Ron Kauk

Ron Kauk ( born September 23, 1957 in Redwood City, California ) is an American rock climber. He is considered one of the fathers of modern sports climbing and was first to climb more difficult climbing routes, especially in the Yosemite Valley in California.

Life

Ron Kauk began in 1974 in Yosemite with the climbing. A year later he succeeded with John Long and John Bachar with the route Astroman 5.11c difficulty ( American scale) in the east wall of rock tower Washington Column, the most difficult five-year long free climbing route in the valley and around the world.

In 1978 his most famous first ascent of the route followed with Separate Reality ( 5.11d ). The route runs spectacularly by a horizontal rock roof and was named after a book by Carlos Castaneda. In the same year he was the Boulder Midnight Lightning ( V8) succeeded on the grounds of the campsite Camp 4 The Boulder as well as the route Astroman after a song by Jimi Hendrix named.

Ron Kauk was in direct competition with John Bachar. As this erstbeging a configured route from him without asking him, it got into a fight at Camp 4 on July 3, 1979 he succeeded with Bill Forrest, John Roskelley and Kim Schmitz the first ascent of Uli Biaho Tower in the Karakoram. In 1990 he again succeeded the hardest route in Yosemite with Crossroads ( 5.13a ) in the valley. This he improved even more in 1997 with Magic Line ( 5.14b ).

Even in the media, Ron Kauk was present, it was filmed in the Smith Rocks in 1989 by NBC Sportsworld in the route Backbone ( 5.13a ). In 1992 he stood in for together with the German climber Wolfgang Güllich Sylvester Stallone in the movie Cliffhanger. In 1999, Ron Kauk trained actor Tom Cruise in the movie Mission: Impossible II In 2000, he produced the video Yosemite: Ascending Rhythms about climbing in Yosemite. In 2003 he published the book Spirit of the Rock.