Having lived now in Wyoming for nearly 2 years, I’ve come to really appreciate and love the climbing history that surrounds me. I recently finished a wonderful book called “Teton Tales and Other Petzoldt Anecdotes“, which is a brief memoir of sorts from Paul Petzoldt. It was a quick read, but only because the stories were so close to home, and so comfortably shared by the man who lived them. Petzoldt started climbing pretty early and had a good common sense approach to safety and order which manifested itself in the climbing commands still in use by climbers today around the world. He pretty much set the standards known today as minimum-impact camping, and taught those principles to thousands over the years through the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) and the Wilderness Education Association (WEA). In the introduction to Petzoldt’s book, his friend Kevin Cassidy summed up the simple lessons Paul shared: know where you are going, watch your step, look around the bend, and pay attention to what you have left behind. I think we need more people like Mr. Petzoldt, now so more than ever. Anyway – having just finished the book and done a little reading up on the guy, it made my day when I came across this footage of Paul along with a wonderful overview of his work with NOLS. The video below was recently found at the NOLS headquarters and cleaned up and posted on YouTube. It’s a bit rough, but the message comes through clear enough.
See also: An article on Paul Petzoldt from Life Magazine in 1969.
I am a history buff of climbing and backpacking too and it is always interesting to learn about the turning points of going from the way things were done (largely in ignorance) to the way we are taught to do things today. For instance, Eckenstein’s invention of the 10-point crampon in 1908 or Frost’s and Chouinard’s use of two ice axes (originally a custom-general axe and an ice hammer) to ascend steep slopes. We owe Petzoldt for the care we have learned to give our public lands, as well as appreciation for his efforts in promoting that belief.
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