Layton Kor belays Dennis Jump on the first pitch of our aborted route out in the Arizona desert.
After a huge and messy November fiasco with PayPal, who incidently is not OurPal!, the great Layton Kor Medical Fundraising effort is back in the business of helping Layton with his medical expenses. A big thanks to our wonderful friends at Big City Mountaineers for stepping up and partnering with us to help Layton out. We’ll be writing more about BCM in another blog post and all the great things they do for urban teens with climbing and the outdoors.
Dennis Jump and I visited Layton for five days before Thanksgiving. Both Layton and his wife Karen expressed extreme gratitude to all the climbers who have been helping him out. We had lots of great conversations about climbing, with Layton remembering details of his ascent of the directissma on The Eiger in 1966, lots of his climbs in the Dolomites, some diving adventures in Guam and Bermuda, and climbing in the Black Canyon of the Gunnison in the early 1960s.
The three of us also got out climbing one day. We attempted an unclimbed 300-foot-high prow out in the Black Mountains. Layton led the first pitch up a groove to a good ledge. Above loomed an overhanging seam lined with loose blocks. Dennis and I both declined the lead so I slammed a couple bolts in and we rapped off. The adventure sapped Layton’s strength, so while he rested, Dennis led a loose crack up a nearby unclimbed dome.
Here is a link to a blog post I wrote for my Climbing website at About.com. Check it out. It recounts a funny story that Layton told me while we drove across Golden Valley. Enjoy.
And remember to donate a few bucks to help Layton with his medical expenses. Steph and I have some great prizes lined up from the end of December drawing.
Photo below: Layton and Dennis go over the drawings Dennis is creating for Layton’s new book of adventure stories.
