6 ms·

What on earth is this trash website? For a supposedly enlightened community, HN sure seems to happily upvote low quality clickbait headlines that are barely acc

What on earth is this trash website? For a supposedly enlightened community, HN sure seems to happily upvote low quality clickbait headlines that are barely accurate.

Judgmentality 5y ago
Well, it fell from the sky into Yosemite. I feel like it's an appropriate headline, even if it's not literally true.
- awb 5y ago
  I don't know, I was disappointed by the title. "Crashed" would have made more sense than "rained". I was waiting for the part where a storm rained the weed all over the valley, but that didn't happen.
  - quantified 5y ago
    More of one big marijuana hailstone.
hluska 5y ago
I don't know friend, Yosemite climbers in the 1970s were really amazing hackers. They didn't have anywhere near the level of equipment available today but innovated in some key areas. As an example, Yvon Chouinard (one of the Dirtbags referenced in the article) founded Patagonia. One of his biggest innovations was recognizing that some of the equipment his first company manufactured damaged rock, so they invented some new tech, leading to a patent on Hexentrics in 1974. Here are some references: - https://patents.google.com/patent/US3948485 https://patents.google.com/patent/US3948485 - https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/09/19/patagonias-philosopher-king https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/09/19/patagonias-phi...
- snowwrestler 5y ago
  Chouinard founded both Black Diamond (called Chouinard equipment at the time) and Patagonia. He sold the hardware business to the employees when he didn’t want to deal with the liability anymore, and they renamed it Black Diamond. He kept Patagonia which was a safer business and grew faster. Patagonia popularized polyester fleece and long underwear among climbers and skiers. Tom Frost was a Stanford-trained engineer who worked with Chouinard to innovate on ice axes, crampons, pitons, and yes the Hexentric. Royal Robbins was another big name in early Yosemite climbing and he started the eponymous outdoor clothing company. The Lowe brothers were well-known climbers in 60s and 70s and invented the internal-frame backpack and the modern padded outdoor camera bags, with their companies Lowe Alpine and Lowepro. Ray Jardine was an aerospace engineer who invented the spring loaded cam so he could protect the first 5.13 climb in Yosemite. He later invented a lot of the ultralight backpacking gear and techniques that are popular now (tennis shoes, tarps, quilts, etc) which he detailed in a guidebook to the Pacific Crest Trail. Not all these folks were in on the smuggler plane of course but yeah there was a ton of invention and innovation that came out of early climbing.
  - boulos 5y ago
    Given your interest, there’s a Tom Frost documentary [1] in progress (I saw an early cut as part of an SFFILM event). There’s a lot of great material, but the film wasn’t ready (late 2019?) and I assume the pandemic paused their release plans. [1] https://flatlanderfilms.com/about-the-film/ https://flatlanderfilms.com/about-the-film/
  - hluska 5y ago
    This is an excellent reply - thanks for sharing it! I think my favourite Yvon Chouinard/Tom Frost story is from the dawn of the Hexentrics path of innovation. They came to realize that pitons, which was their cash cow, was damaging rock. So they innovated against themselves and changed climbing! That's the hacker of my dreams - they're so driven by moving their passion forward that they'll innovate against themselves. :)
    - HeyLaughingBoy 5y ago
      Disrupt yourself before someone else disrupts you!
- steve_gh 5y ago
  The climbing and mountaineering community has always been full of hackers. On my side of the pond there have been Don Whillans (Whillans harness, Whillans Box tent for Himalayan faces), Hamish McInnes (Terrordactyls - the first drop pick ice axes) and Laurent Grivel (12 point crampon) amongst others. Maybe the greatest climbing hacker was Andrew Irvine (who disappeared high on Everest in 1924 with George Leigh Mallory). Mallory was the greatest climber of his generation, and over the years there has been questioning on why he took the relatively inexperienced Andrew Irvine with him on a summit bid (rather than say the vastly more experienced Neville Odell). But Irvine was an engineering genius. Every night he was rebuilding the oxygen sets, learning from the experience of the previous day to make them better - to give them the oxygen they needed to survive at that altitude.
Dylan16807 5y ago
It's a good story.

What on earth is this trash website? For a supposedly enlightened community, HN sure seems to happily upvote low quality clickbait headlines that are barely accurate.

Judgmentality 5y ago

Well, it fell from the sky into Yosemite. I feel like it's an appropriate headline, even if it's not literally true.

awb 5y ago
I don't know, I was disappointed by the title. "Crashed" would have made more sense than "rained". I was waiting for the part where a storm rained the weed all over the valley, but that didn't happen.
- quantified 5y ago
  More of one big marijuana hailstone.

hluska 5y ago

I don't know friend, Yosemite climbers in the 1970s were really amazing hackers. They didn't have anywhere near the level of equipment available today but innovated in some key areas. As an example, Yvon Chouinard (one of the Dirtbags referenced in the article) founded Patagonia. One of his biggest innovations was recognizing that some of the equipment his first company manufactured damaged rock, so they invented some new tech, leading to a patent on Hexentrics in 1974. Here are some references: - https://patents.google.com/patent/US3948485 https://patents.google.com/patent/US3948485 - https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/09/19/patagonias-philosopher-king https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/09/19/patagonias-phi...

snowwrestler 5y ago
Chouinard founded both Black Diamond (called Chouinard equipment at the time) and Patagonia. He sold the hardware business to the employees when he didn’t want to deal with the liability anymore, and they renamed it Black Diamond. He kept Patagonia which was a safer business and grew faster. Patagonia popularized polyester fleece and long underwear among climbers and skiers. Tom Frost was a Stanford-trained engineer who worked with Chouinard to innovate on ice axes, crampons, pitons, and yes the Hexentric. Royal Robbins was another big name in early Yosemite climbing and he started the eponymous outdoor clothing company. The Lowe brothers were well-known climbers in 60s and 70s and invented the internal-frame backpack and the modern padded outdoor camera bags, with their companies Lowe Alpine and Lowepro. Ray Jardine was an aerospace engineer who invented the spring loaded cam so he could protect the first 5.13 climb in Yosemite. He later invented a lot of the ultralight backpacking gear and techniques that are popular now (tennis shoes, tarps, quilts, etc) which he detailed in a guidebook to the Pacific Crest Trail. Not all these folks were in on the smuggler plane of course but yeah there was a ton of invention and innovation that came out of early climbing.
- boulos 5y ago
  Given your interest, there’s a Tom Frost documentary [1] in progress (I saw an early cut as part of an SFFILM event). There’s a lot of great material, but the film wasn’t ready (late 2019?) and I assume the pandemic paused their release plans. [1] https://flatlanderfilms.com/about-the-film/ https://flatlanderfilms.com/about-the-film/
- hluska 5y ago
  This is an excellent reply - thanks for sharing it! I think my favourite Yvon Chouinard/Tom Frost story is from the dawn of the Hexentrics path of innovation. They came to realize that pitons, which was their cash cow, was damaging rock. So they innovated against themselves and changed climbing! That's the hacker of my dreams - they're so driven by moving their passion forward that they'll innovate against themselves. :)
  - HeyLaughingBoy 5y ago
    Disrupt yourself before someone else disrupts you!
steve_gh 5y ago
The climbing and mountaineering community has always been full of hackers. On my side of the pond there have been Don Whillans (Whillans harness, Whillans Box tent for Himalayan faces), Hamish McInnes (Terrordactyls - the first drop pick ice axes) and Laurent Grivel (12 point crampon) amongst others. Maybe the greatest climbing hacker was Andrew Irvine (who disappeared high on Everest in 1924 with George Leigh Mallory). Mallory was the greatest climber of his generation, and over the years there has been questioning on why he took the relatively inexperienced Andrew Irvine with him on a summit bid (rather than say the vastly more experienced Neville Odell). But Irvine was an engineering genius. Every night he was rebuilding the oxygen sets, learning from the experience of the previous day to make them better - to give them the oxygen they needed to survive at that altitude.

Dylan16807 5y ago

It's a good story.