Bill Conrod, Salt Lake City, Utah: an interview by John Worsencroft, 13 March 2009

Transcript (29, 28 pages) of two interviews by John Worsencroft with retired National Park Service ranger Bill Conrod, on 13 and 31 March 2009. Part of the Outdoor Recreation Oral History Project, Everett Cooley Collection tape no. U-1987 and U-2088

Bill Conrod, born in Germany in 1948 to an American soldier and his family, grew up in Salt Lake City. He began skiing at an early age, and toured with the Wasatch Mountain Club. He spent his youth climbing and skiing, and pursued a career with the National Park Service. He was also a president of the Ute Alpine Club at the University of Utah. Conrod first discusses skiing methods and equipment, and backcountry skiing in Utah. But his real focus is rock climbing, in Utah and in the Tetons. He remembers the absence of climbing gyms along with the more easygoing, less competitive nature of climbing in the 1960s. He ties the old method of climbing to the milieu of the 1960s, and equates it to a young man´s game that older men would move past. The Vietnam War and the draft strongly affected Conrod and the climbing culture by taking young men out of the climbing pool during their prime years. Conrod avoided the draft by attending the University of Utah and later receiving a high draft number. At twenty-one, in 1969, after years of climbing in the Tetons, Conrod began working as a climbing ranger in Grand Teton National Park. He mentions a number of other people working there at the time, and recalls that in perhaps 1970, the culture began to shift toward a serious climbing and outdoor lifestyle that rejected a conventional career. Conrod did some of both, becoming a biologist in 1972. He spent time in Nepal climbing with Arlene Blum, who he discusses briefly. In 1974 Conrod returned to the Park Service at Grand Teton National Park. He remembers that Salt Lakers were serious climbers in the Tetons. He also discusses the ill-fitting cultures of climbing and the old law enforcement-oriented Park Service, which allowed him to get a job as there were few other qualified candidates. Conrod met his wife, a summer Park employee, at Grand Teton. His Park Service career culminated in his retirement from White Sands National Monument in 2005.Though there are numerous asides, the bulk of the interview addresses climbing, from the draft´s impact on climbers, to climbing footwear, to the physical experience of climbing. He relates climbs to the Cirque of the Towers, Pingora and other destinations in Utah, Wyoming and California. His early mentors were his brother Charlie, and Charles Leslie of the Ute Alpine Club, and especially Dave Allen of the Wasatch Mountain Club, who also taught him how to write an excellent cover letter. Conrod´s experience as a climbing ranger in the Tetons sobered him, and took some of the fun out of climbing, but he remembers having excellent supervisors. His last reminiscences focus on the Ute Mountain Club, and its strong fraternal bonds, naming a number of members and officers. Project: Outdoor Recreation. Interviewer: John Worsencroft.