There are threads devoted to him on Supertopo:Īnd there was a nice revisionist article by David Roberts in about his fiasco on K2 in the 2013 issue of Ascent.Īlso you can read chapter seven of Yankee Rock & Ice, a book about Northeastern climbing history. If you travel around the East, you will find a surprisingly hard Weissner route pretty much everywhere you go! (He may have put up the nation's first 5.8 in the 1930's with Vector in Connecticut.) I'm not even going to touch on his alpine accomplishments. In 1946 he put up a 5.8 at Skytop called Minnie Belle which remained the hardest climb in the Gunks until well into the next decade. It seems fair to say Weissner was the best free climber of his day, certainly on this side of the Atlantic, at least. As far as development at the Gunks is concerned, Weissner's most enduring contribution was his partnership with Kraus, as it was Kraus who continued to develop the Gunks after Weissner moved away. He started at Millbrook in 1935 (!!!) with what is now called Old Route (5.5), and then put up routes at all the major Gunks cliffs the Trapps came relatively late because Weissner at first thought it was too vegetated and dirty. Take a look at the history section in your Dick Williams Trapps guide and you will get the basic story of Fritz's "discovery" of the Gunks. He and Hans Kraus did High Exposure- a much more impressive achievement- the same year as Layback.
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