Warren Harding (climber) - Later Climbs and Controversies

Later Climbs and Controversies

Following his climb of El Capitan, Harding put up the overhanging East Face of Washington Column in Yosemite, renamed "Astroman" after it was climbed without aid, the first of a row of serious routes he did with his partner of this period, photographer Glen Denny. This was followed by: the wildly overhanging Leaning Tower, also done with Denny and still one of the most popular big-wall routes in Yosemite; the North Face of the 'Rostrum' just outside Yosemite Valley, again with Denny (a notoriously hard and spectacular later one-day testpiece as a free climb); and the beautiful and isolated 2500 foot face of Mount Watkins across from Half Dome, done with Yvon Chouinard and Chuck Pratt (with 'hard man' Harding famously refusing water on the parched last days of the climb to save it for those doing the final leads).

Harding also pioneered big wall ascents in the Sierra Nevada, with routes such as the 2,000 foot face of the 14,000+ foot Keeler Needle on the side of Mt. Whitney and the South West Face of Mt. Conness in the Yosemite high country.

Harding and climber-photographer Galen Rowell nearly succumbed to a storm on the difficult and tedious, but strikingly beautiful, South Face of Half Dome in 1970. After a rescue and later difficulties, one partner, Joe Faint, abandoned the project. Rowell worried when Harding didn't show up one weekend. "The next weekend," however, "as we hike up the steep trail to Half Dome," Rowell recounts, "I stop feeling sorry for Warren when he limps past me with a huge pack. Half of Warren is still twice the average man." Unsuccessful and unpleasant jaunts working as a contractor in Vietnam and a serious accident—a truck hit him while working at a construction site, leaving him permanently disabled—did not stop Harding from returning and finishing the climb.

Harding also made a much-publicised first ascent of the "Wall of the Early Morning Light", up the tallest portion of El Capitan in its southeast side. With Dean Caldwell, he spent 27 nights on the wall, living mostly in tented hammocks designed in coordination with Roger Derryberry. When a 4-day storm rolled in, the National Park Service decided, after 22 days, that the two needed to be rescued. Ropes were lowered, but after much shouting back and forth, retracted. Harding, in his book Downward Bound, recounts what might have happened had the rescue persisted:

"Good Evening! What can we do for you."
"We've come to rescue you!"
"Really? Come now, get hold of yourselves - have some wine."

Harding is the most notorious tippler in the history of modern rock climbing famous for its working class public house and campground tradition. Harding preferred gallon jugs of the very cheapest variant of red, and named the creaky ledge holding their hammocks, and from which they were supposed to be rescued, "wino tower". "Had the rescue team been overzealous," he continues, "a wild insane fight with piton hammers might have ensued. For we were very determined not to be hauled off our climb." Seven days later, after 27 nights on the cliff, they pulled over the top to a throng of reporters, well-wishers, the curious and the critical.

Harding was always controversial as well because he was more willing to utilize artificial aids which become a permanent part of the environment, especially expansion bolts. These take a long time to put in, but are not removable, and as they can be put anywhere, take some of the skill and the risk out of rockclimbing. Some felt, such as historian Steve Roper, English Mountain magazine editor Ken Wilson, and southern Californians like Robbins and Yvon Chouinard, that Harding's flamboyant willingness to use expansion bolts took some of the adventure away from climbing.

Harding granted that some of those climbers had more skills then he, but always disputed their "zealotry" and "purity". He also argued that it was hypocrisy to accuse him of publicity hounding, as many of them developed lucrative mountain climbing businesses, making tens of thousands, if not millions of dollars a year selling clothing and equipment. This controversy reached a high point when Harding's chief rival, Robbins, began the second ascent of his Early Morning Light route, hanging in Harding and Caldwell's bolt and bat-hook holes, and then cutting off the hangers, declaring he wished to restore the rock to its pristine state—and making a third ascent unlikely. The irritated Harding called the southerner Robbins a "Carrie Nation" of rockclimbers, and felt vindicated when Robbins eventually decided the climb was harder than it looked and then respected it by not cutting any more bolts as he and Don Lauria completed the second ascent.