The Definitive Profile of Yosemite Legend Steve Roper

This article originally appeared on Climbing

In the 1950s and '60s Yosemite Valley was the center of the rock climbing universe. The first ascents of El Capitan, Half Dome, Sentinel Rock, Leaning Tower, and Washington Column set the standard for hard, technical climbing throughout the world. But amazingly, at that time, the guide to the “Valley” was just a 20-page chapter in Hervey Voge’s “A Climber’s Guide to the High Sierra.”

An upstart 22-year-old from Berkeley changed all that with the publication of the “Red Guide" to Yosemite Valley in 1964. Over the next 20 years, Steve Roper’s guide and its subsequent editions would inspire climbers all over the world to attack the foreboding walls of Yosemite. And that simple guide would lead Roper into a career of editing and publishing guides to California’s High Sierra, Ascent Magazine, and tomes like the "50 Classic Climbs of North America." As good as he was at writing and editing, he was also one heck of a climber whose resume during the Golden Age of Yosemite climbing put him amongst the best of his generation.

Almost providentially, Roper got his start in climbing when his father asked his boss, a certain Hervey Voge, where he could take his 13-year-old son to learn how to climb. “I was not very popular in school and I didn’t like school athletics and here were these young men whom I could look up to and listen to and learn how to climb from," remembers Roper. "It turns out I was fairly good at it and very enthusiastic.”

But, as per the Sierra Club Rock Climbing Section (RCS) standards of the day, Roper had to undergo a three-year apprenticeship on diminutive local crags before he was finally allowed to go to Yosemite. And even in the Valley, the RCS guidelines dictated he climb only specific beginner-friendly routes such as Lunch Ledge on Washington Column and only partway up Royal Arches.

Roper says he became an “actual” climber at age 17 when he struck out on his own and fell in with Krehe Ritter. It was 1958 and their tick list included all of Yosemite’s classic trade routes of the day from Higher and Lower Cathedral Spires to the Direct Route on Washington Column, Royal Arches, and the Southwest Arete of Lower Brother.

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