Jerry Gallwas: Preserving History with the Yosemite Climbing Association

It was a 150-foot fall — he lived to tell the tale! — that ended Jerry Gallwas’s brief but impactful contributions to America’s rock climbing. He started climbing at 15, in 1951, in San Diego. In those days, climbers had to craft their own gear to participate, so he and Omar Conger packed out an abandoned anvil from a mining camp, dragged it on a sapling for several miles, and used it to bang out pitons. “We found the anvil on a backpacking trip in the spring of 1953. That’s when I started making them,” Gallwas says. “It probably weighs 80 pounds. It’s not that big, but it’s enough to make a believer out of you when you’ve got your own 40 pounds on your back.”

He couldn’t wait to get home and forge pitons like his hero, the Swiss blacksmith and hell of a climber John Salathé, who was the first to use alloy pitons. Salathé marked his gear with a P surrounded by a diamond.

The mid-50s were formative years for Gallwas. Within that period, he climbed Cleopatra’s Needle, a 275-foot sandstone tower in Northern Arizona’s Navajo land. He also ticked the 400-foot Totem Pole in Monument Valley on the Utah-Arizona border, 900-foot Spider Rock in Arizona, and the list continues. He repeated the most challenging routes in Yosemite and authored his own classics, including the East Buttress of Middle Cathedral Rock. His partners were the who’s who of Yosemite Golden Age: Royal Robbins, Mark Powell, Don Wilson, and Bill “Dolt” Feuerer.

Soon, he was drafted into the army and stationed in Fort Poke, Louisiana, during the Cuban Missile Crisis. “There was a lot of brinkmanship going on, but Kennedy played it very smooth,” he says.

When he stepped out on the snow, which was fresh and unpacked over verglas, he took a hard 360-degree fall onto his front side, and the pick of his ice tool slammed against the ice. But his pick didn’t find purchase. “And I didn’t slide. I was a rocketing. I was really moving” he tells me.

Fifty meters later, just before careening into an exposed talus field, Gallwas finally drove his ice tool into the slope and arrested his fall. He was alive, but his body took a severe beating.

“I was able to walk out,” he says before letting out a cough, adding that he’s getting over a cold. “I went to see the doctor, and he says, ‘Why don’t you take off your clothes? Let’s see what you look like.’ And there was a hematoma from my navel to my ankles.”

His hips, legs, and feet were bruised purple. He had major internal bleeding and was damaged to the point where doctors had to cut into him to see what was going on, clear out what they could, and repair where necessary. They made a deep incision around his waist from one side to the other. “My GI tract was opened up and laid out on a sterile sheet and then packed back in.”

After they sewed him back up, doctors told him not to wear a belt, much less tie a fat rope around his abdomen (this was before harnesses) and climb big walls.

Before his fall, Gallwas was already two years into his career doing diagnostics at Beckman Instruments, which does biomedical testing, and after a several-month recovery, he returned to work. He went on to log 30 years with the company and another ten on the National Committee for Clinical Laboratory Standards board of directors.

Fast forward to today. He’s married to his second wife, Sandy, and his two children are in their fifties. He resides in Fullerton, Orange County, California. When I reach Gallwas, he tells me he’s splayed out on the couch resting after being on the phone all morning with YCA and ready to talk about his work on the board with the Yosemite Climbing Association.

“I came on in June, a few months before Facelift, which came off quite well,” he tells me. Today, Gallwas works closely with board member Jim Thomsen, who began climbing in Yosemite in 1967. Jim opened his first business in 1971, Wilderness Experience, holds an MBA and was the president of the outdoor division of VF Corp for ten years. Also on the board is the first woman to climb a Grade VI, Liz Robbins, Royal’s widow, and (liaison) Nikyra Calcagno, Mike “Mr. El Cap” Corbett’s first wife, and YCA founder and president Ken Yager. Yager moved to Yosemite in 1976 and climbed a dozen big walls with Corbett.

“I recognize the value of the Yosemite story,” Gallwas says. “If you stop and look at it, rock climbing, the major changes in techniques and technology have come out of Yosemite, go clear back to the 1930s. This whole business is bringing the dynamic belay to California, practicing it at Cragmont in Berkeley, and then carrying it to Yosemite’s Cathedral spires; it really came to fruition with Clean Climbing and the Chouinard and Frost manifesto in 72 that swept the world and changed the use of hardware. And it all started because of destroying the popular climbs in Yosemite.”

YCA celebrated its 20th anniversary and 20th Facelift event in Yosemite this year. It’s a 501(c)(3) and can receive tax-deductible donations. Donate here.

Gallwas helped spearhead the opening of the YCA climbing exhibit in Yosemite Village in 2022. He believes that the current museum in Mariposa will be much larger within five years.

“Ten thousand square feet,” he says, “There’s a prime piece of property right there in the center of town.” With Yosemite’s annual visitation at 4 million visitors and counting, Gallwas expects the new space to draw hundreds of thousands of tourists annually.

In the meantime, Gallwas plans to keep growing YCA, continue sitting at the table with the Yosemite climbing rangers regarding park policy and how it impacts climbers, and build out the museum’s gift shop, which also stocks climbing gear.

I worked closely with Gallwas to build the 20th Anniversary YCA Facelift zine this past year. At 100 pages, the zine makes a deep dive into Yosemite climbing from the Golden Age to today, featuring Gallwas, Lauren DeLauney Miller, Mark Hudon, and Glen Denny. It also celebrates Facelift volunteers, preservation, and park stewardship. It’s on sale now. To purchase, click this link.