“Dirty Old Town” Ogden Bouldering History: By Pete Lowe

KAYA has recently launched Anthony Chertudi’s Ogden Bouldering Guidebook, which features nearly 500 quartzite boulders on the hillsides just outside the city.

Enjoy learning about the history of Ogden bouldering, as written by local climber and developer, Pete Lowe:

“Ogden City feels like a place out of space and time, like its metropolitan trajectory got stuck in 1982. Yet, there is no denying, Ogden has its own unique verve. It has been described as having authentic character and gritty charm. Others just call it a shit hole.

The exact ingredients of what makes Ogden, well, Ogden, can be difficult to distil. However, if scent truly has the strongest connection with memory and emotion, then it is surprise I have conflicted connection to the city of my birth. In my mind, Ogden and the smell exuded by the resident dog food factory are inseparably linked, which, on any given day permeates all of downtown with unpleasant to downright disturbing odors.

Ogden is a city of juxtaposition, from the Art Deco masterpiece of Ogden High School to the gilded alien spacecraft of the Mormon temple, historic 25th street with its bright shop fronts and timeless flair and the main drag a block away that is flanked by outdated buildings, decaying exteriors and a profound sense of futility where, if you listen closely, can almost hear Shane MacGowan’s lilting chorus line, “dirty old town, dirty old town.”

Then you have Ogden’s incredible natural scenery. How is it possible that such amazing natural aesthetics have not engendered a yuppie haven of multi-million-dollar homes sitting smugly in the grandeur of the mountains? Instead, you have a sprawling chaos of haphazard subdivisions filled with suburban middle-income homes sitting beneath pristine snowcapped mountain peaks, tiered by rising bands of bright orange quartzite forming a beautiful mosaic of tumbled stone. If anything, Ogden refuses to be cliché.

It was the quartzite cliffs that would provide the early testing grounds that honed some of America’s greatest mountaineers. George Lowe and his cousins Jeff, Greg, and Mike capered about the foothills as children, and, once teenagers, applied themselves against the scrappy cliffs above their Ogden home before departing for grander and more exotic locations throughout the world.

With the departure of the famous Lowe’s in the early 70’s, Ogden climbing became relegated to a location of non-consequence. Yet, not far to the south in Salt Lake City an evolution in climbing took firm root in the early 1990’s. The plenitude of granite blocks found in the heart of Little Cottonwood canyon called to the local strongmen to test their power in the re-vitalized game of bouldering. Climbing icons like Boone Speed, Mike Beck, and Jeff Webb established some of the hardest boulder problems in the country like Copperhead, Jack Horner, and Bully on the granite boulders littering the hillside of the canyon.

These powerful testpieces would inspire a motley gang of kids from Ogden and Huntsville to pursue bouldering with a passion. Only teenagers, some of us not even old enough to drive, our tight knit group of friends set about establishing new routes and boulders around Ogden Valley.

For years we considered our local canvass of stone to be second rate. With the smell of dog food in the air, it was hard to escape the biased conclusion that Ogden just did not produce anything special. However, as we traveled more and matured as climbers, we began to recognize the vast potential of the thousands of quartzite blocks that littered the bench from South Ogden to Willard Canyon.

My group of friends were not the first to develop Ogden bouldering. Climbers such as Brian Mecham, Brent Hadley, Bryce Warren and Eric Decaria took up where the Lowe’s left off in 70’s and established numerous problems in the condensed boulders at the top of 27th street.

However, up until 2011, the hardest graded problem in the Ogden area was V9, a decidedly unimpressive grade at the national level. It took the vision, work ethic, and power of the local talent Anthony Chertudi to make Ogden the epicenter of hard bouldering in Northern Utah. Anthony is the kind of naturally talented climber that more dedicated, hard-working, i.e., weaker climbers might resent. With an upper body built like an inverted pyramid, he could bust out one arm pull ups as soon as he started climbing. A few years later, with no previous training or effort, Anthony would stick his pinky finger into a sling and crank out a one-arm pinky pull up. The bastard was just a little too strong!

However, Anthony’s torrid affair with Ogden bouldering started out on a love-less footing. For years he had little to no interest in the mostly diminutive boulders of the 26th street foothills. Ironically, it was the discovery of a modest overhang by Mike Beck, the un-official mayor of Little Cottonwood Canyon bouldering, that would ignite Anthony’s passion.

The cave was discovered as Mike, and I were competing in a charitable outdoor bouldering competition organized by Jeff Lowe. Jeff had returned to Ogden as a progressive neurologic disease forced him to retire from climbing. At that time, Jeff’s disease had advanced to the point where he needed two walking canes to ambulate. His continued passion for climbing even after he could no longer do it has left a lasting impression and I will never forget seeing him painstakingly labor through the boulderfield that day with a huge smile on his face.

As the competition wound down, Mike encouraged me to come check out a cave he had found high on the hillside. I was modestly impressed with his find and even managed to knock out a punchy dyno first ascent. Later that night, I told Anthony about the potential of this little cave. A few months later, when I came back to attempt a sit-start to my problem, the little cave had “grown” a lot bigger.

Anthony’s father was born in the Basque Country of Spain. His given name of Kepa appropriately translates to “Stone.” Some of the most important archeological finds of hominids are in the Basque region. The imprint of cave men is pronounced and pervasive in those lands. We always joked that Anthony had a closer than average connection to our Neanderthal relatives. So, it was little surprise that Anthony began transforming the smallish cave of the Ogden boulderfield into a much larger bouldering playground.

With the primitive tools of a shovel and pins and feathers (a pre-industrial technique of splitting stones) Anthony removed literally thousands of pounds of dirt and rock and managed to lower the ground level of the Ogden Cave by about three feet. My perceived sit-start to the original problem was now at chest level!

Confoundingly, I now had to execute a burly undercling pullup to just grab the original starting hold. While I could not make the desperately powerful moves, Anthony did, and he proceeded to link it into a rightward traverse on crimps, slopers, and pinches that culminated with a powerful deadpoint becoming Spirit Walker, Ogden’s first V14.

https://kaya-app.kayaclimb.com/climb/Spirit-Walker-v13-Ogden-315397/547273/559694

Anthony would apply the same technique of digging and removing copious amounts of rock and earth to establish three other major Ogden cave climbing destinations. From his excavation mania, cutting edge boulders were proliferating like nuclear arms during the Cold War.

In one decade, Ogden went from zero to over seventy double digit boulder problems. While Anthony did not put up all these problems, his efforts, excavation, and vision directly supported each one of them. And guess what, the guy is not yet done, many a secret problem has only been touched by Anthony’s genetically gifted fingers, and if he can’t do them, you can bet there are some hard projects waiting for a would-be suitor.

World class boulderers now regularly journey to Ogden to see what these quartzite blocks are all about. Top women climbers have particularly excelled on the many powerful and technical lines of Ogden as females continue to establish the equality of their physical performance. However, the prime bouldering is not the exclusive realm of the elite. On any given night, you can witness dozens of headlamps twinkling all along the bench as climbers test themselves on problems of all grades and styles above the urban lights of the city. Literally from out of the dust and obscurity Ogden has arisen to claim yet another title, that of climbing destination.

Yet for me it is not the establishment of Ogden as a climbing hot spot that excites me. Unlike Salt Lake City or Boulder there have only been a handful of people to truly explore the canyons and hillsides of this section of the Wasatch Front. There are incredible projects still to be climbed. Not all of them will be found within this guidebook or have been found at all. So, if you have the adventurer’s spirit and are willing to put in the effort you might find yourself with the privilege of finding and ascending something iconic. Not many can claim that badge, and I can tell you, the nectar is sweet. Go get it!”

Pete is responsible for some of the American west’s most prolific lines such as The Shining Path (V12), A Clockwork Orange (V12), Show Your Scars (V14), Under Heaven (V12), and, as you’ll read about in his essay, Mask of God (V13).

Pete, thank you for penning this incredible tribute to Ogden.

Find these problems and many more in the Ogden Bouldering Guidebook, only on KAYA PRO.