From the Archives: Royal Robbins, scaling the heights of life
Editor's Note: This is a story that appeared in The Modesto Bee in May 1993 and written by former Bee sports writer Rick Weber.
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How could it be that Royal Robbins – regarded by many as the father of rock climbing in America, and by some as the greatest climber in the world – is only now, at age 58, discovering the true meaning of adventure?
Isn't it strange how displays of bravado and courage can mask feelings of confusion and heartache?
What would his life have been like, he wonders now, if he had unhesitatingly opened himself to the people around him, to their problems, their joys, their stories?
"It's taken me a lot of years to see the truth," he says.
When Robbins was 15, he'd hop on freight trains in Los Angeles, jumping fearlessly from the top of a boxcar moving south to a coal car going north.
When he was 16, he quit high school. But he wasn't a dropout. He had immersed himself in the writings of Emerson and Whitman, and was influenced to be his own master, to do what was right for himself. He worked at a bank during the week and climbed rocks on the weekend.
At 22, he married a woman – and found out two months later she already had a husband.
That same year, he made a first ascent of the Northwest Face of Half Dome in Yosemite National Park – the first Grade VI climb in the U.S. – and later did four other first ascents of Half Dome, the three great faces of El Capitan and numerous first ascents in Canada and Europe.
At 40, he learned how to kayak, and later made a dozen first descents of wild, churning rivers in California, another dozen in Chile, and was one of the first Westerners to visit a remote section of Siberia to take on the Bashkaus River.
This is a man whose life was lacking adventure?
Ah, but the adventure was illusory.
"The rock was the only place where I thought I could get out and grow and do things and use my full potential," says Robbins, who has lived in Modesto for 25 years with wife Liz and runs Royal Robbins, Inc., an outdoor clothing company. "I could apply myself on the rock. But in town, I was a mess. I didn't have the power that I had on the rock.
"I didn't think people were as important as I do now. I tended to go about my life and not bother anybody. I've come to the conclusion that's a recipe for disaster. ... Not disaster. But not for maximum happiness. Kind of like that movie that's out now."
That movie is "Falling Down," starring Michael Douglas as a man who loses his job, is prevented by a restraining order from seeing his wife and daughter and slowly sinks into an abyss. On a stinking hot day in LA, he ends up blowing a mental gasket.
"That will happen to you unless you're pro-actively trying to change the world in the opposite direction," Robbins says. "If you go along trying not to offend, people will offend you 'cause there is that energy going in that direction. You need to bring that energy in the opposite direction. Not in a powerful, pushy way. But just in a good spirit."
So where is the adventure? It's not necessarily in climbing Half Dome, Robbins says. That's grand, one-dimensional. Adventure is all-encompassing. It's everywhere, all the time.
The sign on the wall at Royal Robbins, Inc.: ADVENTURE IS A POINT OF VIEW.
"If you realize that, then you apply that to everything you do," he says. "Boom! Everything's an adventure. It's the challenge of making people's lives better that day, the challenge of doing something better, getting a lot done in new ways.
"The big difference between me now and in the past is that I have this acute sense of everything being an adventure."
And what was the old Royal Robbins like?
"Spirit Of The Age," a biography by Pat Ament published last year, paints a glowing picture of Robbins' climbing accomplishments. But it is at times brutally descriptive.
Climbing partner Joe Fitschen said this of Robbins: "He was uncomfortable with people." Climber TM Herbert: "Royal was a real loner." And this from English climber Chris Jones in his book "Climbing In North America": "An intense, humorless competitor."
Words like "mysterious" and "cynical" and "stern" are liberally used. There is a picture of Royal and Liz at the top of Half Dome in 1967 after their climb in which Liz became the first woman to complete a Grade VI. Liz wears a smile. Royal wears a semi-scowl.
Robbins doesn't blame it on anyone in particular.
He doesn't blame it on his father, Royal Shannon, a womanizing, one-time West Virginia boxing champion who demanded too much and gave too little to his wife, Beaulah Robbins, and son. (When Royal was 3, he and his mother left.)
He doesn't blame it on his stepfather, James Chandler, a violent alcoholic who forced him to change his name to Jimmy Chandler and moved the family from Ohio to Los Angeles when he was 6. (When Royal was 10, he and his mother left.)
No one.
He just wishes someone had shown him the path to enlightenment.
"If they had told me, I'd have seen the point, " he says.
In February 1991, someone finally did.
Robbins and Liz went to the Pacific Institute in Seattle to attend a seminar by Lou Tice. The theme was "Cognitive Psychology and Effective Thinking." Nothing revolutionary. Nothing anybody would even argue with.
The effect, however, was like a sledgehammer to the skull.
"It was presented in such a way that you get an a-haaaa," Robbins says. "It was like, "Now I see how to transfer what made me successful in climbing to other areas of my life.' We came away from that really stoked. That was the beginning. The first thing we said when we got out was, "God, I wish we had taken this when we were teenagers.' "
Bottom line? "It changed our lives."
That was the day the red light went on. But there were other things, too, that contributed to his transformation.
In the spring of 1978, Robbins was in Las Vegas for a climbing trade show. But all he can remember is the piercing pain he felt – like a hundred ice picks simultaneously being jabbed into his ankles – as he labored across the parking lot toward his car.
Robbins had psoriatic arthritis. His wrists hurt so bad he couldn't slip his hands into his pockets. He was seeing a renowned doctor at the University of San Francisco Medical Center, and ingesting one drug after another.
"I thought that climbing was out for me for the rest of my life," he said.
He then took what he called a "leap of faith." He went to Chile on a kayaking trip – even though his joints hurt so bad that he couldn't perform an Eskimo roll, a simple maneuver, but one that can save a kayaker's life.
"I said to my body, "I don't believe this will get progressively worse; I believe something will happen, ' " he says.
He did a couple of first descents in Chile, survived the trip, then made many more. By 1985, he had no pain at all. There is only one remnant: a crooked left index finger.
"I wish I could say what the answer was," he says, "but I feel attitude had a lot to do with it. I'm fitter than I was at 40. I'm doing everything I was then, and I'm doing it better."
It's a good thing that his mother got him away from his stepfather, restored his real first name and added her last name. Jimmy Chandler wouldn't have had the same feel.
"Most people like the way it flows off the tongue: Royal Robbins," says Tom Barney, marketing director for Robbins' company. "It's a little bit mysterious. It has some wonder to it. I can't envision him as a Mike or a Dave or a Joe. He's too unique and too special for a standard name. And maybe it was part of his personal development. Maybe it helped create the person."
Robbins' climbing contemporary Layton Kor called him "The King," a testament to his name and prolific climbing. Others less reverently called him a bird (as in robin) or the ice-cream man (wondering what happened to Baskin).
But has always stood by his name with style and principle.
The stories of his moral battles with climber Warren Harding are legendary.
Robbins believes the importance is not in getting to the top – it's how you get to the top. And he prefers defacing as little rock as possible, by using "nuts" (artificial chockstones that can be slotted into cracks) instead of "pitons" (pegs that are driven into rock).
In January 1971 – two months after Harding did a first ascent of El Cap's The Wall of Early Morning Light, drilling 333 holes for bolts, rivets and hooks – Robbins went up with a cold chisel and removed 40 of them. Some said he was overindulging in his practice of Emerson's "Self-Reliance": "Nothing finally brings us happiness in life except the triumph of principles."
In the 1980s, Robbins penned a histrionic article in Rock N' Ice magazine in which he decried the "vandals in the temple" whose unlimited bolting was going to be "the end of the world."
Not everyone tuned in to his wavelength. But the same Royal Robbins may have saved Harding's life. In 1968, when Harding was trapped in a snowstorm on the South Face of Half Dome, Robbins – loaded with down jackets, gloves and hot soup -- was lowered hundreds of feet down the face, and helped Harding to the top.
"He gave birth to the idea of style in American climbing," says Peter Croft, one of today's best climbers. "For that reason, he's my hero. 'Cause that's so important – the style part is crucial.
"Some of the best things I've done have been in Yosemite. The psyching up, the inspirations ... yeah, it comes from the pioneers. And the most important pioneer from the Golden Age - first ascents of the biggest cliffs – was Royal. He wasn't in the top five. He was the top one."
Rock climbing has increased dramatically in popularity since Robbins' heyday. And though there are plenty of climbers who have no interest in the pioneers or the vagaries of style, there are also plenty who do.
This might explain why Robbins is more popular than ever, and why hundreds show up to hear him speak as he did in March at Davis High, with the proceeds going to the Boy Scouts, the organization that inspired him to start climbing.
Is it that, or is it something more? Is it the blossoming, the transformation of Robbins?
"I just read something recently: "Each day is a miniature life,' " he says. "I kind of approach it that way. What else could it be but an adventure."
This story was originally published March 14, 2017 at 9:59 PM with the headline "From the Archives: Royal Robbins, scaling the heights of life."