Those notes were the first guidebook I saw. (Actually I think they were ditto sheets not mimeographs, if anyone here knows the difference). They had an AMC grade, which was a roman numeral roughly equivalent to European alpine grades and probably tracing back to Kraus and Wiessner, a decimal grade, and an IOCA grade, which was a letter from a (easiest) to, I think, g (hardest). They had line drawings of the cliffs. Anyone who has had trouble with the modern cliff photos can imagine the difficulty of finding routes based on line drawings. As someone not at all familiar with the cliffs at the time, I found them close to useless.

Cool, I always thought the ditto was a mimeograph, and everyone in school used to refer to it as a mimeo. I can still smell the chemicals...

Why not look it up on Wikipedia?

I did, which is how I found out we'd been calling it the wrong thing all these years.

Dittos and mimeos are still so close enough to each other as to be confused even by the third grade teacher caught sniffing them in the copy room. Dittos used a machine with a rotating drum, a stencil master and dyes, the type had a blue to purple tinge to it . Mimeographs used a machine with a drum, a stencil master and ink. I'm not to excited to say, I've had the chance to use Ditto Machines for classroom work into the 80's. Regarding the origins of this route list, would David B. Ingalls have been a member or maybe an alum of IOCA in '62? RC

I have a copy (or rather a scanned image) of the DBI '62 list that doesn't the line drawings RG saw, so there's at least the one other list. I suppose there could have been many more as anyone with access to a ditto could have made their own.

Would be cool to see the originals though. IIRC you can't make a ditto from a ditto, you need the master.

I think the dittos I saw came from IOCA, but I'm not sure how I got them and have no idea where they might be now.

It is true that you need the master, plus a ditto machine, to make copies of dittos (unless of course you just scan the sucker). Even if it was available, deterioration of the ink impressions make it unlikely that usable copies could still be generated from the master.

On closer reading of the PDF that Roy posted, actually my first full reading, there is notation #5 on the last page of the "D.B.I." document that explains the included IOCA rating system. I can't imagine the IOCA system was used anywhere else but in the NE during the 60's. But then, I was only eight years old when this document was written, so what the hell did I know. RC

Regarding the pre-1964 guidebooks and the mimeographed list that I recently wrote of and provided to some of you:

(1) I am pretty sure that Dave Ingalls was not the ORIGINAL SOURCE for this list. Even though his initials D.B.I. are on the list, I believe this is only a compilation by him of the existing list.

(2) Dick Williams wrote me recently that he recalled this list as originating with the IOCA, which was the college outing club active at the time that both the AMC and Vulgarians were also active.

Stannard's guide was going to show more than just the first few feet of each climb. His actual motivation was that the Williams guide book photos were taken from above--via aircraft, so the roofs and overhangs were not very apparent. Stannard's solution was to climb up trees every few feet along the cliffs (in the winter) and then shoot more or less directly across at each route. Although his guide book never came to be, Stannard still has all of the original pictures he took for the project.

Curt