SAN FRANCISCO-The honor of climbing with his idol was fading fast as Dean Fidelman, struggled mightily on the wet granite cliff in Yosemite.
He was 16 years old, and Jim Bridwell, the man he wanted to impress more than any other in the world, took him aside to calm him down.
"I don't care about how hard someone climbs if they are my friend," said Bridwell, who at that point, in his mid-20s, was already a climbing legend. "I just care about who the person is."
The act of compassion and encouragement 46 years ago was on Fidelman's mind Friday as he said farewell to his friend and mentor.
Jim Bridwell, the wild, partying, long-haired hippie climber famous for being the first to climb the towering 3,000-foot sheer cliff known as El Capitan in a single day, died Friday of kidney failure in Palm Springs, Fidelman said. He was 73.
The renegade climber, who helped usher in the climbing counterculture in the 1970s, scaled virtually every rock, crag, crack and dome in and around Yosemite National Park.
He was known as an innovator and visionary, who invented and refined climbing gear, including a knife edge-size piton known as the Bird Beak, for use in tiny cracks. He also climbed some of the most difficult routes in Alaska and Patagonia, in the Andes, his friends said, and was adept at alpine climbing, once trekking 300 miles around Mount Everest, a journey that required him to go over peaks as high as 23,000 feet.
He once said to a non-climber, "My best vacation is your worst nightmare."
Born July 29, 1944, in San Antonio, Bridwell began climbing around 1965, a time when noted climbers Royal Robbins and Warren Harding were at the peak of their fame. Robbins and Harding had pioneered big wall climbing, an era known as the "golden age" in Yosemite, and Bridwell represented the next generation of climbing.
In 1970, he co-founded with John Dill the park's first search-and-rescue team, known as Yosar, at Camp 4, where the original rock rats, the hippie types who wore cutoff jeans, smoked pot and collected cans for pocket change, began hanging out. He was the first rescuer to rappel 1,000 feet down the El Capitan cliff face, where he stabilized a climber with a broken leg, spent the night with him and then lowered him down the next day.
He recounted to friends how, during one rescue, he slapped away the hand of a park ranger who tried to touch his knots. "Don't touch anything," he said curtly. "They're good."
In the early 1970s, he started a group in Yosemite called the Stonemasters, a band of young climbers known for their loud music and drug taking.
"He took me under his wing, me and a number of other climbers," said Fidelman, now 62, who, as a Stonemaster, also performed on Bridwell's search and rescue team. "He was the leader, kind of the Godfather, and when you got picked for (search and rescue), it was like you were a made man."
Bridwell was best known for making the first one-day ascent of the huge prow of El Capitan, a route known as the Nose, in 1975 with John Long and Billy Westbay. It was an amazing feat at the time. The first ever ascent in 1958 took 47 days.
Members of the Stonemasters were the first to the scene of an infamous crash in 1977 of a plane carrying thousands of pounds of marijuana. They hiked to the scene at Lower Merced Pass Lake, and salvaged the cargo. As usual, Bridwell took charge, directing operations and logistics, according to several accounts.
Fidelman said the kind words Bridwell spoke to his anxious 16-year-old self kept him going and remained with him as he stood next to his friend as he took his last breath.
"If you were in trouble, Jim was the guy who was going to put it together and get you home," Fidelman said. "He was the kind of guy who brought out the best of you but he was also a child of the '60s, a hard-drinking guy, who took acid trips as part of his journey and smoked unfiltered Camels almost until the end of his life. He lived life with a lot of passion."