Ep. 971: The Life of Climbing Icon Royal Robbins - David Smart
Adventure Sports Podcast
Curt Linville
4.6 • 579 Ratings
🗓️ 2 October 2023
⏱️ 58 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Climbing: David Smart's Royal Robbins Biography – Yosemite Golden Age, Clean Climbing Ethos, Dirtdag Roots, Rivalries with Chouinard/Harding, and Legacy as Conscience of Rock Climbing. "Royal Robbins had an outsized impact on climbing history. This great new biography by David Smart brings the man behind the famous climbs to life in a way that’s both relatable and inspiring."--Alex Honnold
Acclaimed writer David Smart illuminates the fascinating life of Royal Robbins---in all its soulful ambition, rivalry, and romance. Royal Robbins chronicles his early years growing up as a latchkey kid in Southern California, the push and pull between being an aspiring banker or one of the original Camp 4 dirtbags, and his later decades as a father, husband, kayaker, and the trailblazing founder of the outdoor apparel company that bears his name. This intimate, colorful tour of climbing history covering Yosemite, the Tetons, the Gunks, the Alps, the United Kingdom, and more from the 1960s onward features star characters such as Liz Robbins-- Robbins’s wife and a pioneering adventurer in her own right-- Yvon Chouinard, John Harlin, Steve Roper, Warren Harding, Tom Frost, and Doug Tompkins.
An important addition to our knowledge of the Golden Age of rock climbing in Yosemite and the development of the clean climbing ethos, Royal Robbins sheds new light on an elemental figure of outdoor culture.
Robbins’s passing in 2017 was covered from the BBC News to NPR to the New York Times, which deemed him the "conscience of rock climbers"
Find Royal Robbins The American Climber at mountaineers.org.
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Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hey, folks, I missed last Thursday. |
| 0:26.1 | You probably noticed that. |
| 0:27.4 | We didn't have an episode. |
| 0:29.4 | Friday came around and I'm like, I got to get something up. |
| 0:32.3 | But I was not able to get to the podcast last Thursday. |
| 0:37.4 | And here's why. I was traveling for work. Oftentimes I do |
| 0:42.4 | the podcast, you know, a day or two before a publishing date. I should plan ahead, but story of my |
| 0:49.4 | life, not planning ahead far enough in advance. And yeah, it caught me. |
| 0:54.7 | I was so busy with my day job. |
| 0:58.0 | And then right after that, I had a conference to go speak at. |
| 1:01.0 | In Florida, where I live, it was a conservation conference all about the progress of this idea called the Florida Wildlife Corps or something I'm hugely passionate about protecting the wild lands |
| 1:12.8 | of Florida, my home state. And between getting ready for that talk, doing my actual job, and then also, |
| 1:20.8 | three, launching a new podcast, I was not able to upload a show on Thursday. And let me tell you about my |
| 1:27.1 | new show real quick. |
| 1:28.0 | It's called Florida Uncut, and it's all about talking to the people who are dedicating their |
| 1:33.7 | lives to making sure Florida stays connected and protected. |
| 1:38.0 | There's this really cool and innovative idea in Florida, like I just mentioned, called the |
| 1:41.6 | Florida Wildlife Corridor. |
| 1:43.1 | And what's so neat about it, |
| 1:44.2 | it's not just protect land and keep it from, you know, turning into houses or parking lots or more |
| 1:50.5 | roads, you know, keeping it an intact ecosystem. But it's also making sure it can connect to other |
| 1:58.4 | green spaces. So like, for instance, you know, Yosemite, which is what we're going |
... |
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