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ONCE CAME A BREED of hardmen who climbed not for glory or money or career (no such career existed), but simply because they needed to: for the thrill of it, for the bone-deep satisfaction derived from topping out and returning safely, for the chance to stretch human limits in the mountains. These rugged ascensionists captured the imagination of
Nashville-based photo-grapher Jim Herrington at an early age. When he was ten, before he had tied in for his first climb or owned his first camera, Herrington would pedal his bike down to a local climbing shop in his childhood home of Charlotte, North Carolina, where he loitered for hours, leafing through magazines and staring at the gear.
"That's where I first read about these guys, in the old Chouinard catalogues," says the photographer, 37, whose gallery of portraits, "Rock Legends," with an introduction by climbing writer Greg Child, begins on page 70. "I'm sure somebody from the store would have
taken me climbing if I'd asked, but I was just this punk kid, standing around wishing I could go."
Since then, Herrington has become a skilled climber in his own right, scaling numerous crags on the East Coast and tackling more formidable climbs in California and the Tetons. His portraits project began in 1998 on a two-week outing with Doug Robinson, during which the pair put up a first ascent of Backside of Beyond, on the Sierra's Temple Crag. For
this issue, Herrington has also trained his lens on Yosemite big-wall pioneer Royal Robbins, ice-climbing legend and Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard (pictured in his original blacksmith shop), and many others.
This work parallels his interest in rock stars of a different pedigree: Shooting musicians like the Rolling Stones and Tom Petty, as well as country legends Dolly Parton, Charlie Rich, and the Mavericks, has been his primary means of support via assignments for Rolling Stone, Esquire, and
GQ. Herrington now continues to tick off his wish list of climbing legends, a labor of love that he plans to collect in a book. "I'm fascinated by history," he says. "I don't find current life that much of a mystery. But these guys are a mystery."
David Rakoff
"I was trapped in hell," David Rakoff says of Tom Brown's Tracking, Nature, and Wilderness Survival School. But on Day Four, while trying to make fire using a bowdrill, he had a revelation. At an instructor's urging, he paid homage to the sun. "I turned off the snide New Yorker in me and expressed gratitude. Sure enough, the fire came." Rakoff
is frequently heard on NPR's This American Life. "I, Nature Boy" begins on page 90.
Bruce Barcott
It took contributing editor Bruce Barcott weeks to locate the number of the antienvironmentalist spy Barry Clausen. Then he was telephonically sized up: "He didn't want to get ambushed by a vegan in meat-eater's clothes," says Barcott, who met Clausen last spring for "Snoop: The Secret Life and Prying Times of Barry Clausen" (page 106). "And I didn't want to ambush him. He's really not a bad guy."
Ian Frazier
"Fish are more active when they're less worried," explains contributing editor Ian Frazier, who threw his first cast at age 14 and now, at almost 50, fishes mostly at night, when his quarry is less stressed-out. "But I do it as much for my own convenience as theirs." Frazier, the author of six books, including On the
Rez, splits his time between New Jersey and Montana. "Catching Monsters After Dark" starts on page 116.
Charles Gullung
When he wasn't snapping pictures of the quest for fire, the tanning of hides, and the proper technique for tick self-inspection at Tom Brown's survival school, Charles Gullung took a few turns in the shooting gallery, where he practiced hunting stuffed toys with sharpened sticks (the large purple Barney was a favorite target). "You sidearm it in
one forward throw, no back motion, after sneaking up on the animal," says Gullung, a New Orleans native. "It was actually pretty easy."
Dan Duane
"I came to believe that my life would take a turn for the worse if I didn't climb El Cap," says Dan Duane, who details his obsession with climbing Yosemite's 3,000-foot monolith in "Up on the Big Stone," page 80. "But there are some so completely obsessed they don't
see it as an obsession. It's just what they do." Duane is the author of Caught Inside, a book about California's surfing subculture.
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