Monday, September 13, 2010

Ethan Pringle's Beginnings

Long time San Francisco climber, Ethan Pringle will be adding some of his experiences to the blog. Check out his write up about finding his beginnings as a Touchstone climber.

The Beginnings:

I am often asked by people at the gym, at climbing areas, "How long have you been doing this?" I usually ballpark it. I knew that I started sometime around '95-96, but I didn't know exactly when. I wanted to know when I first walked into Mission Cliffs; it changed my life.

I became increasingly obsessed with discovering when I started climbing. One day, I asked at the front desk at Mission Cliffs . "Does it say on that computer screen when I became a member?"

"Sure, hold on a sec...” They responded. “It says you became a member on September 9th, 1997."

"But that can't be right!" I shouted in their face, cutting them off. Actually, I said, "Thanks for looking that up." I was just thinking the former. There was a time when I stopped climbing for several months near the beginning, and my parents must have canceled my membership and restarted it then but I knew I became a member of MC before then.

Either way, I had given up hope of ever finding out exactly when I started climbing until one day when I was cleaning out my brother's apartment. I was sorting through a random pile of things on a bookshelf that he left behind and came across my brothers old card!



Yay! I was elated to find this little piece of ancient plastic. I knew that my brother and I both got our memberships at the same time, so there it was, finally. October 18th, 1995. The search was over! I was so happy to be in touch with my roots that I ran to the gym for a good ole' plastic session

Check out the footage I took with my head cam!

Some GoPro footage from a sesh at Mission Cliffs from Ethan Pringle on Vimeo.

1 comment:

hrc333 said...

The reason Ethan shows up as joining in 1997 is that we switch membership system in 1997. Thus all members in the old system were added to the new system in 1997.

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