Hide The Women and Children: Yabbo's Soloing, Again
John Long
Seventeenth-century French author La Rochefoucauld said that supremely lucky people rarely amend their ways. They always imagine they are in the right when fortune upholds their recklessness. Like any large community, the climbing world has always sported a handful of "chosen ones" who can literally get away with suicide. The late, grate John "Yabbo" Yablonski was one of these chosen ones, a climber the rock refused to kill.
Perhaps five feet nine inches tall, lean as a skinned rabbit, Yabbo had an atomic-caliber energy that could take hold of him like a possession. If such a conniption seized him near a crag, he was certain to risk his life doing something crazy (as his occasional partner, I nearly killed him for risking my life as well). On the rock he was strictly rash; on the deck his life marked by blinding contrasts.
Yabbo dug the odd ditch and washed windows here and there but he never held a regular job and seemed to survive with mirrors and blind luck. He'd go days without eating, then would suddenly wolf down 10 hamburgers and a gallon of ice cream - if you were buying. Yabbo loved LSD and "shrooms" and flourished on adrenalin, hashish, coffee and Camel straights. A right-brained "feeler," he was generous to a fault, wonderfully childlike, and so naive you'd swear he'd just stumbled from Mother Hubbard's boot. His heart was solid gold. Europeans who visited the Valley were at once astonished by Yabbo's free soloing (climbing without a rope) and revolted by his scruffy, primitive lifestyle. Yet his innocence drew the hospitality out of many around him who craved the strange, spiritual grace one received while in the presence of the "chosen one." For the closeness of his shaves, Yabbo was matched only by the legendary Tobin Sorenson. Both Tobin and Yabbo are now dead. Both, I believe, would have been 40 this year.
Tobin's exploits are documented, though not in their full majesty. Yabbo's equally ghastly epics live on in oral history, but I've never once seen one in print. As a fellow Californian and Yosemite regular, I climbed on and off with Yabbo for nearly ten years, and I cringe when I remember his countless narrow escapes during that time. But one episode seems in a class by itself.
It was a blazing summer day when Yabbo found himself at Suicide Rock -- without a partner. This was a dangerous situation for Yabbo's person, for he was the kind of soloing maniac who would make the crag live up to its name if he didn't rope up with someone -- and quick.
After spending upwards of ninety seconds trying to dragoon a partner (Yabbo had no rope or tackle), the energy swelled up in Yabbo's loins and he set off jogging along the Buttress of Cracks, searching for an immediate adrenalin blast. Yabbo stalked up to Frustration, the grimmest of these fissures, and booted up. A precarious medley of fingertip layaways and beveled flutes, Frustration had hosted roughly 25,000 ascents since the last rains, and sported grease enough to lube the fittings on the USS Midway. It was a cloudless, midsummer day. The mountain sun beat down like a sledgehammer. The initial stretch of Frustration -- the crux -- seemed to fairly ooze sweat and suet. Yabbo chalked, shuddered, and started up -- with no rope. Several quarts of espresso sloshed around his otherwise empty gut, adding a marked urgency to Yabbo's habitually frantic style.
Yabbo jittered up the first 30 feet on brute strength, which he had in spades. Just above, the route transitioned from borderline pinches into a bottoming gash that you climbed by smearing a toe on nothing whatsoever while yarding on a wet bar of Palmolive. Yabbo smeared his toe, clasped the greased hold, started to yank -- and realized he was buttering off toward the Land of Harps. Had a witness not been standing by, nobody would have believed the sequence that followed.
Just as Yabbo's toe blew off the holds, he torqued his body round to face outward, thrust off the wall with his legs and dove into space much as Jalvert plunged into the Seine in the scene from Les Miserables. As Yabbo arced through the air, freezing Strawberry Valley with a mortal wail, the stunned witness knew she was watching the act of a man gone mad.
Yabbo had vaulted perhaps 10 feet away from the wall and fallen the same distance when his arms shot out and his hands snatched the quick of a pine bough drooping from a nearby tree. Death-gripping the branch, Yabbo continued to plummet. The branch bowed, popped alarmingly, and just as Yabbo's decelerated weight touched the ground, snapped in two.
"Shucks!" Yabbo scoffed. He pitched the branch aside and, noticing the astonished witness, said, "Hey, you want to do a climb?"
For several more years during the late 1970s, Yabbo continued to dazzle and terrorize spectators with his free-solos. Shortly after the Frustration debacle, Yabbo free soloed Leave it to Beaver, a 60-foot, gruesomely difficult climb at Joshua Tree National Monument. Unhappy with his first performance, where he'd bungled half of the routes moves and compensated with reckless, cross-armed dynamics, Yabbo was no sooner on the deck when he started up the Beaver a second time, hoping to improve his style. Sapped from the first lap, Yabbo literally fell up the climb with horribly shaking limbs, typhoon breathing, and troubling grunts, his hands slapping holds for 50 feet above the boulders. The spectacle was so traumatic to behold that one witness jogged behind a boulder and puked. Such episodes were not the exception with Yabbo, rather the rule. Yet for all his seemingly fatal solos, I never knew him to suffer more than a sprained ankle. In his strange and tragic quest he was able to squeeze more juice from the rock than anyone I've ever known.
Yabbo climbed and lived on the razor's edge, and it surprised no one when he eventually fell. The "normal" world rejected Yabbo from the cradle, but the rock never would. Somewhere in the basement of Yabbo's psyche he longed to die. Throughout, the rock remained his staunchest ally and refused to make good on that wish. Ultimately, Yabbo had to jump off himself. Into the void when a rogue prince and strand of memories I'll laugh, cry, and tremble about for the rest of my life.
Perhaps five feet nine inches tall, lean as a skinned rabbit, Yabbo had an atomic-caliber energy that could take hold of him like a possession. If such a conniption seized him near a crag, he was certain to risk his life doing something crazy (as his occasional partner, I nearly killed him for risking my life as well). On the rock he was strictly rash; on the deck his life marked by blinding contrasts.
Yabbo dug the odd ditch and washed windows here and there but he never held a regular job and seemed to survive with mirrors and blind luck. He'd go days without eating, then would suddenly wolf down 10 hamburgers and a gallon of ice cream - if you were buying. Yabbo loved LSD and "shrooms" and flourished on adrenalin, hashish, coffee and Camel straights. A right-brained "feeler," he was generous to a fault, wonderfully childlike, and so naive you'd swear he'd just stumbled from Mother Hubbard's boot. His heart was solid gold. Europeans who visited the Valley were at once astonished by Yabbo's free soloing (climbing without a rope) and revolted by his scruffy, primitive lifestyle. Yet his innocence drew the hospitality out of many around him who craved the strange, spiritual grace one received while in the presence of the "chosen one." For the closeness of his shaves, Yabbo was matched only by the legendary Tobin Sorenson. Both Tobin and Yabbo are now dead. Both, I believe, would have been 40 this year.
Tobin's exploits are documented, though not in their full majesty. Yabbo's equally ghastly epics live on in oral history, but I've never once seen one in print. As a fellow Californian and Yosemite regular, I climbed on and off with Yabbo for nearly ten years, and I cringe when I remember his countless narrow escapes during that time. But one episode seems in a class by itself.
It was a blazing summer day when Yabbo found himself at Suicide Rock -- without a partner. This was a dangerous situation for Yabbo's person, for he was the kind of soloing maniac who would make the crag live up to its name if he didn't rope up with someone -- and quick.
After spending upwards of ninety seconds trying to dragoon a partner (Yabbo had no rope or tackle), the energy swelled up in Yabbo's loins and he set off jogging along the Buttress of Cracks, searching for an immediate adrenalin blast. Yabbo stalked up to Frustration, the grimmest of these fissures, and booted up. A precarious medley of fingertip layaways and beveled flutes, Frustration had hosted roughly 25,000 ascents since the last rains, and sported grease enough to lube the fittings on the USS Midway. It was a cloudless, midsummer day. The mountain sun beat down like a sledgehammer. The initial stretch of Frustration -- the crux -- seemed to fairly ooze sweat and suet. Yabbo chalked, shuddered, and started up -- with no rope. Several quarts of espresso sloshed around his otherwise empty gut, adding a marked urgency to Yabbo's habitually frantic style.
Yabbo jittered up the first 30 feet on brute strength, which he had in spades. Just above, the route transitioned from borderline pinches into a bottoming gash that you climbed by smearing a toe on nothing whatsoever while yarding on a wet bar of Palmolive. Yabbo smeared his toe, clasped the greased hold, started to yank -- and realized he was buttering off toward the Land of Harps. Had a witness not been standing by, nobody would have believed the sequence that followed.
Just as Yabbo's toe blew off the holds, he torqued his body round to face outward, thrust off the wall with his legs and dove into space much as Jalvert plunged into the Seine in the scene from Les Miserables. As Yabbo arced through the air, freezing Strawberry Valley with a mortal wail, the stunned witness knew she was watching the act of a man gone mad.
Yabbo had vaulted perhaps 10 feet away from the wall and fallen the same distance when his arms shot out and his hands snatched the quick of a pine bough drooping from a nearby tree. Death-gripping the branch, Yabbo continued to plummet. The branch bowed, popped alarmingly, and just as Yabbo's decelerated weight touched the ground, snapped in two.
"Shucks!" Yabbo scoffed. He pitched the branch aside and, noticing the astonished witness, said, "Hey, you want to do a climb?"
For several more years during the late 1970s, Yabbo continued to dazzle and terrorize spectators with his free-solos. Shortly after the Frustration debacle, Yabbo free soloed Leave it to Beaver, a 60-foot, gruesomely difficult climb at Joshua Tree National Monument. Unhappy with his first performance, where he'd bungled half of the routes moves and compensated with reckless, cross-armed dynamics, Yabbo was no sooner on the deck when he started up the Beaver a second time, hoping to improve his style. Sapped from the first lap, Yabbo literally fell up the climb with horribly shaking limbs, typhoon breathing, and troubling grunts, his hands slapping holds for 50 feet above the boulders. The spectacle was so traumatic to behold that one witness jogged behind a boulder and puked. Such episodes were not the exception with Yabbo, rather the rule. Yet for all his seemingly fatal solos, I never knew him to suffer more than a sprained ankle. In his strange and tragic quest he was able to squeeze more juice from the rock than anyone I've ever known.
Yabbo climbed and lived on the razor's edge, and it surprised no one when he eventually fell. The "normal" world rejected Yabbo from the cradle, but the rock never would. Somewhere in the basement of Yabbo's psyche he longed to die. Throughout, the rock remained his staunchest ally and refused to make good on that wish. Ultimately, Yabbo had to jump off himself. Into the void when a rogue prince and strand of memories I'll laugh, cry, and tremble about for the rest of my life.
1988