terrible at because I had never could think fast enough to react to slalom so giant slalom and downhill were my main events. Tallie Casucci 05:15 What type of equipment were you using? And did you make some switches as the technology has changed over the year? Larry Coats 05:25 Yeah, that technology hadn't changed a bunch by the time I got out of it. I was on K2s, just like I still have a pair of K2s for backcountry skis and yeah, they were, you know, they were pretty old school. Slalom racing stuff. So I had 205s were my slalom skis. 210s were my giant slaloms and 220s were my proper length and nowadays Yeah, I don't have any idea. I know that the slalom skier ski a much shorter ski now, but I don't know what downhills are like or anything. No idea about racing technology today. Tallie Casucci 06:05 And then were you recruited for the ski team? Or did you just Larry Coats 06:09 In high school? No, we just joined. We skied up there. And so it was a matter of just paying the membership fee and joining. But I did when I started at Fort Lewis, I was trying out for the Alpine team and I was briefly on the Alpine team, but right away their, their work ethic was a bit much for me. And then when I started blowing off mandatory training sessions to go climbing that was kind of the end of that. I was off the team after that. Tallie Casucci 06:42 Were there any other activities from when you were growing up that were really impactful besides the skiing and teaching yourself how to rappel? Larry Coats 06:53 -3- Yeah, really, primarily that just outdoor stuff. And really even things like backpacking, my dad decided to get us all into backpacking and bought us all Eddie Bauer equipment and, and even that I didn't like very much. But when I then started becoming a climber and started realizing I needed all these skills, I realized I already had a lot of them, I knew how to run a little camp stove and knew how to camp out and do all these kinds of things. So it turned out to be a benefit. But at the time, I wasn't that wild about it. Tallie Casucci 07:27 What initially drew you to climbing? Larry Coats 07:34 I mean, initially, probably the excitement part of rappelling, I mean, that looked kind of thrilling. But as I said, we very quickly exhausted everything that's thrilling about rappelling. And then we started looking at climbing to see how that, you know would maybe fit into that. But it really wasn't until I went out and started really climbing a lot more and scaring the heck out of myself that I ended up realizing that there was really something much, much deeper going on with climbing that it was just satisfying, something that I'd never scratch, I'd never itched before I'd never scratched. This is the way to put it Tallie Casucci 08:22 What is that itch? Larry Coats 08:24 I guess now that what I would summarize it is just wilderness, just going places other people can't get. And especially with the crowded situation we're in today, I still kind of pride myself on that of just finding places that that really, you can't just go to. They require a toll to get there. And that's something that climbing really is. So again, long, long Alpine stuff is definitely my favorite thing to get up high and multipitch way up, way up in the air and, and generally, you know, fairly long approaches and descents and all that. So just really something to just go places that the average person can't go. But that wasn't clear to me at first, it was more that kind of macho thing, I think. But it's become much more clear over the years. Tallie Casucci 09:22 Yeah, it's kind of evolved. That's neat. So tell me about teaching students how to climb when you were still kind of a beginner yourself? Larry Coats 09:38 It's funny, because teaching, I think is something that I've always kind of had in me for all sorts of things. And so it really is an application of what I do in the classroom, I think is kind of the same thing nowadays of just being able to break things down into smaller digestible pieces and really present it. So I really don't have much memory of how effective I was as a teacher at that time, but I do clearly remember Dolph, kind of separating the classes and just saying you go do your own thing to just get rid of me. So I think I remember mostly top-roping, and then maybe putting in some, you know, some chock anchors to demonstrate things so. -4- Tallie Casucci 10:28 So tell me a little bit about your educational journey, because now you're a professor. Was that initial, "Fine, go teach these kids free climbing. Good to get rid of you." do you think that contributed to that interest? Larry Coats 10:45 No I don't think so. No, I'm actually on that end of it. For a while when I was in Flagstaff, I of course, wanted to be a mountain guide and, and thought it you know, instructor and guide would be a really good thing to be and you know, of course, now I realize what, what a bad idea. You want to destroy the thing you love then definitely become a guide. But that that was not part of it. So really, no, I. So, you know, to kind of clarify when I went to actually, probably the simplest thing would be to put this kind of chronologically So, I ended up at Fort Lewis, I took the climbing class, I started climbing at the local crags with and met a bunch of the older folks that were there, which some of them were professors at school and one of them was actually a professor that I was supposed to be going to his class and I would blow off his class and then see him later in the afternoon. So it's really kind of a weird layer. But so I really very quickly you know, started getting my skills up, started figuring out how to stand on holds and pull from things and so as far as a top roper, I was pretty good, you know, learned fairly quickly and young, so lots of energy and pizzazz to throw at it. And then I convinced myself that I was a really good climber and so I started putting the numbers on the climbs around Durango to what I was, I was a good 5.9 climber you know, and that was, I was sure that within three or four months of starting to climb. And then we took a spring break trip to Granite Mountain, Arizona, Prescott, Arizona. And we heard about it you know, and heard that it was this fantastic place with all this really good rock and we had this kind of hit list of all these climbs were going to do and they were only rated like 5.8s so they couldn't be that bad. And we went down there and I just was completely obliterated. I was I could not do anything that I thought I could do. I finally one of the more formative moments were on the Front Porch which is one of the little meeting spots at the at the crag and I said "oh, I'm so sick of this I'm just gonna go around the corner and do this 5.6 this chimney route you know just I can at least do a 5.6" and one of the locals from Phoenix, Larry Treiber looked up at me said "mind if I come watch?" [laughs] That was a very important formative lesson when the locals asked you if they can come watch, you've just stepped into it. So of course I went up on this thing to multiple leader falls just on the first 30 feet and finally got into the chimney and saw that the chimney was just going to be this horrendous run-out Yosemite thing with no gear and back down with my tail between my legs and so went back to Durango furious about you know, the ratings and how unfair it was. And "I'm never going back to Granite Mountain again. I've never going to Arizona, that's terrible." And of course, within a week, I was like, "Okay, this is where I need to move." I moved to Flagstaff to climb at Granite Mountain all the time and figure that out. And so then I started working on getting my grades up, but it was you know, second year of college to be able to at least get to that C benchmark C level to be able to transfer and transferred to NAU [Northern Arizona University] and that's where you know climbing really took off at that point. Tallie Casucci 14:31 Tell me about moving to Flagstaff and climbing at Granite Mountain all the time. Larry Coats 14:38 -5- Yeah, well I actually love Flag and I say this all the time to whenever we've talked to people up here about moving up here and they're like "Aren't you just like to be in Salt Lake where the climbing so good?" And I'm just like, like "Flagstaff has about 50 times better climbing than Salt Lake does." Sorry, but it really does. Because it has to everything, it has all these volcanic rocks so these beautiful columnar basalt areas and then these, these coarser grained rock that climbs more like granite volcanic areas and then Sedona with all the towers and the Grand Canyon with all the temples, and quartzite over by Strawberry and Granite down at Granite Mountain. I mean just everything, every kind of rock, every kind of setting, every kind of climbing that that I love is all there. And so yeah, moving in and actually speaking to your mentor thing. When I moved there, then for school got there in the fall, knew that the Alpineer was the climbing shop I had to go in and introduce myself at the Alpineer. And I was as I was walking up this little skinny guy comes walking out of the Alpineer and says hi to me, greets me really friendly. And I heard his name was Scott. And so "Oh, this is Scott" and I and I already knew about some of the famous names of the people in there. But at this point, this little skinny guy, in my mind couldn't be a famous climber. He had to just be some enthusiast you know, because a little skinny guy, you know, climber would be a big, strong strapping guy. And so he invited me out to Elden that afternoon just because I said, Oh, I'm a climber, or I'm trying to learn how to climb you know, and, and so I just came out there and when I arrived, I had to do something at school. So I arrived a little late. And as I came up, he was just finishing putting up a new route. And as he topped out, he turned around and said, "Well, it's 5.10, but it's a pretty easy 5.10." And all of a sudden, just exploded that I realized, oh my god, this is Scott Baxter. This is not just Scott, this is this guy is a famous climber. And he just casually led a new 5.10 without even thinking about it. And all of a sudden, you know, here's my just, you know, exploding brain about how, how cool this is, and that, you know that. And I didn't even try it. They gave me a top rope. And I, I climbed the lower portion, but I just traversed off because I was just like, "No, no, I'm not ready for this kind of thing at this point." And I wouldn't have been able to climb it anyway, it was technical jamming, but it was just but he went on to really be become my mentor. And he, you know, I really I attribute him for pretty much the way I climbed today is because of Scott. That was that mentorship began very early. Tallie Casucci 17:32 What are some things that Scott taught you? Larry Coats 17:35 The whole thing was safety. And that's the whole thing that I have always pushed in, in teaching climbing is that you need to know enough safety to not get killed learning how to climb. So rather than a bunch of techniques and a bunch of stuff that I see people now with things hanging off their harnesses all this specialized equipment when they're brand new, and they don't really know how it all works. It's like no, no, no, no, no back-up, you need to have the simplest package and figure out how to stay safe. And then when you start developing the need for the specialty stuff. Get it then. And that's something that I think is, you know, again, it's being missed out on a lot. I see a lot of people that are learning some very bad habits right off the bat, like simul-rappelling. Good example of that are up in the Wind Rivers watching this young couple from BYU or a couple of women rappelling simultaneously not realizing that if either one of them makes a mistake, they're both going to die. And they did not know that. I mean, they were truly that naive about what they were doing that it just seemed perfectly reasonable. And I was just like, not a good way to learn. Bad. Really the worst. -6- Tallie Casucci 18:59 So then you continued in school and climbing around there? Larry Coats 19:07 And so that that really led to probably the strongest partnership of my, my climbing career. Dugald Bremner, that if you've heard of Prescott College in in Prescott, Arizona was an outdoor emphasis school, and actually that year, so this was '75 I guess. They had been they'd taken to court on some kind of fraudulent debt or something and they ended up being bankrupted. And this whole unit, this whole school basically had to shut down and Dugald had already done a year and a half, I guess at Prescott College, and now there wasn't a Prescott College. So he showed up at NAU that fall. And I came in the climbing shop and saw him looking at the guidebook. So I knew this was somebody who was a climber. But he had been working fire crew all summer. So his hair at his head was shaved. And of course, I was kind of a hippie guy. So I looked at him, I thought I don't know if I want to talk to this guy or not. He looks kinda weird. And then he, I said something about going climbing. And he said, of course, you know, well, can I go and then I got to know him. And of course, he was, you know, very motivated, like I was and was better than me. So it was the perfect match. And so we went on to, that's when we started really making trips to Granite Mountain and really started piecing things together and figuring out you know, how to actually climb these routes, rather than just get spit off of them. And doing a lot of, you know, starting to probe into first ascents and finding things around Flagstaff that hadn't been done and, and that sort of stuff. Tallie Casucci 20:53 Yeah, can you tell me a little bit about maybe some memorable first ascents? Larry Coats 20:58 Well, the the big things in in Flag were really the Sedona Towers. So they're, you know, it's a sandstone area. There's lots and lots and lots of pinnacles, all around, including, you know, some stubby ones that aren't particularly obvious to really slender, you know, Castleton looking things that stick up. And a number had been done the first the first ascents actually were done by [Bob] Kamps and [Dave] Rearick and [Yvon] Chouinard. And people like that back in the earliest '60s, but, and then there'd been kind of a few kind of offbeat people along the years that because again, hard rock was where everybody realized, you know, you could really push yourself and put in good protection and stuff. And soft sandstone was still kind of weird. It wasn't, it wasn't something that was done a lot. And so, for us, you know, discovering Sedona and starting to really hike around and find new things was just tremendous. And so just being able to go up and you know, start working on these, these new towers, and they're always, you know, had plenty of adventure, because there'll be some bad rock here and there and, you know, and things that you're questioning protection on and, and things like that, but it was fantastic. And so really, that's what we that's what we spent most of our kind of first ascent efforts on was, was on the sandstones. Tallie Casucci 22:26 Yeah, how would you prepare for the climbs, especially dealing with the less stellar sections? -7- Larry Coats 22:35 Really, what I would say is, is at that time, of course, there wasn't a choice on active gear, it's all passive gear. And, again, what I think is, is terribly important and that a lot of modern climbers, maybe you're missing out on is learning passive gear initially, because it can be really, really solid in you know, if you've got closing down cracks that close toward the front, it can be you know, just as solid as anything can be even in poor rock. And so really, we mastered that, obviously, it's in sandstone, a lot of wide cracks. So we had tube chocks and six and eight inch tube chocks that you would drag up to try to find a place to fit and occasionally it'd be too parallel, but usually, there was some kind of pocketing thing that you could get something into. So we worked really hard on protection, and that was something I always I've always been kind of a technologically oriented person. So always the challenge to me is how to get good gear and good protection, and not ever just blow it off. I think part of my really, safety over the years has been I never considered myself a terribly good climber. So it was better to be really, really safe knowing that I could fail rather than thinking that you know, all I can do this, I can just go up and do it. Just like no, I'll probably fall. I guess I need good gear. Tallie Casucci 24:06 So you're not running things out? Larry Coats 24:08 Not very often. Tallie Casucci 24:11 Okay Larry Coats 24:11 Couple of notable exceptions was on the Klondyke Wall, a remote, big granite thing in eastern Arizona, down near Safford. And Scott Baxter had done the first ascent of it. And we went down to do the second ascent of it. And the first time tried to do it as a big wall which was really a mistake and dragged a bunch of stuff up there and didn't get anywhere and then went back with Dugald and another friend [Ross Hardwick] to do it, you know, when we were much fitter, and I was leading the crux crack and was just climbing great, you know, really, really feeling solid and went up and put in this sideways hex again just as bombproof as it could possibly be in the slot and then took off I'm kind of thinking, you know, I could just run it out to the top, it was gonna go easily and went up to where the thing kicked back and angle and threw my arm in and flexed it and actually wedge myself really tightly in the crack. And then tried to figure out how to do the next moves and kind of took that jam out. And then suddenly realized I was in this wide-ish piece that I just couldn't really do much with and then suddenly realized I was going to fall off. And again, you know, the panic took over, if I had just stuck my arm back in and wedged it, I could have figured out another piece of gear and then been fine. But instead I just panicked, lost all control, fell off, the sailing back down, the pitch almost ended almost at the belay just dangling above with the belay, gear sling up around my neck. And immediately Dugald said, I said, "I don't know if I can go back up there." And Dugald said, "I'll lead it." He grabbed the gear and ran up and did it. And so that actually, that was the longest fall I ever took, and really kind of shattered me for a while that I was, I was very, I anytime I'd get at all run out, I get very, very nervous. And it took a while -8- to really get over that. But then I just decided that was, you know, a bad idea. Don't ever fall don't ever do that again. And I never have Tallie Casucci 26:26 How big of fall was that? Larry Coats 26:29 Probably 35 or 40 feet. It was, again, it was close enough to the ledge that that was the bad part. The catch was perfect again, and I have described what it feels like to get caught on a long fall. And it's like a really high performance sports car. When you really hit the brakes. It is not brutal. There's no shock load or anything. It just stops you start feel the cushioning and then stop. It's perfect. So not scary, but hitting something would be. Tallie Casucci 26:58 Yes. Did you ever have any other scary or close calls in your climbing career besides that, getting kind of close to the ledge on that fall? Larry Coats 27:18 There's a Sierra story that we I guess kind of introduce you a little to the climbing culture in Arizona. They are the Northern Arizona climbers are based around Flagstaff and Prescott. Very much like minds, you know, wilderness climbers, minimal impact, that sort of stuff. There's the Tucson climbers. And again, this is way back in the day. I have no idea what these divisions are like today. And again, very similar wilderness ethic long approaches, minimal bolting, you know, just whatever you can do. And then there were the Phoenix climbers, and the Phoenix climbers, lots of bolting, at this time using chalk which was the big no no. And, you know, just all these things. So really, the Phoenix climbers and us the Tucson and us got together got along really well. And the Phoenix climbers were always kind of these, you know, different strokes sort of people that were a little bit standoffish, and we were standoffish to them, et cetera. But so anyways, right, we, we did a lot of things with the Tucson climbers. And we had planned this trip out to the Sierra. And again, we're trying to become alpinist, so our plan is this is a November trip. We're going to climb the Mendel Couloir which is this big ice climb and in the Sierras, that it's a Chounaird ice climbing book [Climbing Ice by Yvon Chouinard] and stuff. So it's, it's something that we really want to go do. And it's one of these dry years in the Sierra, there's no snow yet. It's just, you know, it's cold basically, but not even that cold. And so we show up at the trailhead in tennis shoes with, you know, huge packs on and just go running up the trail, you know, to the Marcall to get to Mendel and of course none of us really have a clue where we are we have some maps but we don't really know what we're doing and especially the scale of the Sierra is so huge that we're kind of lost so we finally get to this campsite we look over this ridge and see what we think must be the Mendel Couloir it's this big ice water ice gully in the middle of this face and it's like "wow, it looks lower angle than we thought it was gonna be especially toward the top where it's supposed to be steep." We're like, "don't let that worry us." So we go back to camp and somebody's finally looking at the maps and gone we aren't over the Marcall yet. That's That's Mount Lamark. You know Mendel is clear over this next, this next pass and down in the next valley, which I now I've been there and know, quite a bit better. But at this point, we're like, "oh, okay, so just this stupid ice climb that, you know that it'll be really easy to do." And we meanwhile, during the night or the evening, there had been this big -9- show of cirrus clouds marching over, which I now understand is the arrival of a warm front that in Sierra, you really need to pay attention to. And we didn't, and we get up in the morning, and it's been snowing for, you know, since midnight. Dumping snow, there's already you know, six or eight inches on the ground. And we've left gear, we've hiked into the base of this, this ice climb and left gear at the base. So we're going to go collect this gear, and everybody else is tearing down the camp, and we're going to hike out before the storm gets too bad. And so Steve Grossman from Tucson and myself start walking and I mean and we're just totally in this world, it's blizzarding. So we've got goggles on and balaclavas and it's just, we aren't talking because you can't really even communicate, we're just walking along to get to the base. And somehow walking along to get to the base, we both convinced ourselves that the best thing to do would be to go do the climb because "it's a stupid, easy climb," right? And so it would be make sense to just go out and do the climb and then come back to camp and tear down and go home. And so without even speaking a word, we get there and we just start we've flaked out the rope we just tie in to start climbing. And immediately it starts to become apparent that this isn't going to work very well, because now there's like, you know, two and a half feet of snow over the over water ice. And your crampons won't even really bite the water ice because it's so hard. But there's nothing in the loose snow on top to really pack down. So you're kind of scraping down the ice with all this loose snow on top of it and you can't really swing an ice axe, because it just is deadened by the snow before it even gets down to where it needs to penetrate the ice. And so we're just flailing up this thing, roped together, but no intervening protection. And I start thinking about avalanches. I'm like, oh, you know, this stuff is really loose and just piling up on this water ice, it seems like it'll slide off, and then I start seeing, you know, little slough type things getting bigger and bigger on both sides. And I start creating this, this little story in my head that if it you know, if an avalanche comes down, I'm gonna lean down and, and slam into the ice and it'll pass over my head and then I'll be okay. And about, then the whole wall in front of me is moving. And I do exactly that. And it does kind of pass over me and I stand up and scream at Grossman, you know, "get an anchor" this is you know, we're in the middle of an avalanche zone. And so he heads up this side gully. And again, everything's covered with snow. So finding some rock to get an anchor and is really quite a quite an ordeal. And he finally gets an anchor in and I come up and now all of a sudden we're just in it because to go down is going to involve exposing ourselves to more and more of this avalanche threat that's getting more and more serious things are starting to run bigger and bigger. To continue up the easy gully, is a gully that's lowering an angle. So it's really loading and would be, you know, stuff that could carry you all the way down the gully. But we look off to the left and there's this steeper branch of the gully that spindrift avalanching. So it's not, it's not loading. And suddenly, we realize our only choice is to go over there and head up this thing. And Grossman has never really been in crampons before. He's a master rock climber, but he's not an ice climber at all. And we're, we're sitting there, you know, free soloing on mixed ground with crampons. And Grossman is too and you know, there really wasn't any other option. So we finally get up into the steeper gully and it just keeps getting more and more difficult. And, again, we can't really communicate that we're now breaking it into pitches and belaying but as you are following, you're kind of throwing gear on every old way and it's getting kind of tangled up and more and more. So every pitch you're having less and less gear available to be able to leave because it just keeps getting tangled up in the in the previous person's gear and you follow and they you don't have time to really sort it out. You're just like, you know as soon as they get there you're taking off to try to keep moving. And at some point in there, I realized, "okay, you know, we're gonna die that we've really overstepped it, we're gonna die." And so it's like, "Okay, so what's your option here? You just sit down and wait to die, you just sit down on the ledge and go, - 10 - 'Okay, I just wait until I freeze to death.'" And then I'm like, "Well, that seems kind of pointless. I guess we might as well keep trying the next pitch." And that was literally how the whole day unfolded as we just kept, kept going. Because we couldn't figure out anything else to do. We couldn't rap off we you know, it was there was no option but up. And the crux pitch was that little strip of water ice on a vertical cliff that I had to. And I had really no gear that there was a crack down below and I had took the widest thing I had, which was a big stopper and turn it sideways and slotted it into the old and the narrowest part of this crack. Really, it was not real protection. But it was way below me anyway. And I just had to do this thing. And it's the hardest ice moves I'd ever done. And Grossman's down there belaying me and I don't know if you know, he doesn't know what's going on, he can't hear me or see me or anything. And then after doing it, I'm now just in this snow filled gully and trying desperately to get an anchor because I know as soon as the rope runs out, he's going to just start following. And I know that he's going to fall off of this thing. And he weighs a lot more than me, he's a really big guy. And I just start, I'm just thinking, "Okay, now I'm still going to die because even though I made this, this crux move, I'm gonna get pulled off up here." So I'm just swimming out through the snow and the rope just creeping out creeping out. And finally, I look up ahead and there are these two big blocks that have fallen together and there's a thread right in between them. And I realized if I can get that thread that that's an anchor, that'll do it. And I'm just slowly slowly dragging the rope up. And I know he's getting close. He already left the belay starting to get close to this thing, and I'm just terrified. And I get there and I don't have any slings left to tie the thing off. So then I have to wait and keep pulling up the rope to tie a knot in the rope to clip it around. And literally, I just got that anchor in, I just put him on the belay plate. And he fell. And I caught him because it was fine, I had an anchor and then brought him up. And it turned out that really was the end of the difficulties we we'd made it at that point. But now it's five o'clock at night. It's getting dark. We've been out all day that the people that we're with, we're assuming have all torn down the camp and have left. And we're going to come back there and have nothing and now we're still going to die. And it turns out as we're coming down this descent, we look off in the distance obviously this one little black clad figure waving his arm. And it turned out that Mark Axen and had stayed behind with the tent with the stoves because we'd been missing all day everybody else went out but he stayed. And so we got back to the tent we got inside got in our bags, and he just started handing hot food and and all night we're just looking each other going, "Can you believe we're alive?" "We're alive! Can you believe we're alive?" So that was that was probably the closest we've ever come that was pretty grim. Pretty scary. Tallie Casucci 38:33 Oh, yeah. Larry Coats 38:34 Could have gone south a lot of places. So Tallie Casucci 38:36 Was that when you were in college? Or was that later on? Larry Coats 38:39 Much later. So in in my hardcore days, in the '80s, early '80s, I guess - 11 - Tallie Casucci 38:46 What did Mark say when you guys got back to the tent? Larry Coats 38:50 Well, he just really it wasn't that big a surprise to anybody. They really thought about it. They thought of course those guys are going to try to do the climb but at the time it was yeah, it was dumb but typical, typically dumb. Tallie Casucci 39:11 So what are there any other climbs kind of down in Arizona that really stand out from that time period of undergrad and just living down there? Larry Coats 39:32 Well, I guess some of the Grand Canyon stuff even though a lot of that didn't turn out as planned. So there are some big temples that you can see right from the South Rim. And by temples. There are mountains that sit down within the Grand Canyon that are virtually as high as the rims and Zoroaster is one of them and Buddha is another one and Zoro had been climbed back in the '60s or' 70s, by the by an easier route on the back side, and then John Annarino. And some Phoenix people did it from the front side, that Southwest face, which is this really dramatic face facing the South Rim. And Buddha had a very similar face to that. But it was much further in that, that Zoro actually you can get there in a long day. And actually, people nowadays, do it in a day, but it's brutal. So you're going from the South Rim all the way to river, all the way back up to the height of the North Rim and then back down to the river and then all the way back out. So it's like a very brutal, you know, days hiking just to do this climb. But we decided to try to do a new route on Buddha. And we you have to backpack to get to Buddha, you can't possibly do that in a day. And the first ascent of Buddha had actually been like a five day expedition, they'd carried tons of water in and huge monstrous packs and all this crazy stuff. And we realized that that wasn't the way to do it, that what we had started to pioneer was doing wintertime climbs in the canyon. Because if you're up relatively high and you're around on the north side, there will be snow laying on the ground, you can melt that and make water so you don't have to carry water. And we went in to do Buddha that way. And sure enough that that worked great, you know, it was a great approach. And we went in with like, you know, a liter of water each and filled up in some springs on the way and then had water at camp it was it was great. But the route we'd selected on the south face of Buddha, that again, it just looks dramatic as hell from the from the Rim, it is big, huge Coconino cliff. And it was just you could just third class it. And so he led one kind of 5.7 pitch that was even optional, you could have gone around it. And then we just third class to the summit. And a couple of folks did one other pitch just because we were there. And we had you know, racks of friends. We carried it! At this point we're carrying 11.7 ropes, so not just 11 millimeter but 11.7 millimeter ropes. Way before the days of skinny ropes, it was fat ropes, you know, really fat ropes. And so we drag all this gear in and just you know, did this new route, but it was just, it was a third class route, we could have gone in with no gear. And so that was rather disappointing. But it was a tremendous summit. I mean to get on top of Buddha is an amazing summit and, and really worthwhile but not the climb itself was not a big deal. Tallie Casucci 42:48 It's more about the experience at that point. - 12 - Larry Coats 42:50 Yeah, and to have kind of successfully gone in there on a really quick I think we did it in three days total or something. So you know, a midnight walk to the Phantom Ranch, then a day to get to the base, then a day to do the climb and come back down to Phantom Ranch and then a day out. So it was really, really quick for that sort of distance. Tallie Casucci 43:13 Yeah, what is it like climbing in the Grand Canyon? Larry Coats 43:17 Well, that the climbing is not the thing in most cases, it's just the summit's because you're going out through many different rock layers. And you know, some of them are horrible, you know, shales, and all sorts of stuff. And, and approaches are always inevitably broken up by these little scruffy bands that are you know, like, maybe 40 feet high. But they go for miles. And so other than doing some kind of technical pitch to get up, but you just walk for miles and miles and miles and break through some little cliff and then walk for miles and miles back. And then you know, it's just so there's lots and lots of that kind of frustration out there. But the summits are amazing to get on top of those things is like, you know, being in the far side of the moon or something. It's really bizarre up there. Tallie Casucci 44:08 It seems that a lot of the areas you've gone to or have described are kind of remote and unique. Larry Coats 44:18 Yeah, that was definitely our thing was to seek out, you know, places that hadn't been done or were kind of off the radar. Tallie Casucci 44:27 Yeah, definitely. What was the climbing community like in Flagstaff at the time? That was in the '80s? Larry Coats 44:40 Yeah, like late '70s '80s. Really pretty, pretty small, and a lot of different interests. So there were people that were almost kind of Grand Canyon specialists that that didn't do that much climbing elsewhere, but they would go to the canyon as much as they could. Lots of people that were starting to push the kind of harder end of things. And that's where we got into some real battles. This is the whole, you know, bolt time of bolting and everything coming in. And fortunately, most the climbing years in Flag weren't really a battleground for that. Because if you've got beautiful vertical cracks, that just eat protection, there's not a lot of argument for bolting it, you know. And so, in most of the cases where that came up, were people that just were putting in convenience anchors at the top of the crag, so that you could do a route and then rap back down and go elsewhere. But it's like, there's also trees everywhere that you can rap off of so it just, you know, those battles weren't, weren't that hard to really fight. But the other one was chalk. So for the longest time, we didn't use chalk in northern Arizona. And, and then, you know, that, that was kind of a battleground for a while with, especially the Phoenix climbers who very heavily use chalk and, and they would come up and you know, and then our cracks would be all - 13 - chalked up. Getting just silly arguments today when I think about it, but it was, it was pretty emotional at the time. So Tallie Casucci 46:23 Yeah, it's interesting how the ethics have somewhat evolved. At what point did the Flagstaff crew start using chalk? And have they added convenience anchors? Larry Coats 46:39 Yeah, actually, most of that hasn't happened. And I'm really pleased with that, that the Forks. So one of the areas we really pioneered was Paradise Forks. And really, the convenience anchors have all been taken out, the talk still comes up every once in a while on Mountain Project, and then usually people shut it down pretty quickly. Because again, there's trees everywhere you can, you know, you can bring an extra rope out and just leave a rope to go down very easily. It just doesn't need any of that kind of setup in that regard. And what the main thing that's happening is just all the vegetation on top is dying because of just people's feet. And that, you know, is another issue, but it bolt-bolted anchors aren't going to solve that. So it's just a matter of getting people a lot more aware of where they're walking and taking their 10 dogs and all that sort of stuff. But, yeah, so chalk, I can't really say because I moved to Boulder, Colorado, in '83. And that, you know, once I was there, I started using chalk. And so when I came back, I was using it and everybody else was too and you know, whatever, you know, so I didn't really go through that transition there. I don't know what really happened. At that point that actually one of the highlights was there was a there's now a big Phoenix bouldering contest and if you've heard about that? But they it's a big kind of comp outdoor comp with accumulating points for boulder problems and things. The year before it turned into a big thing and people like Ron Kauk and stuff started to show up. Paul Davidson one of the Northern Arizona climbers won it without chalk. And it was always a big thing that he won this the one that Phoenix Boulder Colorado Boulder contests without chalk, you know, "wow, that was really cool." But and then like I say, the next year then, you know, Dale Bard, and the big name started showing up and that was the end of that. He wouldn't have won anymore. Tallie Casucci 48:55 So tell me about the move to Boulder and the climbing you did in Colorado? And did you move for school? Larry Coats 49:03 Oh no actually, kind of bike racing with a girlfriend so [laughs] and nordic ski racing, that was where I really that's when I really got into that up there. But yeah, the climbing. I mean, Boulder has fantastic climbing. And there's such a scene that certainly I came out of much better climber than I would have otherwise just because of what you jump into when you're up there for sure. Rocky Mountain National Park was my little secret go to that, you know, again high and wild and wilderness just fantastic climbing up there and hard approaches and although now even that is super crowded, but I guess I got my insight into what the rest of the world was going to see before too long with being in Boulder because you know any remote crag you'd go to get there and, you know, there, people be right next to you in 10 minutes. Because there's just people everywhere. - 14 - Tallie Casucci 50:12 So you got back into skiing? Larry Coats 50:15 Yeah, well, Nordic skiing. So So really I had in Flagstaff, once I was a climber, you start getting into Nordic skiing, because again, you know, in the wintertime, you can go get in a ski race and stuff, and it's competitive, and you can, you know, race with your buddies and all this sort of stuff. So I started really trying to master Nordic skiing. And we had some clinics and things in Flag where we learned some stuff, but I realized you really need to go to Colorado and go on, you know, race the circuit, if you want to really get good at this. And when I was living in Colorado, we would in Boulder, we literally would race every weekend. Through the winters, you know that pretty much through January, February, and into March, there'd be a race somewhere in the vicinity every single weekend. So you could go and race and, and this was when Nordic was transitioning to skating for the first time. So at first there were divisions, it was all one thing. And then then they became you know, classic and freestyle. They they split into two different disciplines now that they have today. And, and that was really kind of the time period that I was in. So and I was a good skater. Again, because it's kind of Alpine it it's an Alpine endurance skill. Really, it's if you can skate on Alpine skis, you can skate on Nordic skis a lot more easily, but you need to get the, the endurance and to be able to, you know, go for 10 or 15 or 20 or 30 Ks. Tallie Casucci 51:51 Did you ever combine that as a way to get to climbs? Larry Coats 51:57 Not really. Actually the closest in Colorado we got to that to get to winter climbs when there was a lot of snow is well, I worked at Neptune Mountaineering and Gary Neptune was the you know, that's the name the face of the of the shop. And Gary was a really weird dude. So a lot of really weird ideas, but some of them worked pretty well. And one of the things that he found somewhere when he was is in Europe were these little short skis that are called Big Feet. And they would just snap onto your, your climbing boots or whatever. And so what we would do in Rocky Mountain National Park to go do mix climbs and ice climbs is we'd either posthole in or snowshoe in if you needed to, but we carry these Big Feet in our in our packs. And when you went to go out, you throw the Big Feet on, and you could just rocket down all the trails. [laughs] And I mean, people didn't have any idea what you're even doing, you know, and you're sitting here slaloming down these little narrow hiking trails. But the skis are so short and maneuverable that you can do that you can just slalom down these trains. And I had people yell at me going, "What are those?" You'd go "Big feet!" Rocketing by. [laughs] And so that was the one thing that we did use a lot of these Big Feet to really facilitate descents that that worked really well. But not so much going in Tallie Casucci 53:26 Not going up, okay. Was it challenging? Was it busy with hikers going up that you were having to really bob and weave? Or was it not that popular in the wintertime? Larry Coats 53:44 - 15 - No, in the winter really wasn't even in the summer or in the in on season. Once you get, you know, well, of course, that's all different now, I'm sure but once you get a couple miles out, you really wouldn't see anybody. So one of the things that we always did, we kind of prided ourselves on is July 4 is always the busiest day in Rocky Mountain National Park, all the trailheads would be crowded and everything. So we would leave early in the morning to get you know, to get there and then take off hiking. Because again, Alpine approach you had to go early anyway, and go up into some remote area and climb all day. And often we wouldn't see anyone on those days. So by the time we got back to the trailhead, all the mayhem was over with and we wouldn't see anybody. Nobody would ever make it up as far as we were. And we purposely picked something obscure so there wouldn't be any other climbers on it. So something you know many, many summers I remember doing that that's you know, "Fourth of July, so we got to go to the Park!" and, and really, it worked very well all the time. Very seldom ran into anybody. Tallie Casucci 54:56 That seems like it was part of the game of "Let's get remote and not see anyone." Larry Coats 55:02 But again, that's all changed so much because people are so much fitter. Now. They just, they can go horrendous distances and do all the time. And so, yeah, there's there's no more escaping, at least not with my level of fitness. Tallie Casucci 55:21 So, when did you end up moving to Salt Lake? Larry Coats 55:25 2004. Tallie Casucci 55:27 Were you in Boulder? Larry Coats 55:28 No I went back to Flag five more years in Flag for 10 years, went to Boulder for 10 years, went back to Flag for 10 years and then came up here. Tallie Casucci 55:38 Okay, and I assume the job brought you to Salt Lake? Larry Coats 55:44 Actually not mine, my wife [Heather Hayes] got a chance. She's a physical therapist, and she got a chance to kind of start up her own clinic and research and so we came up for her. And then actually, the coincidence is that one of the grand old man in the Geography Department that does the kind of Ice Age stuff that I did died suddenly. So Don Currey died. And all of a sudden, they have this huge hole in their, in their schedules are, you know, that they needed people to teach. And I was friends with Andrea Brunelle who went to grad school with me. And so I had just dropped her an email saying, "if you guys - 16 - have any, you know, adjunct teaching, I'd be available." And she immediately ran down the hall to the chair and said, "call this guy." It really plugged me right in. Okay, so. Tallie Casucci 56:37 So I guess before we talk to Salt Lake, is there anything when you move back to Flagstaff, any changes? Larry Coats 56:42 A lot! There was a climbing gym by then. So there was a whole social scene and the climbing gym, which in a small setting, like that I loved and I fit in really well. I did route setting, you know, I would volunteer to come in and do route setting, I help them route set for competitions and things and, you know, I love that that whole social end in it in a small climbing to, you know, in a small town, and I really kept looking for the stuff that hadn't been done yet. You know, so at the Forks, there were some kind of chossy sections of cliffs. And at this point, we've gotten more into kind of cleaning if necessary to kind of clean off the loose blocks and, and, you know, clean up some stuff. So we still put up some new routes there. By doing that, at this point, finally, the Sedona had come around to the fact that what we were looking for in Sedona back in the day were things that had cracks that completely went to the top. And that's what we're doing was you know, traditional type climbing, we'd drill bolts if we needed to, but it was really necessary to have cracks that pretty much went all the way up. And meanwhile, what had changed was some pioneering folks, John Burcham specifically had figured out that wow, there's some really good climbing in Sedona if you connect up these features by maybe doing some face pitches or something in between so he would go up and drill bolts and clean up holes and things and all these you know fantastic next wave routes were going up. And so I went along with him on a few things and put up some new things that way and then went and climbed a lot of his stuff because it's just fantastic. Really good climbing but just and again I just I fault us for not being smart enough to figure that out. At the time was like if the crack didn't go, you just you know you forgot it. You look up "oh yeah, that's a nice crack but you can't get there" and now you know you connect it up with some cool face climbing and a little bolted section of rap anchors all the way down. It's kind of cool. So yeah, that did change quite a bit. Tallie Casucci 58:52 Yeah, was that the first time you actually had to start bolting? Larry Coats 58:58 That was the first time you use a motorized drill. Yeah. So I you know we hand drilled a lot but I never used that. I never used the Hilty. Tallie Casucci 59:12 Big difference! Larry Coats 59:14 Yeah. Tallie Casucci 59:15 - 17 - Definitely. Yeah, any other climbs down near Flagstaff that you want to share the story behind? Larry Coats 59:32 Not offhand. You know that's something we've gone through slide collection you know that because that's really what, many things I have no memory of except the slide. And so going back through some of those, you know me I certainly have a story about every climb practically. But yeah, nothing that that jumps out at me. Tallie Casucci 59:55 Yeah. Tell me about coming up to Salt Lake. What was that transition like? Larry Coats 1:00:06 For us, definitely not a big deal. My brother lives here and had lived here since the '90s I guess. And so we'd already been ruined as far as skiing anywhere else in the lower 48. Knowing that the touring here is far better than anything in Colorado, I mean in Colorado we use in the winter we used to go ice climb, we drive to Vail to go ice climbing, not skiing. It was how ridiculous it was. We just you know, the skiing in Colorado was seldom very good. And so we would, we would come over here and from Flag we would come up here to go skiing, you know, to go touring and stuff like that. So I already was very familiar with the winter scene here and actually a lot of the summer scene because we'd been up to, to climb as well. Yeah, so that, again, one of the points that I make often is about switching from Flag to here is really minimally different if what you do is spend a lot of time in southeast Utah, because it took five hours to drive to Moab from Flagstaff and four hours to Indian Creek. And from Salt Lake, it's four hours to Moab and five hours to Indian Creek. So all you did is just switch those two things. It's really exactly the same except that it was easier to drive out a Flag because the Wasatch Front is a nightmare. But yeah. Tallie Casucci 1:01:34 So did you do a lot of climbing in Indian Creek and Moab when you were living in Flagstaff? Larry Coats 1:01:40 Yeah, both. Both since here and there too. So. So yeah, although, again, for me, spires are so much more fun than just the individual crack climb. So that Bridger Jack Spires are just rockstar, every single one of them is fantastic. Because they're fantastic summits and they're, you know, have these beautiful chocolate brown stain splitter cracks on them and really, really fun. And so, you know, I mean, we'll go to Indian Creek crags on occasion, but that's really you know, we'd rather go in the backcountry and climb a tower somewhere. There's a lot more fun. Tallie Casucci 1:02:22 Yeah, it fits more with your style too of avoiding people. Larry Coats 1:02:26 Yeah. Tallie Casucci 1:02:28 - 18 - Any climbs down in that area? Larry Coats 1:02:32 We did it my brother and I did an earliest scent of the Primrose Dihedral on Moses, which was pretty fun. I mean, by early, I don't know, probably within that first 10 people maybe or 10 parties that had done it. And then at that time, you know, you could easily go to Moab get the camping permit, drive around the road and camp right below in the in the White Rim trail campsite, and then go and climb. There was no problem at all. Of course now. I've actually tried to get that campsite. And I don't think you can get that anymore. Just like you can't go to Yosemite. Unless you're Alex Honnold living in a van right outside the gate. The gates drive in every day, you just, they're just things that are now impossible. Tallie Casucci 1:03:25 They're more complicated. Larry Coats 1:03:27 Or I mean, I'm willing to go with the complexity, it just isn't possible. I mean, we've been trying now for five years to get campsites in Yosemite to go climbing in the Valley. And my wife gets on the minute they're available and hits the reserve, and they're gone. There's some automated system that obviously just books everything immediately. And so it's literally not possible. You know, we have a friend in Mammoth, so we still do climbing Tuolumne all the time. But we'd like to go back to the Valley and the only way to do that is to camp and you just can't do it. Can't get a site. Well, I mean, okay, you could go to Camp 4 at midnight and stand in line till eight and maybe get a site with other people that you don't know that it's just literally a one person per slot type thing. I mean, and we, you know, we're old enough, we're not going to do that. But that's it, you know, it's just, it's crazy. You can't can't do it. Tallie Casucci 1:04:42 Yeah. That's a change. Larry Coats 1:04:46 That's a big change! I mean, we used to go out and just live in the Valley for a month or two and climbed. Tallie Casucci 1:04:54 Not anymore. So tell me a little bit about climbing here and kind of the Wasatch post moving here. Wasatch or the Uintas or other? Larry Coats 1:05:09 Yeah, really my favorite place for sure is is Lone Peak, it is just stellar. Again, just just our cup of tea. It takes five hours to walk up and put your hands on the rock five hours to walk back down. And that's kind of limiting. So I know, you know, you can backpack up there, but then then your packs are way heavier. So we usually just do it as a day hit and it's brutal. And so it's not something that at least I'm going to do very often just because of how hard it is. But it is fantastic. It's the best stuff. The best rock for sure. - 19 - Tallie Casucci 1:05:52 Have you been up there since the new trail realignment? Larry Coats 1:05:58 The one on the Draper Ridge? Tallie Casucci 1:06:01 Yeah, they realigned going up to Lone Peak. Larry Coats 1:06:04 But there's two approaches the Alpine way and the Draper way Tallie Casucci 1:06:07 Draper way Larry Coats 1:06:08 I have been up the new Draper trail and it it's a good trail actually. No, I haven't been the steep section I have not been on so that because that is the brutal part of that trail as you got into this section that just went on for ever up the steep angle. And I guess they've realigned that. Which would be nice, but it would still add too much mileage. So it still I bet would be five hours. It might be slightly easier than it used to be. But yeah, still pretty brutal. Tallie Casucci 1:06:39 Yeah. Any other areas that you've explored? Larry Coats 1:06:43 Well, I mean, we like the City. It's really fun and casual. Held a Tallie Casucci 1:06:49 Busy! Larry Coats 1:06:50 Busy. Yeah. Although, actually, one of the things we've been doing there is just kind of looking as far afield as we can get. So finding the climbs that are the furthest approaches out and just walking over there and finding you know, some really nice stuff that we wouldn't have gotten on previously, so. So that's been fun. Uintas are nice again, you know, Ruth Lake is great climbing. And that's super clean. The other stuff is less clean. I mean, there's some good thing or maybe some definitely really good climbing but I'm always a little on edge of just, you know, block falling off and hitting someone or you know, the narrow ledge you're on or something down below. It's never it's never just casual. Which I wouldn't mind in rock climbing. So it's good rock. You know, it's really sound rock, but just it's Alpine. So it has some loose stuff up there. What other? Tallie Casucci 1:07:58 - 20 - Have you been to Ibex? Larry Coats 1:08:02 No Tallie Casucci 1:08:03 I think you would like it. Larry Coats 1:08:04 Well, actually, no, yeah. Okay, we have been Ibex. Yeah. So the climbing was really cool. Kind of a creepy spot. Tallie Casucci 1:08:13 You're out there. Larry Coats 1:08:14 If you had a bunch of big party with you. It'd be fun. But we just ended up the two of us out there. And it was kind of scary. It was middle of the night this van starts driving across the playa toward you. And you're just like, "oh man, we bout to get murdered?" So yeah, I mean, it is it is a really interesting place. I haven't you know, we've just been one time basically Tallie Casucci 1:08:41 It seems like it would fit your remotes towers Larry Coats 1:08:45 a bit more. Tallie Casucci 1:08:46 Yeah. Larry Coats 1:08:47 Although it's you know, it's all pretty well set up for most things. Tallie Casucci 1:08:51 Yeah. repeating things. When you moved here, you said 2004, right? What was the climbing community like in Salt Lake and how did it compare to what you were used to with Flagstaff and Boulder? Larry Coats 1:09:13 I have never found a place in this in this community that understands me in the least. And I'll give you an example of this that this is something that has happened to us now three or four times so it's not a one off, is we will be walking up to a crag in Little Cottonwood is where mostly this has been so walking up toward you know, the Schoolroom Wall or toward Pentapitch with a crag pack on our backs, like everyone else. And other climbers with crag packs on will go "Are you guys going backpacking?" I - 21 - mean, we're old, right? So because we're old that we must not be going climbing? I mean, it is the weirdest thing that I'm just like, "No, we have crag packs on with our gear in it just like you have, why are we going backpacking, and you are not, you're climbing?" I mean, it's just a very strange thing. And I've run into that a lot. And, you know, and so I get the sense of just not fitting in, in the climbing community here in any way that that I, we go and do our own thing. And you know, with some friends of ours, maybe and that's it. But the anytime I try to really communicate with other climbers that around, they just, it's clear, they're not, we're not talking about the same things. They're not making sense out of what I'm saying. And I'm not making sense out of what they're saying. And I, I am at a loss for why that is. But I just, yeah, it's very interesting. And which is kind of true in most places, I guess, that it's a rare person, I guess I'm kind of sarcastic or something. And so it's a rare person that would maybe, you know, chuckle at something I would say, you know, in a crowded climbing area and in the City. And actually, we met a couple of nice folks from Idaho up there. The last time we were up there, they did just that, that there was this, this crew came over and they set up a shade device right in front of the climb for all the people to sit in. I mean, it was just like this whole rigmarole. And the guy had to come and ask everybody what climb they were going on. And I'm like, "Are you know, are you the emcee here? What exactly is going on?" And I said something like that. And these guys chuckled, you know, and so it's like, "Okay, you guys are we're kind of seeing the same thing here. But everybody else just seems inured to it." You know, it just like, "oh, yeah, that's what people do." [laughs] Okay, I don't get it, but say, right, I, I don't, you know, in the climbing gyms. Even the old folks are so hardcore. I've watched old avalanche forecaster blanking out on his name right now, but at any rate, you know, must be 75 or something in the gym. And he's just just cranking on these overhangs, just carries his rope in in a big laundry basket, you know, to be able to get on the route fast. I'm like, wow. Okay. Kimbrough, Tom Kimbrough. So it just, you know, I don't fit in there. Because if I'm in a climbing gym, it's pretty casual for me. I'm not, I'm just there to have fun. Not really push the limits or anything. At any rate, right. Don't feel that I have fit much into the climbing milieu here. Tallie Casucci 1:13:00 You haven't found the other people Larry Coats 1:13:02 No, definitely not. Tallie Casucci 1:13:03 interested in the obscure Alpine stuff yet. Larry Coats 1:13:08 Or just also, I mean, one of the things that is really nice and places like Big is a lot of just these multipitch kind of moderate routes have been going up. And they're wonderful. They're really fun, you know, and so we go and do those a lot. And, and we both agree that it's my brother and I that it was good that we didn't do all the 5.7s back when we were good climbers, because now we have all these 5.7s we never used to do, you know, so we're always pushing harder routes. It's like, "oh yeah, 5.7s kind of fun." Tallie Casucci 1:13:40 - 22 - And yeah, Big Cottonwood is tricky for route reading. Larry Coats 1:13:47 Yeah. So and again, that's something that you know, we've really keyed into so we can sort that stuff out and figure out how to get to the climbs and all that. Well yeah, a lot of people are wandering around kind of lost. Tallie Casucci 1:14:01 Definitely. So tell me a little bit about being a professor here and what you what you do research in? Larry Coats 1:14:10 Well, that's probably the, the most interesting part of my climbing story comes from that. So when I was in Flag, working at the climbing store, climbing all the time, I overheard one of the young kids that worked at the shop, talking to this guy about some caves in the Grand Canyon, and I didn't really hear the whole thing, but I overheard at some point, him saying, "well, you'll be able to get us into these caves?" And, and so he laughed, and I caught Dave Dawson and said, "So Dave, what was that about?" He said, "Oh, this guy is a scientist. And he's, he's got this idea that if he gets into climbs into these caves in the Grand Canyon, that he'll find these you know, fossil Condor remains and things" and I said "Oh, that sounds pretty cool." But Dave's a kind of young climber. I'm like, "you understand that this guy's whole expedition is going to be wrapped up in you, it's going to require you to get to these caves and get this guy into the caves?" And so Dave kind of, you know, got lost his confidence a bit there. He said, "Well, would you want to go?" And I said, "I thought about I thought, yeah, I haven't done a Grand Canyon river trip this. This sounds pretty cool." This one was being kind of self financed, we had to pay, I think, a couple 100 bucks for food. But the rest of it was taking care of the boatman were all hired and stuff. And, you know, we're going down the river. And so I said, "Oh, yeah, sure, I'll, I'd go along with this if he if he wanted me to do that." So I met this guy, Steve Emslie. And he's a, he's doing his PhD at Gainesville, Florida. And what he's been working on is the fossil history of California Condors because they were really, really common in the Ice Ages, and, and there was so much meat around to eat basically carrying around to eat. And so he got the idea from hearing from a researcher in the Grand Canyon that these caves often, you know, have remains in there perfectly preserved. But he would need to be able to get to these caves to access these caves. And so I went along, and of course, you know, to me, it was, it was heaven on earth, and I had all my climbing gear in the boats, everything I could possibly need. Took me a while to kind of figure out that, you know, I needed slightly different gear like carrying soft iron pins was really a key because this is limestone and often that just really thin cracks. And so a soft iron peg would go in where you know, tiny stopper would be your only other option. But the first trip at any rate I did you know enough stuff to get in that we started finding condor remains right away. And he put in then for a grant, the next year got funded. And now the next year, it was full ride. So we had all the, you know, everything paid for it. Actually, I think I got a little salary for it. And again, to climb into caves to find these, these remains these Ice Age remains for him. And it just, you know, it was crazy fun. And then on actually okay with the second trip, I tell people this a lot, they don't believe that we had a 40 day research trip in the Grand Canyon. We are at one campsite for 10 days while we were excavating in Marble Canyon. And so we were on the river you felt more like you were a river person than, than anything else by the end of that trip. I mean, it was just amazing. And so in that trip was where I started really thinking about the science, and I always been kind of a science - 23 - nerd. But I never really pursued that in any way. And so I started really thinking about, you know, what, what are we trying to figure out here? And where could we prospect for other stuff? So I started really adding in, you know, those caves haven't been looked at, we need to go over there. And sure enough, after a while, in the expeditions, we did like five or six expeditions, three river trips, helicopter sling load into a rim camp at one point or up on the limestone rim, I mean, just did some hiking trips. So really, really, you know, spent a lot of time exploring these caves and somewhere along the line, it started becoming, you know, much more interesting scientifically to me. And so finally I was with the guy that turned out to be my chair [Jim Mead] down in Flagstaff with Emslie. And we were discussing some hypothesis about something and they finally both looked at me and said, "You need to go back to school now." And so I went down the Flag, I did this Quaternary Sciences degree [at Northern Arizona University] and that's what really put me on that on that path. So I started out as really just safety assurance, guiding them, making sure they got their getting fossils down safely. And then that just grew into me, you know, being a part of the research and we're still all the three of us are still working together. So I I work with Steve in Antarctica and now we're working out in the in the Snake Range in the Great Basin the last few summers we've been together, you know, so all these old guys still still together and still doing doing work. It's really fun. And so that was and again, I do tell my students that story just to point out that outdoor stuff can lead you in some really unusual directions, you know, that that? I definitely did not get into science in the typical pathway of just, you know, going through masters and PhD and you know, right out of high school I was, you know, I was in my 30s when I went back to school, so it was a very different thing. Tallie Casucci 1:20:06 Tell me about your Antarctica and the Snake Range? Larry Coats 1:20:11 Yes. Steve, so his original work was on condors in the Grand Canyon, so he's an avian paleontologist is what he is. So he then as soon as he got his PhD, and started getting his first few hires, he started going to Antarctica, on NASA grants to collect data on Adélie penguin occupations, because Adélies are the only penguin are actually the only Antarctic penguins that nests on land. So they leave a record behind. The famous emperor penguins nest on sea ice, so any of their record is on the bottom of the ocean. He's not a scuba diver, that isn't the thing he explored. So he then kind of stepped into Adélies and started studying them. And so eventually, and again, NSF once he was getting NSF funding, they encourage you to have a skilled mountaineer with you, that goes when you're doing field research, you know, and stays with you. And so it was an easy fit for me to get to go along. And so I've done five field seasons with him down there. And it's yeah, it's amazing. I mean, you talk about a wilderness, Antarctica is all wilderness with tiny little pockets of civilization. And otherwise, just, you know, wild wild country everywhere. And that's really amazing. Really cool. Tallie Casucci 1:21:39 Let's see. The other one is in Snake? Larry Coats 1:21:42 Yeah. So over in if you know, our Great Basin National Park is it's the next little segment of that range further north. And there's a bunch of caves there. And some work was done back in the kind of late - 24 - '70s. But again, the radiocarbon dates and stuff aren't that good from back then. So we're back there, again, again, with the Forest Service cooperation, excavating caves and collecting packrat middens and all these things to actually reconstruct Ice Age climates. So it's really fun. And actually more than that, because of my climbing, when we were at one cave, we saw this opening. So what we're looking for these kinds of classic Condor nests, caves, right. So that be a big hole up on a cliff with a flat platform, because condors would have to fly in and land and go back into where their nest is, right. So we're looking for this particular kind of shape. And we see this big opening up in the middle of this cliff that looks kind of like that. And I, it's going to be a rock climb to get up there. And initially, when I sussed, I glanced I saw some cracks and corners, I thought, "oh, yeah, we can probably do this with with gear, it won't, won't require any bolts." But when I got back to actually do that the next year, it turns out that what those blocks were with the cracks in them, were just kind of these loose blocks sitting against the cliff and kind of calcified to the cliff. So I realized I don't even want to touch these things, much less put gear in them. So I immediately start drilling. And this was the hardest rock I've ever seen in my life. Literally two and a half hours per bolt for the first two bolts that I put in. Tallie Casucci 1:23:31 Wow. Larry Coats 1:23:32 And I was like, okay, and I needed a ladder, basically, to get up this thing. So there's no way I was going to do that. So we ended up having to kind of negotiate this thing. So again, we add a caver forest service personnel with us. But he had to kind of convince his boss because this is a wilderness area, that this was the least the least invasive tool that we needed to use, and it's battery operated. And he said, his boss said, "So it's kind of like a laptop?" And Doug said, "Yeah, kind of like a laptop." He said, "Oh, that's fine. You can use it." So now I had a power drill, and I went back and bolted into this climb or into this cave. And initially, I was kind of disappointed because the cave was not what it looked like from below was kind of down sloping and just had some younger deposits in it. But there was this hole up in the ceiling, dark into the darkness with cold air pouring out of it. And so I was kind of disgusted with a thing that I'd worked that hard to get up there and it wasn't anything and the cavers were with me in the cave, and they're like, "Well, what about that hole up there?" I'm like, "Well, I can go up there if you guys think I should. I don't think it's going to do anything." And so it's turned out, this might be the longest cave in Nevada. It is. It is huge. It's it's still going it is crazy beautiful. It is. It is like being on the Dark Side of the Moon, and I just can't get enough. I've been going back every chance I get to meet up with these guys and go into this cave and explore it. And it's crazy. So and that was nothing to do with science, that's back to the adventure wilderness things again, that and it requires climbing that all these leads are high leads, they require lead climbing to get to and so it's just, it's my cup of tea. And you know, and all of them are, you know, just pleased as can be that I can get them into these things. And it's amazing. Tallie Casucci 1:25:37 That's so neat. Larry Coats 1:25:40 - 25 - Yeah, I mean, climbers don't. I see this complete disconnect. I've seen this many years now between cavers and climbers, that cavers are all terrified of exposure. And "ugh Cliff scares me. I'm never gonna go there." But in the dark, it doesn't bother them at all. Even though I still see the exposure. It's just the same, but you can't see it. So they don't, but they're bothered by it. Climbers are all claustrophobic. So they can never go in a cave because they're too claustrophobic. So I'm one of the very few people that have split those two worlds that it's the same to me. It doesn't matter. Tallie Casucci 1:26:19 Is there any differences that you notice in the climbing rock in a cave versus on a cliff? Larry Coats 1:26:27 Oh the main thing, I've had to now drill into some formations and stuff, or, you know, flowstone, and things to put in anchors. And that has, like, going into solid limestone is one thing. But sometimes flowstone can form over just like mud, you know, so it looks really solid on the outside, and you drill through and it would break through and you know, wouldn't be a good bolt. So that part of it has been a little bit of a learning curve, but not so much that you know, that I really I can feel with the drill going in, if I'm really drilling the whole way. And if something's breaking through, so I think everything's been, you know, really, really solid, but it is a very different, like, down in this lower section. I had to, I spent about 20 minutes just trying to find a place in these huge mammillary formations, they're called that just put in one bolt for rappel that it was really hard, you know, I'm just like, wow, you know what, solid here? What isn't? I mean, it was really tricky. So that can be a little bit challenging at times. Tallie Casucci 1:27:34 Yeah. When do you for these trips? When is it that you're invited for the scientific or the climbing skills or is it at hybrid? Larry Coats 1:27:50 Yeah, well, now the really, we went back out to the Great Basin for the science and but then knowing that I could climb and get you know, into these things because even the the cave we've been excavating in has a little short rope draw up that needs to be rigged and everybody has to you know, use ascenders to go up and out as they as they enter and exit the cave. And so having me along with that, you know, is always handy, because I can really safety assure all of that stuff, but really now it's more of the science now. But the weird thing that bridged over was discovering this cave. It's like all of a sudden it's like okay, you know, scientifically This is amazing, but this is really off the charts amazing for I mean it really I tried to equate it to like a tower that you don't know where the tower ends you know, so you're you're out climbing a tower but you can't see the top and you don't know where it ends because we have no idea where this cave is going to end and if it if it'll end because nothing's ended so far. Tallie Casucci 1:28:57 When are you going back? Larry Coats 1:28:59 - 26 - I was trying to see that I think they're gonna go on one more trip the cavers in the in the park guy or that forest guy in December. But that'll also depend on if it snows before, then they probably won't be able to get to it. So I won't be back till May but well, maybe spring break? Again, I just can't wait for it. It's crazy. Tallie Casucci 1:29:22 Yeah. Oh, that sounds so fascinating. Larry Coats 1:29:26 It's bizarre. I mean, again, to have that opportunity so kind of late in my career has just been off the charts because I was making a point to them. It's like I haven't been a contributor for a really long time that you know, I used to be the pusher, the driver, or the person that lead you know, they put up the route to figure out where things are and now I'm just, you know, content to go out and just climb something somebody else has worked on or, you know, I mean, or to do a route but no need to put in gear but not my route, not something I'm putting up. It's just something I'm getting from a guidebook and so to really be contributing again, you know, leading into new passageways is really fun. Tallie Casucci 1:30:10 Oh, that's neat. So what classes are you teaching then here? And do you get to incorporate some of the things that you have discovered? Larry Coats 1:30:21 Yeah, I mean, all my classes. I'm a physical geographer, so everything I teach is, is really climate change. And again, so these tools that we're using to understand past climates or what, you know, are creating the data for how we understand what climate has been like, in the past and how different it is today. And so, yeah, that that's, you know, totally fits with my field, I, I took them all on a little field trip up to the lab the other day, just to show them you know, what a core looks like, and what pack rat middens look like, all these types of things, that these are the tools that we're using to to understand past climates. So Tallie Casucci 1:31:01 That's neat. Who have been your mentors? And you talked about Larry Coats 1:31:09 Baxter as far as their Yeah, really, Scott Baxter, is it for, you know, really a mentor? Well, okay, I guess [Steve] Emslie and [Jim] Mead, the two scientists both have been, you know, scientific mentors, so in their own way, but Baxter so I really look to as having, you know, learned, learned climbing from now, or at least learn the right attitudes about climbing. Not necessarily the skill set. Yeah, how to stay alive. Tallie Casucci 1:31:40 So those safety basics. Larry Coats 1:31:44 Yeah. - 27 - Tallie Casucci 1:31:46 How are you balancing your kind of climbing for yourself and then climbing for these cavers helping them, and then your normal job and personal life? Larry Coats 1:31:57 I mean, we don't for my wife, we do not climb enough. So she, she loves climbing more than anything in the world. And, you know, and we've done a huge amount in the time we've been together. But of course, I have this whole history before that, that of many things that she didn't, wasn't on. And she would, you know, climb every single day, that would be what, what she would do. But, so we really, we just don't climb that much. I mean, she'll go to the gym more than I will. If she has somebody to go with, she'll definitely just go. And in the summer, you know, we'll go and climb a few things. Well, what we'll do is plan a trip. So we actually kind of blocked times off during the summer without destinations, yet we wait and see what the weather's doing. And that will almost always involve climbing somewhere, you know, so, maybe go out to the Sierras and backpack into something or go out to Mammoth and visit our friends and climb with them out there. So it'll almost always involve climbing, but around here. If we don't get off to the city for a weekend or something, we really don't climb very much. So it's it's not. It's not a real balance. It's we're unbalanced and not climbing enough in her mind for sure. Tallie Casucci 1:33:20 What's the biggest challenge you see facing the climbing community? Larry Coats 1:33:25 Numbers and perceptions of taking care of, you know, taking personal personal responsibility for care of the landscape. I mean it's there are so many climbers out now. And so many don't really have a clue about wilderness or how you treat it right? Or, you know, you know, I think of things like how we approach a climb? I will walk on rocks as much as I possibly can, and not even so I think about the the old adage, leave nothing but footprints. I'd prefer to not even leave footprints. To really work hard to not do that, you know. And so that's the kind of level that I think all of us need to be thinking about. And I don't see I see some of that out there, but I don't see enough of it. So I see people that are, you know, pretty much into bringing their dogs and all their friends and all their stuff and don't really much care about what they're doing to get to the base of the climb. And certainly not paying any attention to what you know, the dirt is doing. You know whether you're scuffing things up or your dogs digging a hole or those types of things, I just no perception whatsoever. So I would assume most climbers wouldn't just leave their trash at the base. But that's about their level of, of environmentalism that I see. I see a lot of other really poor habits that really need to change, I think if if you know, we're going to have these numbers of people in places that it just, that's the only way it's going to, you know, continue to be as enjoyable thing for everybody as it is, is if people just become a whole lot more aware. Yeah, and I know that that's a limited viewpoint from the, I don't have a lot of interaction with climbers. So it's the busy places that I go to, but what I see is not a sustainable approach to, you know, the City Rocks or Ruth Lake or, you know, Little Cottonwood, that, that it's just not a sustainable approach to having those places, you know, pristine for generations, is that's we're, we're not on that path. Tallie Casucci 1:36:06 - 28 - Yeah, what impact do you hope to have on the climbing communities and maybe scientific community too? Larry Coats 1:36:15 Not much. Quite honestly, yeah. In climbing. I can tell you about an annoying habit that I picked up, I had to do the Antarctic stuff, I had to do wilderness first responder, because they wanted that qualification for these mountaineers. And so I did the 10 day WFR course, which I am not a medical person, it is really, really, really disturbing to me, and especially the, the very graphic scenario based thing is way too, you know, I have had many, many friends die climbing and drown in kayaks. And I mean, it's just, it's not fun to think about these things. To me, it's really, really scary and serious. And so I don't like that at all. And I always had this kind of creepy feeling that if I, as long as I didn't have any medical skills, I would never need them, then I would just make sure nobody got hurt. And that would be, you know, my approach, which worked quite well. And then when I started having these medical skills, I started witnessing some horrendous stuff that I was on scene and had to deal with. And one of them was this guy, plummeting off The Bastille Crack in Eldorado Canyon and landing headfirst without a helmet on this giant flake from 30 feet up, you know, and I, and there have been tons of people in the cliff minutes before and they all cleared out. And I'm there and my wife, and she's like, "you're gonna have to deal with this," you know, "oh, my God." So at any rate, I just, I hate that stuff. And I've had to now deal with a few of these things to where, my new approach became to short circuit that in advance, so I noticed this guy floundering, and I should have gone over there and told him to get his ass down off the climb until he can get some good protection. And you're going to die up there. That's what I should have done. But I didn't. I mean, I'm in Eldorado just, you know, who am I to say? And so I started really getting upfront about that. I started seeing when I'd see stuff dangerous. I'd walk over and start having a little discussion with these people about that. And I just got cussed out and yelled at. And I mean, you can imagine the approach that many people were not very pleased to hear that. And so, you know, if I had any impact, and that I, I would hope that's a good thing. You know, again, from their reaction, they didn't think so. But maybe I saved them? Maybe they got down from those things? So that's about it for climbing. And I would, actually, no, I wouldn't, I would not do that again. Because again, coming off Pingora when those two girls were rappelling simultaneously, that was the dumbest thing they could have done. I mean, it was literally the dumbest thing they could have done that if either one. One of them was a total novice, and could easily have lost control. And the only thing they're only safety was the other girls next to her. You know, kind of watching her but you can't. Yeah, you can't handle your rappel device and their's, just you can't, it was dumb. And I should have said something, you know, but I didn't I just let them do their thing. And we rapped down both of us on on two ropes together in order at the same time, so I don't know. I I'm not. Yeah, I tend to now I've gone back on that, but I'm not. I really have no impact at all. In science, I mean In yeah, I've published a few things, I'll get a few more things published. And actually, I just checked into a collaboration. There's Denise Dearing, that does pack rats, that modern pack rats on campus is now getting into some genetics. And I thought of the fact that if I've got all these really old packrat pellets, that maybe you can take that genetic story back, so I contacted her and we, you know, we might collaborate on something to see if that works to at least, assess it. So there you go. I mean, there's a bigger shaking thing that we can look at, when packrats developed the ability to digest creosote. So not a big thing. It's pretty, it's pretty obscure stuff. But it's fun to do, because we get to go, you know, really, to me, the science just adds time depth to what I already love about the West. So it just adds now I know what this place was, like 10,000 years ago, - 29 - 30,000 years ago, 40,000 years ago, plus what it's like today. And so that, to me, that's the science is it just fits into my whole wilderness ethic. Tallie Casucci 1:41:13 Yeah, definitely. It must be cool to know things too, in terms of when you see something be like, "Oh, I can explain what's going on here." Larry Coats 1:41:24 In geology too!! Tallie Casucci 1:41:25 Yeah, Larry Coats 1:41:26 That's the other thing I've really been struck by I took a bunch of geology classes in my undergrad just because I wanted to know about the rocks I was climbing on. And I see guidebooks that never mentioned what kind of rock it is. And I'm trying to probe, Is it limestone? Is it a volcanic? What is the rock? And they're just like, it's rock, it doesn't matter. And to me that's missing out a lot. I find that kind of puzzling that, you know, rock is rock, but it's not. It's totally different. Tallie Casucci 1:42:06 Is there anything else that you'd like to share that we haven't talked about already? Larry Coats 1:42:11 No, I think I've talked myself around in circles enough. Tallie Casucci 1:42:16 Well, thank you so much for your time, and then also for donating a bunch of magazines and other materials to the collections. Larry Coats 1:42:26 Sure. Tallie Casucci 1:42:27 Appreciate it. Larry Coats 1:42:27 Very welcome. - 30 -