Who the hell is Tingey?
By David P. Carter & John Flynn
If there were a Halloween-themed Wasatch climbing circuit, it would surely feature the iconic Little Cottonwood Canyon multipitch Tingey’s Terror. Both Mountain Project and A Granite Guide describe the route as a moderate “choose your own adventure” romp that ascends granite cracks and faces midway up the Gate Buttress. The memorable name presumably comes from a mid-route 5.7R slab pitch protected by three bolts that is generally referred to as the Terror Pitch.
But, if the terror in Tingey’s Terror comes from a spooky, runout slab…who the hell is Tingey?
The answer traces back to the first ascent team, and the young climber who first led the storied Terror Pitch, in particular.¹ The route was authored by Ralph Tingey, David Wood, and Rick Reese in 1962. Tingey was 18 years old at the time, having fallen in love with climbing five years earlier on an ascent of Lone Peak with three friends. Hooked, Tingey taught himself the basics of rock craft though reading, including a book by a medical doctor on the 1953 Everest Expedition and Gaston Rébuffat’s Glace, neige et roc. Tingey translated the latter with the help of a French dictionary.
We sat down to talk to Tingey about the route that now bears his name. He recalls setting out for the climb with Wood and Reese on the afternoon of May 15. All three were clad in knickers to ward off the chill of early spring. The climbers had no more than nine pitons and six steel carabiners between them, which they used to ascend the low-angle granite crags of lower Little Cottonwood in pitches of 50–100 feet at a time. They climbed with pitons dangling from nylon ropes slung over their shoulders and hammers on their belts. They rarely stopped to place protection between anchors.
The 1962 ascent came long before the advent of sticky rubber and predated the arguable release of the modern dynamic lead rope by roughly two years. Reese climbed in Raichle mountain boots and Tingey wore “Kletter shoes” — a type of hiking shoe that climbers had begun to adopt for its snug fit (snug enough to edge up 5.11 routes, according to Tingey). Tingey also sported a helmet from a mining safety supply outlet in downtown Salt Lake City, secured with a piece of parachute cord. The men hip-belayed one another on a 120 foot Goldline rope tied around the leader’s waist in two or three wraps. They made the climb without the benefit of modern protection, including the three lead bolts that constitute the only available gear on the 100 foot Terror Pitch today.
With these facts in mind, no one would blame Tingey for being scared as he cast off on lead, the unclimbed slab grainy from a lack of traffic. However, when asked if he felt fear as he stepped off the belay ledge, he replies simply “no, no, I don’t think I’ve ever been scared climbing.”
Never mind the pendulum fall that Tingey then took onto the Goldline rope secured by Wood’s hip belay. In Tingey’s words:
Where we got to that traverse, since no one had climbed on the rock before, it was very grainy — like covered with sand because that’s just the natural weathering way. . . . it was all edging at that point; there was no friction. I had a little undercling. I was about 15 feet up to the right of Dave Wood, who was belaying me on a waist belay. He had the rope around his waist, which was the classic way to belay.
So I was just diagonally out about 15 feet on that traverse, out with a little undercling, and I was pushing really hard and my feet just skittered on that loose gravelly stuff. And I shot into the air and somersaulted and landed on my left hand and kind of scraped my hand a little bit. [I] went tumbling down and Dave caught me with a rope. And I wasn’t caught by, you know, protection or anything. Dave Wood was sitting in a little nook and he caught me on a hip belay with the rope, you know, as I banged down the mountain. That was a big deal.
And I climbed right back up. I didn’t think anything about it. It was my first leader fall in my life, even though I’d been climbing for about five years. I’d never really considered falling. I mean, the rule was you don’t fall, the leader must not fall. It was in all the books. And so there I was [thinking to myself] “Whoa, what happened?” you know, and Wood goes “You okay?” [and I replied] “Oh yeah I’m fine. I’m doing great.” So I continued to lead on and led out on the pitch.
The team finished the route at the end of that pitch, on a sizable flat spot since dubbed the Fudd Ledge. They returned to their packs in the dark without headlamps. According to Tingey the descent was “just horrible.” He recalls: “I remember [the descent] as much as I remember anything–in the dark, fighting my way through horrible scrub oak at the base of the cliff.”
The first ascent of Tingey’s Terror is just one story amidst a lifetime of outdoor exploits, both recreational and professional. As discussed in an interview for the University of Alaska Fairbanks Oral History Program, Tingey took a seasonal position as a climbing ranger in the Tetons in the summer of ’65, five years after he first climbed the Grand Teton. He then took a full-time Teton climbing ranger position in ’70. In 1980, Tingey moved with his family to Alaska, where he climbed Denali at least three times and “dog mushing became a way of life.” Throughout, he stayed in touch with his Alpenbock Club friends and climbing partners, including David Wood, Rick Reese, and Ted Wilson, among others. He remains an avid climber today.
Tingey returned to Tingey’s Terror only once: a climb with his (then) 17 year old daughter in 2000. When asked what the experience was like, he exclaims “Oh, we just loved it. It was great. I thought, ‘well, what a great route.’” He still gets asked about the first ascent, the Terror Pitch, and whether the three bolts the slab now features desecrate the route he put up 60 years ago.
His response? With a laugh: “No I was happy to have them . . . it felt real comfortable up there, you know, 70 feet out [from the belay] or whatever it was.”
[1] Tingey is uncertain how closely today’s Terror Pitch follows the line he climbed in 1962. According to Brian Smoot on the route’s Mountain Project page, the first ascent team did not traverse out directly from the belay, as the route is commonly done. Rather, they “went straight up to a right slanting bulge/roof, then traversed straight right along a cool foot ledge to its end,” before making a few more moves to the belay ledge.
[2] When we first published this essay, we incorrectly referred to Tingey’s shoes as “clutter shoes.” The ever-helpful James Garrett (former climbing partner of Tingey’s, prolific first ascensionist in Utah and beyond, and “Mr. West Desert”) reached out with a clarification. Thanks, James!
