Clinton Eastwood Jr. is an American actor and film director. After achieving success in the Western TV series Rawhide, Eastwood rose to international fame with his role as the "Man with No Name" in Sergio Leone's Dollars Trilogy of spaghetti Westerns during the mid-1960s and as antihero cop Harry Callahan in the five Dirty Harry films throughout the 1970s and 1980s. These roles, among others, have made Eastwood an enduring cultural icon of masculinity. Elected in 1986, Eastwood served for two years as the mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea, California.
Many climbing routes have a grade that reflects the technical difficulty—and in some cases the risks and commitment level—of the route. The first ascensionist can suggest a grade, but it will be amended to reflect the consensus view of subsequent ascents. While many countries with a strong tradition of climbing developed grading systems, a small number of grading systems have become internationally dominant for each type of climbing, which has contributed to the standardization of grades worldwide. Over the years, grades have consistently risen in all forms of climbing, helped by improvements in climbing technique and equipment.
Friedrich Wolfgang Beckey, known as Fred Beckey, was an American rock climber, mountaineer and book author, who in seven decades of climbing achieved hundreds of first ascents of some of the tallest peaks and most important routes throughout Alaska, the Canadian Rockies and the Pacific Northwest. Among the Fifty Classic Climbs of North America, seven were established by Beckey, often climbing with some of the best known climbers of each generation.
The Eiger is a 3,967-metre (13,015 ft) mountain of the Bernese Alps, overlooking Grindelwald and Lauterbrunnen in the Bernese Oberland of Switzerland, just north of the main watershed and border with Valais. It is the easternmost peak of a ridge crest that extends across the Mönch to the Jungfrau at 4,158 m (13,642 ft), constituting one of the most emblematic sights of the Swiss Alps. While the northern side of the mountain rises more than 3,000 m (10,000 ft) above the two valleys of Grindelwald and Lauterbrunnen, the southern side faces the large glaciers of the Jungfrau-Aletsch area, the most glaciated region in the Alps. The most notable feature of the Eiger is its nearly 1,800-metre-high (5,900 ft) north face of rock and ice, named Eiger-Nordwand, Eigerwand or just Nordwand, which is the biggest north face in the Alps. This huge face towers over the resort of Kleine Scheidegg at its base, on the eponymous pass connecting the two valleys.
Grindelwald is a village and municipality in the Interlaken-Oberhasli administrative district in the canton of Berne. In addition to the village of Grindelwald, the municipality also includes the settlements of Alpiglen, Burglauenen, Grund, Itramen, Mühlebach, Schwendi, Tschingelberg and Wargistal.
The Kleine Scheidegg is a mountain pass at an elevation of 2,061 m (6,762 ft), situated below and between the Eiger and Lauberhorn peaks in the Bernese Oberland region of Switzerland. The name means "minor watershed", as it only divides the two arms of the Lütschine river, both converging at Zweilütschinen, while the nearby Grosse Scheidegg divides the Lütschine from the Rychenbach stream.
Duncan "Dougal" Curdy MacSporran Haston was a Scottish mountaineer noted for his exploits in the British Isles, Alps, and the Himalayas. From 1967 he was the director of the International School of Mountaineering at Leysin, Switzerland, a role he held until his death in an avalanche while skiing above Leysin.
Shiprock is a monadnock rising nearly 1,583 feet (482 m) above the high-desert plain of the Navajo Nation in San Juan County, New Mexico, United States. Its peak elevation is 7,177 feet (2,188 m) above sea level. It is 10.75 miles (17.30 km) southwest of the town of Shiprock, which is named for the peak.
The Eiger Sanction is a 1975 American action film directed by and starring Clint Eastwood. Based on the 1972 novel The Eiger Sanction by Trevanian, the film is about Jonathan Hemlock, an art history professor, mountain climber, and former assassin once employed by a secret government agency, who is blackmailed into returning to his deadly profession for one last mission.
Two Mules for Sister Sara is a 1970 American-Mexican Western film in Panavision directed by Don Siegel and starring Shirley MacLaine and Clint Eastwood set during the French intervention in Mexico (1861–1867). The film was to have been the first in a five-year exclusive association between Universal Pictures and Sanen Productions of Mexico. It was the second of five collaborations between Siegel and Eastwood, following Coogan's Bluff (1968). The collaboration continued with The Beguiled and Dirty Harry and finally Escape from Alcatraz (1979).
The Eiger Sanction is a 1972 thriller novel by Trevanian, the pen name of Rodney William Whitaker. The story is about a classical art professor and collector who doubles as a professional assassin, and who is coerced out of retirement to avenge the murder of an American agent. The novel was made into a film of the same name in 1975, directed by and starring Clint Eastwood. Whitaker wrote a sequel entitled The Loo Sanction.
The Needles of the Black Hills of South Dakota are a region of eroded granite pillars, towers, and spires within Custer State Park. Popular with rock climbers and tourists alike, the Needles are accessed from the Needles Highway, which is a part of Sylvan Lake Road. The Cathedral Spires and Limber Pine Natural Area, a 637-acre (258 ha) portion of the Needles containing six ridges of pillars as well as a disjunct stand of limber pine, was designated a National Natural Landmark in 1976.
Devils Thumb, or Taalkhunaxhkʼu Shaa in Tlingit, is a mountain in the Stikine Icecap region of the Alaska–British Columbia border, near Petersburg. It is named for its projected thumb-like appearance. Its name in the Tlingit language means "the mountain that never flooded" and is said to have been a refuge for people during Aangalakhu. It is one of the peaks that marks the border between the United States and Canada, and is also listed on maps as Boundary Peak 71.
Marmot is an outdoor recreation clothing and sporting goods company founded in 1974 as "Marmot Mountain Works". The company was founded in Grand Junction, Colorado by local resident Tom Boyce and two University of California, Santa Cruz students, David Huntley and Eric Reynolds, who shared the common goal of making their own mountaineering equipment. Two years before founding Marmot, Boyce secured an order for the climbing apparel used in the film The Eiger Sanction starring Clint Eastwood, and Huntley made the original prototype gear that Boyce used for the Wolper Productions/National Geographic documentary Journey to the Outer Limits, about the Colorado Outward Bound School. It was during this documentary production that cameraman Mike Hoover, who later worked on Eiger Sanction, saw the equipment that Boyce used during the portion filmed in Peru. Shortly before Christmas 1973, Mike Hoover called Boyce and placed the order that led to the formation of the company in Grand Junction.
Dean Spaulding Potter was an American free climber, alpinist, BASE jumper, and highliner. He completed many hard first ascents, free solo ascents, speed ascents, and enchainments in Yosemite National Park and Patagonia. He won the Laureus World Action Sportsperson of the Year in 2003. In 2015, he died in a wingsuit flying accident in Yosemite National Park.
Lost Arrow Spire is a detached pillar in Yosemite National Park, in Yosemite Valley, California, located immediately adjacent to Upper Yosemite Falls. The structure includes the Lost Arrow Spire Chimney route which is recognized in the historic climbing text Fifty Classic Climbs of North America. The spire is the location for a dramatic Tyrolean traverse, which has since become an iconic slackline.
Frank Walter Stanley was an American cinematographer. He is best known for four Clint Eastwood films in a row: Breezy (1973), Magnum Force (1973), Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974) and The Eiger Sanction (1975). During the filming of The Eiger Sanction, shot in Switzerland, which required a great deal of precarious mountain-climbing cinematography, Stanley fell during the shoot but survived. He used a wheelchair for some time and was taken out of action. Stanley, who later managed to complete filming after a delay under pressure from an unsympathetic Clint Eastwood, would later blame Eastwood for the accident due to a lack of preparation, describing him both as a director and an actor as "a very impatient man who doesn't really plan his pictures or do any homework. He figures he can go right in and sail through these things". Stanley was never hired by Eastwood or Malpaso Productions again. Bruce Surtees was Eastwood's regular cinematographer before and after this period, on a total of twelve films.
Mike Hoover is an American mountaineer, rock climber and cinematographer. He first became known for an Academy Award-nominated documentary short, Solo, in which he climbed a fictional mountain solo, as well as his Oscar award for Best Short Subject at the 57th Academy Awards for his 14 minute film Up in 1984. His first major involvement in commercial film was with The Eiger Sanction (1975), in which he taught Clint Eastwood how to climb in the Yosemite valley before the film was shot in Grindelwald, Switzerland in 1974. Hoover has since been a cinematographer for the documentaries To the Ends of the Earth (1983), To the Limit (1989), The Endless Summer 2 (1994) and Zion Canyon: Treasure of the Gods. In the late 1980s, he made 18 trips to Afghanistan to shoot war footage that was later featured in a program named The Battle for Afghanistan (1987). Hoover has led various film teams all over the world, particularly in physically and politically difficult locations, such as Everest, K2, the precarious rock faces of the Eiger and the Venezuelan jungle.
Jerry Gallwas is an American rock climber active in the 1950s during the dawn of the Golden Age of Yosemite Rock Climbing. He achieved a number of pioneering first ascents including sandstone spires in the American Southwest, and the first ascent of the Northwest Face of Half Dome with Royal Robbins and Mike Sherrick in 1957. Gallwas made his own heat-treated chrome-molybdenum steel alloy pitons, which contributed to the success of the climb.
