Ed Webster Desert Photo Gallery
I’ve known Ed Webster since 1975 when he was a young student at Colorado College. After that I went on a lot of climbing trips around the American West with Ed—filming him on the first ascent of Supercrack, taking him out to Moses in Canyonlands National Park via my secret rim rappel route, and photographing him on Sentinel Spire in Colorado National Monument. During those years Ed became not only a very good climber but also was a very motivated climber. He not only repeated the classic Utah tower routes, but he was visionary enough to do first ascents on many of those as well as seek out unclimbed towers to name and climb. A lot of these towers and routes are now established, often-repeated classic climbs like the Lightning Bolt Cracks on North Sixshooter Peak and the Bridger Jack Spires.
While Ed was out visiting me in March, he brought along a thick binder filled with images of his desert first ascents. He graciously allowed me scan the best ones and gave me permission to publish a portfolio of these historic climbing photos here on Climbing at About.com. Thanks Ed!
Ed Webster, of course, was more than a rock climber but also a serious and skilled mountaineer, who traveled on many expeditions to the world's highest mountains in Nepal, Tibet, Bhutan, and Pakistan. His 1988 ascent of Mount Everest’s 12,000-foot-high Kangshung Face with three companions, no Sherpas, radios, or oxygen, was an audacious landmark climb that almost killed him. He wrote a marvelous book of that adventure, Snow in the Kingdom, that not only details his adventure but also recounts much interesting Himalayan history.
Go to Ed Webster Utah Canyon Country Photo Gallery to check out this collection of wonderful historic desert climbing images.
Photo above: Ed Webster at Bridger Jack Spires, Utah, in 2008.
Photograph © Stewart M. Green
Buy Ed Webster’s book:
Snow in the Kingdom: My Storm Years on Everest
Comments
I met Ed in the 80’s when I was living in New England and working for the Vermont forest service. He gave me his old EB’s and took me up my first lead climb; Thin Air on Cathedral ledge in the Mt Washington valley. Before that, I had done a lot of scrambling around and loved watching climbers but had never done anything technical. I still remember it with great clarity, Ed was generous and patient and kind. I continued to climb after that and still climb to this day. Certainly not to any great extent but always with much enjoyment in “seeking high enchanted places.”