After I chatted with Dean Fidelman for this story on his favorite unpublished work this summer, a package arrived in the mail hot off the press from Stone Master Books. During our call, he told me Stone Master founder Mike Graham — his publisher and lifelong friend — would send over a few of the latest titles. One was Tobin, The Stone Masters and Me 1970-1980, which is Rick Accomazzo’s part biography of Sorenson, and part autobiography. I wrote about it here. Tobin, The Stone Masters and Me was submitted to the Banff Film and Book Festival. The second is a reprinting of The Stone Masters, California Rock Climbers in the Seventies, compiled by Dean Fidelman and John Long, which includes hundreds of beautiful photos. It has contributions from various authors, including Long, John Bachar, Lynn Hill, Bruce Adams, Tobin Sorenson, and many others.

[Editor’s note: The photos in this story are collected works by Rick Accomazzo, Dean Fidelman and Mike Graham]

Dean texted me Graham’s number, and I figured, if I were lucky, we’d chat for 20 minutes about his publishing business. He picked up right away, and that 20 stretched into two hours as we dove deep into his clothing company, Gramicci Products, importing the first sticky rubber shoes from Spain and partnering with John Bachar for distribution. We discussed Mike’s lifelong dedication to climbing and surfing — he started both sports while still in high school — and how he rarely tried a route more than three times and always strived for the onsight. “I could probably count the bolts I put in on maybe my digits. It was always the last resort.”

His crew was tight – the sport’s elite – and climbing these hard routes left a lasting impression on him. They lived and breathed climbing and their futures were carved out of these early experiences. Long spent a lifetime writing everything from articles to books to screenplays about that impressionable period.

Lynn Hill became the first woman to climb 5.14 and the first person to free The Nose. Accomazzo co-founded The Access Fund and continues to pen stories on the Stone Masters. Fidelman amassed one of the world’s largest Yosemite climbing image collections and published several coffee-table-size books. Graham took the gusseted crotch style cut found in martial arts pants and applied it to climbing pants, building Gramicci into a mainstream brand.

As I write this, I’m looking over at my green velvet chair with all four Stone Master Books piled on it. Titles that have come out since the beginning include: The Stone Masters, California Rock Climbers in the Seventies (2009 and reprinted in 2024); Stone Nudes, Art in Motion (2010); The Valley Climbers (2011); and Tobin, The Stonemasters and Me (2024).

During my call with Graham, we talked about the many big walls he climbed and doing the boldest routes of the time, experiences so significant to him that to this day, he remembers the exact day and the partner he climbed them with. These experiences were so lasting that he went back to the most significant lines with his oldest son, Ian. This included one of the first 5.11s in the U.S. Valhalla, the three-pitch 5.11a that, if you could do it back in the early 70s, you’d earn yourself a spot as a Stone Master.

He told GQ in 2016: “It was a cockiness, a confidence that you have because you survived this pitch when no one else had been able to do it, and if you fall, you maybe could have broken yourself for the rest of your life, or died, and you survive it.”

Gramicci

“It was 1974, and it was real popular in Yosemite for European climbers to come over and claim the first, you know, French ascent of the Nose or the first Italian ascent of Salathé,” Graham tells me as we start the interview.

“We had a real kick over it,” Graham says from his home in Santa Paula in Southern California. “We thought, okay, what kind of ascent could we claim? And that’s when we came up with the idea of the first clean Italian ascent of Half Dome.”

Dennis Hennek, Doug Robinson, and Galen Rowell had made the first clean ascent of the RNWF of Half Dome in 1973. Their bold feat earned them the cover of National Geographic. Graham wanted the coveted second clean ascent.

It was mid-summer, a time when afternoons were warm and nights cool. Graham, seventeen at the time, and his partners Gib Lewis (18) and Rick Accomazzo (18) racked their hexes and nuts in Camp 4 under a thick haze of campfire smoke. “There might have been some beer or maybe something else (I’m guessing pot),” they started joking about making up their Italian names. “Rick didn’t have to do anything with his name because he was Italian. We decided to call Gib Lewis Antonio Gibbo. And I’d always really admired Emilio Comici, so, you know, I’m Michelangelo Gramicci.”

“Everyone around Camp 4 started calling me Gramicci because we claimed that ascent, and that name just stuck from then on.”

Importing Boreal Fires from Spain

In 1983, Graham began purchasing the first sticky climbing shoes, Calzados Boreal S.L (Boreal for short) Fires from Spain and importing them to the U.S., where Bachar would then deliver them to climbers from the back of his car.

“Bachar and I worked with a manufacturer in Spain to introduce sticky rubber climbing shoes to the world, which changed climbing footwear forever. In a weird way, I think it, like, ruined people’s footwork,” Graham says of the difference between Fires and the non-sticky options of the time, including Super Graton EB’s, Calcaire, PA’s, and RD’s. Before Fires, “you had to be super precise with your feet.”

“I’m laughing while saying this, but we all had brilliant footwork because of climbing in those early shoes. You get someone with super footwork, and then you put them in Fires, and, boy, the sky was the limit with what you could do. Yeah, it changed things so much for good and bad.”

Everyone wanted Fires and shipments were bought up even before they arrived. “I would get the shipments in from Spain,” Mike says, “and we were usually sold out about three or four shipments ahead. So, John would always just constantly have some in his car that he gave to the people who had ordered them.”

Gramicci

In 1977, at age 21, Graham started making custom products for people, including portaledges and alpine backpacks. He used them for the second and first continuous ascent of Son of Heart on El Cap and the second ascent of Horse Chute.

Before using his portaledges on Horse Chute (with with Ron Kauk) and The Son of Heart (with Dale Bard), he made fifth ascents of Zodiac (with Ron Kauk) and the Shield (with Bachar and Kauk), also on El Cap, but he did those with hammocks. Graham recalls placing ten RURPS in a single pitch on The Shield headwall.

Midway up Son of Heart, which parallels the Salathé Wall and ascends the right side of the Heart feature, complete with a huge roof, the team deployed their ledges for the first time. “They’re easy to put together, honestly, when you know how to do it. I could put mine together in, I think, less than 45 seconds,” Graham recalls.

Dale Bard struggled hard the first time he used Graham’s portaledge. “We were in the big arch overhang above the heart,” Graham recalls. “I just remember Dale couldn’t put his ledge together, and man, he was cussing me out big time. He couldn’t figure out how to do it. But we got it together for him, and the next morning, he says, ‘Man, I had the best sleep in my life.’

Graham added, “I wouldn’t have wanted to be up there with anyone but Bard. Dale was the best off-sized climber around, and that’s what that chimney stuff is up there. It was impossible to protect, especially as this was before large cams. Dale was a good aid climber, too, so there is no doubt about it. We’re really close to this day.”

During the late 70s, Graham followed the climbing circuit from the U.S. to the French Alps. He recalls always running into Yvon Chouinard during his travels, and Chouinard had even heard good things about Graham’s portaledges. Impressed by his designs and knowing Graham was interested in sewing outdoor goods, “he just sort of off the cuff said, ‘you know, if you ever come to Ventura and you wanna set up a sewing shop,’ He goes, ‘I’ll throw you all the business you want.’”

Unannounced, Graham showed up in Ventura, California in 1978 with his girlfriend. He recalls, “I walked in the Pacific Ironworks, and he was at his retail store there, and I came up behind him, tapped him on the shoulder. He turns around, surprised I even showed up, and I go, ‘here I am.’ Then he asks, ‘So What do you wanna do?’”

Chouinard suggested that Graham start a sewing factory, and at first, Graham helped him make his first climbing harnesses followed by making packs. For many years, he worked as a contractor for Chouinard Equipment, and in 1980, Graham started dabbling in his own designs. When Chouinard launched Patagonia, Graham continued helping him make Polypropylene underwear.

“The first thing I did was a sweatshirt. I also had some T-shirts and stuff and put some unique pattern designs in the underarms so you could reach well without your shirt hiking up. That was the start of, like, the freedom of movement clothing.”

“By 1982, I started experimenting with clothing ideas. I wanted to design something for climbers, and that’s how Gramicci’s gusseted climbing pants came about.” Graham carried over the ankle cuff and gusseted inseam designs from martial arts clothing.

When it came to naming his company, “I was torn between what to call it, and the name Stone Master came up to my head. But I thought that it’s a little more personal if I just call it Gramicci Products.”

Next came the Gramicci street pants. Today’s popular version is trim and straight-legged.

By 1998, REI informed Mike that Gramicci had become the number one brand in their stores, outside their label. In 1999, when the company was doing $27 million in annual sales, Graham left the company and ten years later – after building his home and large warehouse on his ranch and starting a brand in Asia called Rokx – he started Stone Master Books.

To this day, Graham resides in the same area in California as he did when he started working for Chouinard.

Stone Master Books

“Dean Fidelman, John Long, and I were working on the Stone Masters California Rock Climbers in the Seventies manuscript,” Graham says. They were “collecting photos and stories from that era, but they couldn’t find anyone to publish it.” Patagonia Press wasn’t interested; neither was Mountaineers Books. “So, I said, ‘Let’s do it ourselves,’ and that’s how Stone Master Books started.” It was still a rough manuscript, and no one wanted to publish it before Graham got involved.

The trio would go on to make three books together. Their first title, The Stone Masters, California Rock Climbers in the Seventies, received the Grand Prize and Best Mountaineering History Award at the 2010 Banff Film and Book Festival. Fidelman’s Stone Nudes, Art in Motion was next, followed by The Valley Climbers, Yosemite’s Vertical Revolution.

Where The Stone Masters showcases the 70s climbing era, with two free soloists ascending the 5.10a Reeds Direct in Yosemite, Valley Climbers is modern, with Kevin Jorgeson on the 5.14d Dawn Wall at sunset.

The collection of photos and essays is in a similar format as Stone Masters but with a modern take. Images included are of Sean Jones on his recent 5.12s with rainbows and waterfalls in the background, Alex Honnold soloing 5.13, and stories by Beth Rodden, Paul Piana, Peter Croft, Hank Caylor, the late Scott Cosgrove, and the late Sean Leary. Many of the stories are favorites from past issues of Climbing Magazine. Photo credits include Mikey Shaefer, Ben Ditto, Jimmy Chin, and others.

Graham also did an e-book version of Long’s classic title, Gorilla Monsoon.

“Not since George Meyer’s iconic Yosemite Climber (1979) has a single volume captured the modern ethos, in word, image, and design, of the “Mecca” of world rock climbing,” says the Stone Masters Books website of Valley Climbers.

But unlike Stone Masters, Valley Climbers didn’t sell as quickly as Graham expected. “We printed quite a few copies, but it didn’t start to sell off the shelf. And I could never really explain it,” Graham recalls.

For a while, as he looked at his enormous palette of Valley Climbers books in his warehouse, he thought they’d never sell out, nor would he even consider making a reprint. “These books, it’s a labor of love,” he says. “You get to work with your oldest friends and produce something that looks beautiful, which is awesome.”

Valley Climbers is still available, but only 400 copies remain out of a print run of 4,500. However, due to renewed interest in his Stone Masters title, Valley Climbers is selling again. Graham tells me people worldwide are buying all three books, and there is a resurgence of interest in Valley Climbers.

“They’re treating it like a trilogy or a collection,” he says.