Dale Bard Tribute

Dale Bard Tribute: "I've fallen and I can't get up." In Memoriam October 5, 1953 - October 1, 2025 (by Kent Olmstead, November 1, 2025)

November 25, 2024, my phone rang and the caller ID said "Dale Bard". It had been over 5 years since we'd last spoken.

In 2019 I'd reached out when our late 80s climbing wall startup, Vertical Concepts, was mentioned in an issue of Gym Climber magazine. It was the first article I recall including my small footnote of a role in the wall and gym industry. I'd offered the first wall for sale in the US in 1986, foreshadowing today's system boards, the first holds in 1987, and supplied walls and holds to Gary Rall for the Portland Rock Gym. Gary's gym was the second dedicated climbing gym in the country after the Vertical Club, but the first to use commercially available components. He converted one room of a gymnastic center in Beaverton with the Metolius version of EP hex tiles, and used my Roks screw-on holds on the mostly vertical plywood walls. There was also a small roof box he built and a skinny adjustable angle wall I supplied. Thanks to Alan Watts and Smith Rock, Doug Phillips and Metolius, Central Oregon was the epicenter of both sport climbing and the fledgling climbing wall industry in the US.

While Vertical Concepts was technically my third iteration of a climbing wall venture in as many years, the article seemed like a great excuse to try to locate Dale. It had been over 30 years since our brief, intense, and little known adventures relating to the Snowbird World Cup in 1988. Sport Climbing Systems, Spider Dan Goodwin, Vertical Concepts, Star Trek V, William Shatner, David Lee Roth, Outdoor Retailer and more were all packed into a few months in 1988. I called the author, Alison Osius, who connected me to Bobbi Bensman, who had Dale's number.

That 2019 call was a great trip down memory lane, but I was very surprised when he called me in November 2024. He said that Mark Chapman, one of his friends from the Stonemaster era, had passed away that day from an aggressive brain cancer. Climbers are a group that face mortality frequently, but Mark's death was hitting Dale especially hard. For some reason I was among the people he reached out to that evening.

He told me a little of his own health struggles. He had a stroke earlier that year. Dale was a gifted storyteller, and this was no different. I was transported to his trailer in Moab as he shared about an evening he just wasn't feeling right. With no other warning, he found himself face down on the floor, unable to move. His first thought? "I've fallen, and I can't get up." His second thought? He just started laughing. Eventually, a small amount of feeling returned. He described pulling himself slowly across the floor, reaching his trailer kitchen, then reaching first one arm up, then the other, mantling on his counter so he could get his phone and call for help. All of this was told like he was sharing beta from any number of his climbing adventures.

Then he mentioned his nearly finished memoir. Twenty-seven chapters. Maybe I could help him find a publisher and do some editing. He'd had a couple people try to help him but he wasn't making progress. I told him I'd love to help. Maybe we could collaborate on the Snowbird chapter that brought us together. We said goodnight that evening, promised to keep in touch, and more importantly, complete his story.

While my stories with Dale are less about climbing and more about behind the scenes business and life struggles, we shared several epic adventures over a few intense months that kept us connected for life. Here's that chapter.

Spring 1988 - Less than three months to the Snowbird World Cup

It was spring of 1988 when I met Dale Bard. Just weeks earlier I'd partnered with Spider Dan Goodwin and his photographer girlfriend Anne Marie-Weber. We'd formed a new venture, Sport Climbing Systems, from The Wall and Roks Bouldering Bloks, which I'd simply advertised via Powroll, my parents' motorcycle parts business. Powroll was still reeling from the 80s recession, a major embezzlement and my dad's burnout and disengagement. I was supposed to be taking over, but was distracted by my passion for climbing rather than motorsports. And to elevate the distraction, we'd just agreed with Jeff Lowe to build the majority of the upcoming Snowbird World Cup wall for what would surely be a money losing $18K.

It was into the middle of this pressure cooker that Dan convinced Dale to move his trailer to Oregon with a promise of ownership. He hadn't mentioned any of this to me though. I'd been desperate for collaboration, but things were getting out of control. My first interaction with Dale, who I knew from my copy of Yosemite Climber as one of the original Stonemasters, a legend with Bridwell, Bachar, Long, and Kauk, was to inform him that he was not an owner of this flailing startup, but we could discuss it down the road. He was as blindsided as I had been, but he didn't have funds to head anywhere else and he settled in to work.

Our immediate challenge was the Snowbird World Cup. Dreamed up by Jeff Lowe and funded by Dick Bass, Jeff had spent almost 90% of his $155K budget on about 30% of his climbing wall. The giant roof and two triangle volumes fixed to the 115' tall Cliff Lodge were designed by Ray Kingston of FFKR Architects. I can only surmise that there was no way they could build the rest of their design with Jeff's dwindling funds. Whether we were Jeff's first choice or his last to fill this gap, we were the right combination of ambitious and desperate. He still needed over 300 custom panels, all the holds, manufactured with a special purple garnet sand from Idaho, delivered to Utah and installed to complete the main competition wall and two 8'x100' speed walls.

We had just weeks to shape holds, make molds, dial in the custom dark and light purple shades, get a truckload of resin, pallets of sand, and make the hundreds of custom diagonal panels. As the deadline fast approached, Dan headed to Utah to do the installation prep while Dale and I worked almost round the clock. We were mixing endless buckets of resin, sand and fibers, pouring them into steel framed, silicone lined molds, installing t-nuts, packing the panels, and shipping them to Utah as fast as we could for Dan to install. We had transformed the back warehouse of Powroll into a panel factory.

Without Dale, these panels would have never been finished. I was on the verge of burnout two years into my attempts at climbing wall entrepreneurship. My wife Kristine was feeling abandoned in our 10'x52' mobile home parked between Bend and Redmond, having just given birth to our 3rd child weeks earlier. Dale brought a focus and work ethic from his big wall adventures that kept us going when I'm sure I'd have given up. We finished the panels, got them shipped, then got ourselves on the road.

We made the all day drive from Oregon to Utah. It was evening as we traveled down I-15 and the Wasatch Front. Dale really needed a drink, not convenient in Utah in 1988 or still today. I was, and still am a practicing Mormon (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) and wasn't going to be much help. After a few stops Dale found an open liquor store just in time to get a cheap box of wine before they closed. We found our way to Little Cottonwood Canyon, to Snowbird, and got ourselves checked in. We were exhausted, but ready to enjoy the competition weekend.

The next morning we woke up to go see the wall. It was June 10, just a day before the big event, to be featured on CBS Wide World of Sports. Top climbers from around the country and the world were there. The route setting was in its final stages and everything was buzzing. Dale and I wandered around, running into his Yosemite peers, me a wide-eyed hanger-on ready to meet climbing royalty. But any buzz was soon killed when almost everyone Dale met was asking him under their breath "what are you doing working with Dan Goodwin?" I knew the climbing community was still fraught with the simmering ethics wars around traditional versus sport tactics, and I'd had some warning that Dan, famous for climbing buildings, featured in the Guiness Book of World Records, and photographed soloing or adding a human flag pose high on a cliff was far from embraced by "the community". Even a place like Smith Rock could be filled with gate keepers and standards. When Dale and I arrived at Snowbird the welcome was not what we expected. There had been a business showdown we were just learning about.

Apparently in the days leading up to the competition, as panels were being installed and route setting started, a variety of quality issues were cropping up. Not all the epoxied t-nuts were staying fixed. Some of the holds were breaking or spinning. And, as anticipated by Dan, Francois Savigny had arrived with the offer of complimentary Entre Prises holds to donate for the competition. Dan had negotiated an exclusive deal though: only Sport Climbing System holds would be used on the wall. He didn't want EP claiming they'd provided the wall by supplying a few holds.

With the quality issues and the EP option there was pushback on the exclusive deal, but Dan didn't budge. He said if a single Entre Prises hold went on the wall, he'd start taking it down. Jeff backed off and the route setters dealt with what they had. The power play didn't sit well with "the community" though, and Dan's already negative reputation as a self-promoter and publicity seeker got worse. Instead of a hero's welcome, we were thrown in the shade of Dan's reputation and shrewd business tactics.

It all seems a bit silly decades later, where every would-be professional climber is their own brand, built on well-crafted images and carefully picked projects and pursuits that cross between the personal adventure and public promotion required to get and maintain sponsorships. Today Dan's tactics could be sold as a course and captured in a Ted Talk. But this was harder to see and harder to embrace in the moment. Dale and I were bummed to encounter the hostility.

We went to find Dan and Anne and met in their room. We caught up on the drama. I had one specific item of business to address, Dale's ownership in Sport Climbing Systems. I was now fully behind it. Without Dale's efforts the wall would not have been finished in time. With Dale beside me I told Dan and Anne that he had fully earned his stake and that we should formalize his 10% ownership. Their reply would trigger the next chapter of the Dale and Kent adventure. Their almost immediate and unified response was, "We're not even sure our two-thirds ownership is enough for all we've been through. If you want Dale to have 10% of the company it will have to come out of your share." Another blindside.

Over the next two days of the competition, with all its ups and downs (pun intended), Dale and I hatched a plan. We would bail on Sport Climbing Systems and start our own company. We'd keep most of the debt, send Dan and Anne packing with all the SCS molds, products, the Roks brand. They'd have to find a place to move. Meanwhile, in the competition, Didier Rabatou topped the prelim route, but was disqualified for a boundary infraction. Catherine Destiville won an appeal on her preliminary attempt to make the final, which she ultimately won over Lynn Hill.

Under cloudy skies, the men's final was delivering the opposite of climbing excitement. Not a single competitor had reached the roof. Many were stuck for what seemed like minutes before popping off well below the swooping arch. At least we had some adrenaline from planning our strategy. The final competitor was finally up. Patrick Edlinger danced up the wall, easily passing everyone's highpoint. Soon he was heel hooking and pulling over the roof. The sun broke out of the clouds, illuminating Le Blonde and his famous mane. He continued his flash to the top and saved the competition. Almost as soon as it was over, Dale and I were racing back to Bend to enact our plan.

On the drive home Dale suggested the name Vertical Concepts. We'd also need a new name for our holds. He wanted to make them all circular bases and suggested calling them Dots, like connecting the dots for this new style of climbing. We made it back to Bend before Dan and Anne and boxed up their stuff. The break-up meeting was not fun, with a "it's you not me" vibe. Sport Climbing Systems had been freeriding at Powroll only five months, but it was long enough. It was now Vertical Concept's turn. The fresh start felt right if just a little traumatic.

With Dan and Anne packing off to Reno, Dale and I launched into full startup mode. He had a friend sketch a new logo using Beth Wald's well known photo of him on Taco Chips at Smith Rock. He coined the term Synthetic Climbing Structures instead of the more common term Artificial Climbing Walls. We collaborated on shaping a new set of holds. Dale got on the phone with retailers and we started getting orders. With his connections he somehow got our advertisement in Rock & Ice for the July 1988 issue. In mid-August, just two months after the World Cup and the break-up, we were at the Outdoor Retailer show in Reno, with a small wall as backdrop for the La Sportiva booth, just a few spots away from Dan and Anne with their Sport Climbing Systems display. Along with Metolius, and soon an Entre Prises USA division with Alan Watts and Chris Grover as founding US investors, the fledgling market was already getting crowded. But we had the only climbable wall at the show, with a steady stream of climbers looking for a pump between the retail gladhanding. During the event we were approached by Margaret Brady, a sales manager at Outdoor Retailer. She wanted to see if we'd build a wall for the show at the next event. She treated us to a fancy dinner, complete with snails, and we agreed to build a wall for the next show.

The trade show euphoria was quickly followed by business realities. We were getting orders, but also had plenty of competition, and zero cash. The money to build a wall for Outdoor Retailer wouldn't come for months. Dale had already borrowed $3500 from his older brother Gary to help us pay our post Snowbird resin bills. Even though we were operating rent free in my parents' back warehouse, we were struggling.

Through it all, Dale kept things positive. His typical daily attire was overalls, Birkenstocks, and...nothing else. We were shaping holds, pouring holds, calling retailers, shipping orders, and designing what we could with our limited resources. He built an adjustable angle crack machine prototype (not his first or last) and shared his story of the first true free ascent of Owl Roof. The first recorded ascent had inadvertently used a human placed chockstone at the lip. With this removed, Dale, Ron Kauk and another stonemaster planned to take turns to work the route. On Dale's attempt everything clicked and he pulled the roof unexpectedly. As he told it, the others were a bit torqued.

Between work tasks we'd zip into Bend in his beat up Camry for his daily espresso. Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give You Up and Bobby McFerrin's Don't Worry Be Happy were Dale's choice of soundtrack. Because we were so broke, he decided he'd forego the espresso so he could save for an espresso machine. This plan was interrupted by his acupuncturist saying he needed to quit coffee so his amped out adrenal gland could recover. All of this was an interesting side show for me, the coffee-abstinent Mormon. Soon Jerry's Juice Bar replaced the espresso trips for shots of wheat grass juice and veggie burgers. Fall was settling into Central Oregon. Maybe we'd get to actually spend time climbing at Smith.

Then Dale got a call from Bob Carmichael to help rig for the upcoming Star Trek V. Bob had been integral to the Snowbird Comp, developing a system for the film crew to zip up and down the wall with the climbers. Dale laid out the opportunity. He'd need to be gone for several weeks but could earn some cash. Was I willing to run Vertical Concepts solo in the interim? I don't remember even questioning it. Soon enough Dale was off to Yosemite and I was back to being a solopreneur, handling sales, production, and a little bit of meager accounting. Dale would check in with tales of helping William Shatner learn to climb with a few Vertical Concepts jugs being bolted to some obscure boulder for practice. He did some networking that resulted in David Lee Roth's team calling about a possible wall. Randy Leavitt, a Dale mentored protege called and started providing great feedback on holds and possible products.

The Star Trek V detour was ultimately the beginning to the end of our brief collaboration with Vertical Concepts. Dale fell in love on set amidst his film related errand running. After several weeks, when the shoot was over, he returned briefly with his new lover. But his heart had a new focus our struggling startup could never sustain. In between his trips from Bend to Malibu, we finished one more wall, loaded up my dad's little Ram pickup, and took a winter trip across Idaho, through Utah and Wyoming to a recreation show at CSU in Fort Collins. We set up our climbing wall amidst some Yurts, a precursor to today's AirBNB glamping. When it was over I drove Dale to the old Stapleton Airport in Denver to meet his lover and said goodbye. My long trip home included a midnight 360 degree spin on a snowy I-80 somewhere in the middle of Wyoming. I was exhausted, alone, and only a couple years away from complete burnout. My semi-adopted big brother was gone.

In truth, Dale hadn't completely given up on Vertical Concepts, but he relocated to Malibu, got into massage therapy, and apparently had a few celebrity clients from actresses to basketball stars. We still owed Gary that borrowed $3500. Dale left his trailer in Oregon by the shop, and it would ultimately get used and then purchased by my next partner, Tim Wilkinson, who brought his young, ambitious entrepreneurial enthusiasm in spurts between finishing his engineering degree at University of Oregon. But I mostly worked alone, and in the growing shadow of Metolius, Entre Prises USA, and the other budding startups springing up everywhere.

I tried collaborating with Boulder artist Ramsay Thomas and sent him to meet with David Lee Roth. Ramsay had several artistic designs including interlocking Escheresque lizard tiles and spherical sperm-like orbs. He was bummed when these were all rejected. Roth reportedly said, "I'm looking for something more spiritual. You know... like a Rock." I was bummed that I didn't take the meeting. I'd have been happy to make him a rock. We did sell him a bunch of holds, but we were chasing the big wall deals and not succeeding. I built a handcrack insert for the second Snowbird World Cup in 1989 but couldn't attend. I heard it spit Isabelle Patissier out and maybe a few others, but I was basically stuck in the shop or on the phones trying to get business. Jeff Lowe flew me to Boulder sometime later to meet with him and Jean-Marc Blanche to possibly collaborate on his planned wall startup and comp series. I met with Lynn Hill and Russ Raffa at Chris Grover's where she recounted her fall off the Styx Wall at Buoux, France when an interruption distracted her from completing her knot. We all brainstormed what might make for better competition formats than what Jeff had pulled off so far. I felt like I was knocking on the inside but never quite entering. My time with Dale was receding into a series of mis-clips.

Eventually I left Vertical Concepts and agreed with Dale that we'd leave it all to Tim, but could Tim please try to get Gary paid back that $3500. I went back to school with no idea that in a few short years I'd be working with Alan Watts at EP USA. After I graduated, Alan hired me as CFO shortly after he moved up to President. We collaborated for a couple of very transformative years, with revenue growth from $900K to $2.2M and our own Jean-Marc Blanche collaboration for an REI wall in Seattle. But Alan was essentially financing the growth with his personal credit. EP France had their own growth issues and the banking sector wasn't ready to take any risk on climbing. Alan was running it out on the business sharp-end, but with big plans for new products, a chain of climbing gyms with all the retail, a perfect vertical integration. We were even discussing folding Vertical Concepts into EP via a merger or acquisition. Unfortunately Alan's 10% position and ambition ran directly into an internal and international power struggle I'd helped to create. Our relatively new design lead went behind Alan to Francois, concerned with Alan's plans and my Vertical Concept's history. It turned out I was also exposed in the runout. Francoise went from telling me "bon courage" just months earlier to blaming our ambitious misalignment on me. In a surprise visit to the Bend EP offices, Francois, with 56% ownership, was shutting all Alan's plans down. My resignation seemed like the best support to Alan at the time. I found myself outside the industry only a decade after placing that first ad in Climbing Magazine. Sport Climbing Systems had years earlier gone bust. Tim grew Vertical Concepts to over $1M, designed some great products like Krimpers and Real Rok panels, but also went out of business, still owing Gary Bard that $3500. I'd take all I learned, including some great accounting and financial survival skills from Alan, and great memories from Dale, into the balance of my career. Ultimately I'd find better ways to feed our eleven kids outside of climbing.

Reunion with Dale

As mentioned, it was decades before Dale and I would reconnect, first my call to him in 2019 and his call to me in 2024. We reminisced about Snowbird, Sport Climbing Systems, Vertical Concepts, wheat grass juice and Star Trek. We recalled that evening in Utah looking for some alcohol before driving to Snowbird. Dale thought it was pretty ironic that all these decades later, he was living in Utah, working at the liquor store, selling alcohol to lapsed Mormons. He shared that while he'd been sober for several years, his doctor had told him recently that a glass of wine was probably good for him for some of his health issues. From being told no coffee all those years ago to having his doctor recommend he drink was something he got a chuckle from. I told him I still felt bad we'd never got Gary paid back that $3500. He said he'd taken care of that years ago. I still felt bad, but was glad for the closure.

I thanked him for calling, told him I'd love to help him with his book, and we agreed to talk soon.

Over the next few months we'd connect a handful of times by text or phone. He'd talk about sending me some chapters to review, about him getting a new laptop, about his health, and about another climbing training product he was working on. He never did get his chapters sent to me though. And then several weeks went by when he didn't answer any texts.

I was starting to get worried when June 23, 2025 he texted: "In hospital...no worries." Then after several more days, July 2, a voice text: "It was a roller coaster journey, but all is good." July 3 another voice text: "It was fun, and I got to do it again today... I'll give you a shout when I know more. Right now, I don't have cancer, so that's a cool thing. I'll talk to you soon."

After a few weeks and more unanswered texts, I called on August 3rd and he picked up. He'd got a new phone and was still setting it up. The doctors still didn't know anything conclusive. He had more tests scheduled. I hoped his health issues weren't a lot more serious than he was letting on.

Then I got an opportunity to visit Moab. My wife was taking a multi-state road trip to visit her sisters. She would finish the trip in Casper, Wyoming. I'd fly to meet her. We could drive home together, stop in Colorado, and then visit Dale in Moab. The only problem was that he wasn't responding again. I was worried enough to call the Moab hospital. HIPPA laws aside, I reached someone that assured me Dale was okay. I was determined to make the trip even though he hadn't replied.

On August 26 my wife and I drove to the state liquor store just off Main in Moab. It was around 11am and I asked if Dale was still working there. They said his shift started in about 30 minutes. Also that they were used to people dropping by to see Dale from all over. I sent him another text letting him know I was there. Maybe he'd gotten his phone working. About 30 minutes later I saw he arrived so I walked in. We hugged. He said it was actually his first day back to work in several weeks. He'd been in and out of the hospital for tests. His phone was still giving him trouble. We made small talk and I mentioned his boss saying he regularly had visitors. He confirmed that, sharing that Chris Grover, my brother Sean's co-conspirator on Churning in the Wake, Smith's first power-bolted sport route, had been by several weeks earlier. In between customers Dale and I would recall one or another story from our early days. He mentioned that the doctors said he did have cancer, but very treatable, and that he wasn't totally convinced he believed them. As the store started getting busier I felt it was time to go. We hugged again. The last thing Dale said was "I really want to work on my book together."

I texted a couple more times after the visit, really looking forward to helping on his book. Then early October 3rd I saw first a reddit post, and then Randy Leavitt's Instagram post that Dale had passed away October 1st. I found another tribute on Facebook. Everyone was sharing their encounters with Dale, both small and epic. Much like what Dale was feeling the night he called me about Mark Chapman, I was feeling a much bigger hole than expected. It had been less than a year since we'd reconnected. A final chance for collaboration was gone. What would happen with Dale's unfinished stories?

Epilogue

On October 7, my phone rang. On the caller ID: Dale Bard. I'll admit my heart skipped a beat, but I knew it wasn't Dale calling from beyond. I wasn't sure who to expect though. It was Jared Ogden, former X Games Climber and author. He'd actually been helping Dale over several years, when he could, including with his most recent health issues. Dale had given him his phone and computer. He was trying to figure out what to do and saw my name in Dale's phone with the note "Kent - Book". We filled each other in on our gaps with Dale's story. I was glad to learn that Dale was less alone than it had seemed.

While my chapter with Dale will go unfinished, I hope his stories will eventually get told. As many have shared, even if you only connected with Dale once in your life, he left an impression. He struggled with too many issues, but always with an extra dose of optimism coming through. He might say now, "I've fallen and I can't get up," but just as quickly he'd be laughing and saying, "I'll see you on the other side."