The Southeastern Climbers Coalition - Jesse Guthrie Interview

Jesse Guthrie. One of the pioneers of sport climbing in the southeast. He brought insanely hard routes with him (ie; first 5.13 in Alabama and quite possibly one of the first 5.13d/14's in the country (no second)). He was a man ahead of his time in the wide open climbing spaces of the deep south. We sit down with the man himself to get some insight of what all went on "back in the day". Photo: Jesse Guthrie on Tour de Jour (5.13d/14a).

SCC: When and where did you start climbing?

Jesse: I started climbing in Virginia, at Great Falls when I was 13 and then climbed a lot at Seneca Rocks West Virginia. I put up my first accent in 1974 at Seneca. In 1975 I did the first accent of Sunshine 5.10+r and placed the first bolt since the army in the 40s..so it cause a bit of controversy, but even at that time I looked at the route first, thought that it needed a bolt at about 60 ft up, at a blank section, so before trying the climb, I placed the bolt on rappel, and started from the bottom with a lot of old shitty wires. I did the route on-sight, because it was so scary, that I knew if I fell I’d probably rip out everything, besides I was 16 and didn’t have much fear….young, dumb, and full of $#@!

SCC: Who were some of your early mentors?

Jesse: I graduated High School when I was 16 and a year later in 1976 hitchhiked to Colorado and hung out in El Dorado canyon, climbing everything I could, there I meet Steve Wunsh for the first time. After leaving CO and hitching to the valley and getting some big air experience I went back to VA and starting going to the Gunks every chance I got, there I ran into Steve again. I was living in a tent in (Near Traps) in the Gunks and ended up climbing almost everyday with Steve….there was a group of us, Wunsh, Bragg and many others working on freeing old Aid routes…Steve was one of my first mentors..

SCC: You traveled to Europe and climbed with many of the great climbers of that day. Can you tell us about that time and how it influenced your climbing once you returned to the States?

Jesse: I went to Europe this first time in 1984 with a friend from the DC area John Bremer and his friend Matt Lavander. John knew a guy in Munich Hans martin Goetz, who happened to be the Boreal shoe distributor at the time. So my first trip was unbelievable. We went to the Frankenjura and hooked up with Wolfgang Güllich, Kurt Albert, Stefan Glowacz and many others. We climbed around Germany for a while, then headed down to Verdon in the south of France, there we hooked up again with Wolfgang and Kurt. John and Matt headed off to Italy and I stayed and climbed with Wolfgang and Kurt, they took a liking to me after they found out that I was a professional rodeo cowboy a few years earlier ( I rode Bareback Broncs and Bulls for 5 years). My first climb in Verdon was with Wolfgang and Kurt. I didn’t have a clue about the way things worked there, and being still apart of the red swammy belt and EBs generation, I was lowered down a hard 5.12 which was slightly overhanging, and no quickdraws to clip in on the way down. So I ended up about 20 ft away from the wall, spinning in circles hanging from my swammy 50m down and 150m up, needless to say I was a little freaked out. When I finally managed to jumar out, I struggled over the edge on top to see Wolfgang and Kurt laughing the asses off at my afternoon epic. All in all they were a blast and had a major impact on the way I climbed and lived. A few years later my wife, whom I met the next year in Garmisch Germany, and I were living with Wolfgang and Kurt in the Frankenjura, while living there I was a climbing guide for my friend Norbert Sandner who also lived in the same house, and I met and became friends with Jerry Moffat, Ben Moon, Gerhard Horhager and an endless list of others. 1986 we returned to Alabama to live in America for a while.

We moved back to Germany for a while, then out to Colorado. I was a sponsored climber by vauDe in Germany, and they ask me to come to the States and start vauDe there. So my wife and I moved to Nederland, a small town at the top of Boulder canyon in 1989. there I hook up with a lot of the local climbers and put up a lot of first accents in Boulder canyon on areas like Coney Island crag.. the routes were really similar to those at yellow bluff…steep thin edges. I put a hand full of new 5.13s and many 5.12s and my house was the stopping station for all my European friends…Jerry and Kurt spent a lot of time in Nederland a long with many others. Being in Colorado I got into Ice climbing and hooked up with Jeff Lowe, climbing new mixed routes in Vail. Later he invited me on an expedition to Makalu with Catherine Destivelle to try my hand and high altitude climbing, it was an unsuccessful trip, but an amazing adventure. Jeff and I have been good friends over the years and still see each other occasionally; he was here in Prague this past summer, doing a slide show in Bratislava Slovakia. In the late 90s my wife Gina and I parted, but still stay in touch, and I wandered around the world for a while, back to Germany in 1998 . I was working as a salesman in a climbing shop in Nuremberg and climbing, at that time I was in the middle of writing my 2nd book, when after work on Saturday afternoon I headed out to meet Kurt and some other friends and climb, the crag was crowed so I took my laptop and headed off to the side and up to a comfortable ledge overlooking the valley and started to write, listening to music on a beautiful October afternoon, so sitting about 30ft up writing away. A beginner climber climbed above me and stepped on a boulder the size of my laptop, needless to say, It found it’s way right to my head, and not knowing or hearing anything I was hit and knocked off the ledge, the next thing I remember is waking up in the hospital with Kurt Albert, dressed in a green gown saying “you in Hospital” I was in intensive care for 5 days and as Kurt told me later, “as the helicopter took off I was sure we wouldn’t see you again” so after a rather long recovery time “I’m feeling much better now” I made it back to 5.12+ ….hard to kill an old cowboy! I’m now 47 and still wonder how I made it this far? So in 2000 I went back to Colorado and Jeff Lowe and I started his new company Couldwalker…me as Salesman, and after a year of struggling and few disappointments Jeff closed it down and I took off for Nepal again, I came back to Nederland after that, finished writing my 2nd and 3rd books, bartended in a mountain saloon worked at the Nepali restaurant teaching them English and learning Nepali, went to Nepal again, came back again, then after a winter cabin fever session, got on a plane back to Europe. Been here ever since.

SCC: How did you find Yellow Bluff?

Jesse: I was living in Huntsville at the time, exploring every place I could with my Wife Gina and my really good friend Roy Simmons, Roy said he saw a place that looked really good one day while he was out photographing…so we bushwacked in and found it! We found a lot of climbing places, but nothing like Yellow Bluff.

SCC: Many of the routes you did at Yellow Bluff were some of the hardest in the U.S. at that time. Can you tell us about the routes and how challenging they were for you?

Jesse: I think we just didn’t realize the magnitude of the rock at first, we mostly climbed routes with gear only, which didn’t last long, I started seeing things that would go if we added a bolt or two, so following in the foot steps of my European friends, I opened a few new routes after rap bolting, like my earlier days, I looked, bolted then tried the route. I guess Rainbow Warrior was the first break through for me; it’s on the left side of a blank wall that no one had tried at that point. The start is easy 5.11 up to a short headwall with a super technical crux, tiny fingertip crimps and minimal footholds then finishing up on continual 5.12 to the top. I wasn’t sure about the grade at the time, I called 5.13a/b because it was considerably harder than anything else there at the time. Chris Gore visited Yellow Bluff later, confirming the grade. He didn’t however try Tour du Jour, which I had finished before his arrival. Tour was the hardest thing I had ever been on. I saw the line just to the right of Rainbow, and started working it, it took over months of constant tries before I finished it, it has 3 crux’s the first 13a, then 13b/c and the top 13d/14a every crux super thin and technical, I was obsessed with the route, and my wife was stuck belaying me, she did however get to do a few of her own first accents. I did tour just after JB did to bolt or not to be, at Smith rocks then scott franklin climbed to bolt, and then he called me to ask about coming down for a visit, he had a good time in AL, and did a few of the hard routes, he worked Tour a bit but didn’t have time to stay and work it further, so Tour never got a second accent.

SCC: Who was climbing at Yellow Bluff during that time and what was the scene like?

Jesse: Word spread rapidly about the area and soon we started running into a lot of new climbers like Curt Merchant, Mark Cole…then came along Doug and Maurice Reed, the power boys, they could really climb the hard overhanging cracks and power climbs. Jeff Gruenberg came up from FL and Robin (erbesfield? ) came over. Mostly it Mark and his wife Jennifer and Curt, Roy Simmons and Betty (Curts wife). Eeverybody was in a frenzy of finding and putting up new routes, it was right at the peak of climbing there when the new landowner came along and shut everything down, Yellow Bluff is without a doubt one of the best areas I have ever climbed at, and I’ve been all over the world climbing.

SCC: What was your favorite climb at Yellow Bluff?:

Jesse: Rainbow Warrior.

SCC: Can you tell us about the books you have written?

Jesse: I wrote 3 books which are available on line at Amazon or Barnes and Noble. They’re mostly about a group of friends and their travels and troubles, my favorite is the second book “The Rains of India”.. it’s about sex, drugs, and rock-climbing… and most of the people I know who read it either cried or were pissed off at me because of what happens in the book. Anyway if you like adventure travel, romance you might enjoy these books.

SCC: Where are you living now and what are you up to these days?

Jesse: I live in Prague, Czech Republic. I’ve been here for 3 years now, I came back to Europe in the spring of 03 and decided to come to Prague, I always wanted to come here and never did, so after traveling around India and Nepal and back to Colorado, I decided to take a course at a Language school here and started teaching English to Czechs. After a year of living here I hooked up with an old friend from Germany, who is the boss of Marmot Europe, and along with my Czech friend and my Slovak girlfriend we started reping. Now we rep Marmot, Montrail, Wildcountry and Metolius in Czech and Slovak Republics. We’re only a 3 hour drive away from the Frankenjura, so we head over and climb and hang out with Kurt Albert, it’s great being so close to a lot of my friends in Germany, as well as making new friends here in CZ & SK.

SCC: Thanks for the interview Jesse.