Six or seven years ago a San Diego climbing group led by Will Tapp climbed Big Picacho and found the register notebooks in a sad, soaked and bedraggled state because of a leaky register container. They brought the register papers down and Jane Rausch took the notebooks and papers home where she dried and straightened them. Shortly after I led a group including Jane and Lou Brecheen to the peak and afterwards Jane told me about the papers in her possession. I was going up again soon on a Memorial day climb and she offered to get them to me for returning.
Joe McCosker heard of this register, asked Jane if he could look at it and afterwards pass it on to me at the DPS Banquet. Well, I didn't attend the Banquet and Joe didn't get them to me until after my climb. I went down again later that year with Paul Freiman, Jim Hinkley, Doug Mantle and others and I brought my bundle (several bedraggled notebooks and a clutter of many loose papers, scraps, business cards, 2"x2" gauze pad wrappers, and a label from a can of Fed Mart Hawaiian Pineapples) up to Campo Noche. Paul wanted to look at the registers in camp so I passed them to him to read and asked that he put them afterwards in his summit pack and carry them up the next day. The next day after reaching the top I asked Paul for the papers and as I asked, a look of consternation crossed his face. He had forgotten and left the notebooks in his backpack below.
Moving on in time I organized yet another trip to climb El Picacho with Karen Leonard, Ron Hudson and others and this time I left the papers with my clean clothes at the roadhead!
Finally I organized a climb of Big Picacho with the CMC for November 1990. I transcribed many of the pertinent entries for this SAGE writeup, my youngest son, Keith, joined the CMC just for this climb and then early in the very morning that Jim Hinkley, R J Secor, Graham Breakwell, Kent Santleman, my son and I were to leave, Leora's father died ( read RJ's account of the climb on page 43 ).
So the notebooks, Keith and I stayed behind and I hope to finish the job on a fast climb with a small group this April. Anyway, here are selected register entries from 1966 through 1984. Not all climbs have entries as some pages are illegible or missing from the collection. Incidentally I found my signature from 6 of my prior climbs. Ironically, all the subsequent registers now reside in the safe-keeping of the Alpinistas de Tijuana who took all the prior registers down when they left their fine new register box and book.
There are 3 categories of memorabilia to go through: The oldest is a 6 ring leather binder with a sticker on front reading "Desert Rats Uninhibited - Dedicated to the principles of absolute & total unusualism". This probably was placed on 11/26/66 by Gene Gail (John Robinson - verbal ) which is the oldest loose page entry I found. Entries from this I have cited with a #. There is also a fabric flower print vertical spiral bound notebook placed on 12/27/73. This citation is *. Finally there are many loose scraps the oldest of which is 11/29/69 although there is an earlier entry dated only 1969. This citation is @.
 
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