Hey, y'all. We'll be back next week with Chapter 3 of Dope Lake. You've heard a lot of voices

and names in Dope Lake, John Long, Jim Bridwell, John Backer, Dale Bard, Vern Clevenger, John

Yablonsky, big names, big personalities, backed by the skills to see a new athletic horizon.

They helped write the history of Yosemite Valley climbing.

Today, though, we wanted to do a little deep dive into the roots that defined the time and place,

Yosemite in the 1970s, when the decade started the hardest route in Yosemite checked in at 510,

but by the end of that decade, the standard had climbed to 513.

So let's dive in.

As a student of history, Lauren, and our resident historian here on Platton Gold. Is there something that

really grabs you about that era? I guess I've been reflecting a little bit on that conversation

with Mari, and we have bits of it throughout this season. But I think the most interesting part of that

was listening to her talk about how being

a climber meant being good at everything and that there wasn't a specialization in bouldering

versus big wall climbing, aid climbing, you know, hard free climbing. Like there was just being a climber.

The thing to really remember is that Yosemite Valley 50 years ago was just so different.

You know, there are just not that many roots and you could, you could actually know them all.

Like you could know what's on each cliff because there aren't that many. You know, it's like

there's one route up this wall. There are two roots on that wall. There's one free climb over there.

There are, you know, 14 roots at the

cookie. You know, now they're, now they're 100. It's, like, hard to keep track of it all.

So does the growth in roots and the progression really a situation where necessity is the

mother of all invention? Yeah, like they're going to the incredible Hulk. They're putting up

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