Pat and Deb
Mr. & Mrs. Fremont Canyon
(Okay, actually, we all know them as Deb & The Old Dog.)
Pat's been in situ at the Dome and at Fremont Canyon like some old fixed pin that everybody likes to clip in to. Together, Pat and Deb are guides, instructors and former owners of
the Best Damn Indoor Climbin' Gym in Wyoming!!
(Psst... it's in Casper, Wyoming...)
I'd been reading about Pat since I started roping up in 1983, by the time I actually met him in 1988. It was an inauspicious meeting: He was a patient in the Operating Room where I was working at the time, waiting to have his bicep re-attached to his arm (again). I read his name on the chart as he lay there on the gurney, about to face the horrors of anesthesia and all that stuff... and I had the impropriety to try to strike up a conversation with the poor guy:
"Hey," I gushed, "you're Him! I've been reading about you in Climbing, blab-blab-blab..."
Pat, and Deb, who was standing at his side, just nodded and smiled as politely as possible, enduring the fool.
Even so, many weeks later, I was up on Casper Mountain, climbing with Pat. I was in hog heaven. Here was one of the modern masters of the area, showing me around the place. His gear was worn and derelict, by neophyte standards, but I could hold each piece in my hand and feel rope-lengths of tales. He did things to my rope that I only dreamed of in my worst nightmares, like weighting it (with an honest fall!). But you have to understand... I was new to the idea of rock climbing strictly for the sake of rock climbing. Prior to climbing with Pat, rock climbing for me had always been merely practice for the mountains. Consequently, I had spent about five years "stuck" at the 5.7/5.8 level. To climb 5.10 was something
I only dreamed of, or only tried on a top rope. My focus had always been to stand on lofty summits, and in 1988 I had been on twenty-four mountains, summitting just over half of those. They weren't all as easy as, say, Colorado Fourteeners. Heck, I still haven't climbed any 14ers...
But Pat pushed my limits until I finally broke the barrier. Ofcourse, there's almost always a plateau beyond the steep...
Pat flourishes in establishing new routes. It's his gift. Over the years, he and a handful of other area climbers have made Central Wyoming the climbing center that it is today.
"I used to go to the mountains every chance I had," he once told me, "but one day I decided that I just wanted to climb, not hike."
If you'vehad the pleasure of being in their home,
you can see by the many framed pictures of himself, and of Deb, that both of them have done their time in the mountains. For a while, Deb was a climbing ranger at Devil's Tower National Monument. She was climbing some hard routes that Pat had either wanted to climb, or that he had climbed some time in his past. I'd see him at the video store or somewhere, and he would have this misty look in his eyes, and a frozen gasp on his face. He would murmur in that quiet, Clint Eastwood-like voice of his:
"Deb lead [insert heinous 5.11 route name here]."
I could see that he was he was either in awe, or worried that he might lose her, or maybe he was even worried that she'd be climbing 5.13 soon and wouldn't give him a second look? Well, no, but why ruin a good story with the truth? I didn't know what to say, but I thought (and perhaps I thought aloud because I do have The Impropriety) that he should probably think about marrying her before she took off for Verdon Gorge with some French sport-climbin', bolt-scummin' cream-puff...
Well. So Pat and Deb really tied the knot in September of 1989, out at Dome Rock. I woulda been there, 'cuz they invited me... but I got married on the same day myself.
I have so many stories I could tell you about Pat, and they'd all take about a minute each if I could tell 'em in person...
And for once, I wouldn't be ruining a good story with the truth...
Patrick Kelly Parmenter
20 July, 1955 - 14 February, 2003
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