Quinn: When you were hiking with your family groups and with friends, did you notice
a different sense of purpose or different approach that men have to hiking the Canyon as women? Or different appreciation
of different things?
Steck: Well, three women: Alice, Delores, and Helen. I think they were generally slower. Michael says those are
my, what is it, do or die march, march or die, days. And then it became march AND die days. I kind of enjoyed the
physicality of it all, so I would go faster than the ladies wanted to go. Alice had trouble with her knees and
with her back, but she's still hiking the Canyon. I'm going with her next week. I guess the view that I have of
Canyon hiking now is that just about anybody can do it. I guess the givens are that you have to be in reasonably
good physical shape, but (pause while a plane passes overhead) . . . I guess I don't feel there is an elite to
this, that little old ladies in tennis shoes can do it. You may need somebody to show them where to go and that
kind of thing, but it's not an excruciating effort. As I get older, I'm more and more conscious of this. I just
don't go as far in a day, but I can essentially do the same things, I just do them slower.
That's probably what I should have done from the beginning with the family, you know, keep the group together more.
In the 1977 trip, it was I and six kids, just newly graduated from high school. I called them the galumphers. They
just galumphed along and in no time at all, they'd be way out in front. So I had to develop the theory of leading
from the rear. Only once was there a potential impasse when I decided I wasn't going to go any farther, and they
decided that they weren't going to come back to where I was, but eventually they did.
I've written these books, and I sometimes wonder who they are for. I decided that it's for people who are capable
but don't have the time to get all the knowledge they need themselves. So I provide some knowledge and they can
convert it into a fun trip. An example of how this works . . . when was it? It must have been in late spring, Mike
and I are out doing some errands and somebody calls asking for me and I'm not here. Helen says, "But he'll
be back soon, can I take a message?" "No, he won't know who we are, but we've just finished one of his
loops and we wanted to talk to him about it." "Well, fine, he'll be home in a couple of minutes. Why
don't you come on by?" So they did.
These were nine kids from Ohio State. Of the nine, three had never even been backpacking before, and of the other
six, only three had been to the Canyon before, or SEEN the Canyon. One had hiked down the Bright Angel Trail. (chuckles)
He said when he said, "Oh, Mom, we're going to go hiking in the Grand Canyon," [his mother responded],
"Oh, that's fine. Here's sixty dollars to use if you need a mule to get out." (laughter) So that was
about the extent of their knowledge. They had gone through, I guess it was Loops II, and picked out a trip that
was of the required length. It's like buying a picture because it matches the couch! (both chuckle) They had only
six days or something, so they picked the loop from Tuckup to Stairway. As they're leaving Columbus, one of them
said, "Hey, who has the book?" Well, they didn't have the book, it's still back in the room.
So they go back and get the book, which they read very casually, until toward the end, they're trying to find the
way out of Stairway, and they find they can't find it. So they start going back, back to Tuckup and out that way.
Well, one of them says, "Well, let's read the book." (chuckles) "Oh, yeah." Well, alright,
they read the book and the one guy uses the information there to find the way out above the Stairway. So he gets
the others back, and they get out and back to the car. They are just so pleased with themselves. They did this
terrible thing and they got through it. So I think those are the guys that I'm writing for, that just have the
strength. In looking at them, they all looked like they could be on athletic scholarships, would have the strength
and the intelligence and so-forth to make sense out of the written word, sort of how I felt using Harvey's books
when they finally came out. Hey, that's a neat book to have! Because we'd done the first hiking before they had
come out.
Quinn: Did you ever call him and ask him for more information?
Steck: Yeah, and I always asked him for information that he didn't have. So after that happened three times, I
didn't ask him anymore. I just used him as a repository of information, like when we found a way down Saddle Canyon.
I wrote him about that and he said oh, yeah, he often wondered where that went.
Quinn: What about Emery Kolb? Did you ever go in and talk with him about . . . ?
Steck: No, because, when did he die?
Quinn: It was 1976.
Steck: I could have.
Quinn: Can you touch briefly on the publishing history of your two books? Like when it first came out, was it immediately
grabbed up, or did it take some time for people to become aware of what was available?
Steck: It takes time. The publisher, George Mayer [phonetic spelling], published mountain climbing books, and he
was somebody my brother knew. He suggested that I ask [Mayer] whether he'd be interested in doing this book, and
he said yes. He printed five thousand copies, and soon said (chuckles) that he wished he'd only printed three thousand
because it took a while to build up. I guess the most he'd ever sold in a year might have been 1,500 or something.
They're chugging along now at about a thousand a year. There's a limited market. I spoke to one other publisher,
another friend of my brother's in Berkeley, the Wilderness Press, and he didn't want to bother with it. I guess
he lets them go out of print when they get down to a thousand a year. So he was probably assessing the demand about
right. But you know, in ten years, that's ten thousand of them! That's a lot of people wandering around, and you're
wondering in what shape they're in.
Quinn: When the second one came out, did a bunch of people who already had Hikes I buy that immediately?
Steck: Yeah, it has a good reception among those that have corresponded with me anyway. When it came time to publish
the second one, Mayer didn't want to bother with it. Finally I got down to two arguments: one was, "Will you
do it if I pay the publishing costs up front and then you can pay me back out of the [proceeds] of the books?"
And the other argument was that he had already told me that he had gotten more correspondence about Loops I than
he'd gotten on any other book that he published -you know, favorable comments from readers. So I reminded him of
that. (laughter) Finally he said, "Okay, I'll do the second one." But he only published, oh, three thousand,
maybe even a little less. When it comes time to either reprint it or give me the plates, he may decide to give
me the plates.
Quinn: Have you had any environmental people write you and say, "Do you know what you're doing, encouraging
all these people to go into the outback?"
Steck: No, nothing. Of course my brother, being the author of a guide book himself, isn't in a position to criticize
me for writing mine. And his friend, Steve Roper, that I like and respect, is co-editor in
Ascents and Fifty Classic Climbs. Steve has written a lot of guide books. I have to admit that the use is going
to go up, like those nine kids from Ohio State would never have gone there. But I say, "So what." A heavy
rain (chuckles) is going to wash away all signs of them. And if it comes at the right time, it can wash them away
too. The ability of the Canyon to cure the ills imposed on it is remarkable, I think. Witness the recovery of these
fires and flash flood and the regeneration of the canyons, except for the one that I mentioned, and that will eventually
recover too. |
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