“I’ve chosen to do hard things that are fun for me. Family creates the joy of the journey. Film is either a mental challenge or proof that I’m mental. Climbing unites my physical and spiritual. For me, socials are the antithesis of the healthy pursuits listed above, however I am trying to log back in for this film stuff.” You can follow him on Instagram (to his ambivalence) @chadheddleston and you can learn more about Catching Pinecones at catchingpinecones.com
Chad's story, "The Misfits", is a feature in SJ 323 about the Conns, two of the most daring and innovative climbers of the 20th century.
Q&A with Writer and Documentarian, Chad Heddleston
Summit Journal: So who is Chad Heddleston aka Rad Chad aka 5.Chad aka Chad from Almost Alpine?
Chad Heddleston: Rad Chad was the man who defined the 5.Chad grade for the modern generation. His struggle was the culmination of poetry and climbing in a mile-long, epic first ascent, which he gifted to his mid-Atlantic home. He was the kind of man to cauterize the wounds on the fires of his passion and climb on. Sadly, he has passed.
Chad from Almost Alpine is a mediocre climber who helped his buddies make a mockumentary over a decade ago. Chad is known mostly for revealing the “world’s greatest belayer, Alpine Jesse” to his adoring fans, the Alpine Jessites. The Alpine Jessites, of course, would go on to reveal how the Petzl company tried to steal the “world’s greatest belayer” title, losing their shirt in the court of public opinion and leaving the Almost Alpine team swimming in free gear for years.
As the chalk of the Almost Alpine ascent cleared the air, a family man with a day job materialized. My name is also Chad. I have become a bonafide filmmaker.
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SJ: You write in The Misfits, the cover article for Summit Journal 323, that you first learned about Jan and Herb Conn in the guidebooks of your youth. At the time, what caught your attention about their routes, and them?
CH: They were the first ones everywhere! As I learned to climb, this couple's name appeared consistently, and I wondered about the bigger story.
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SJ: Why couldn’t you get their story out of your head?
CH: They were a couple first of all. The description I had heard was of a pair swapping leads in symbiosis. How did they get there and does that still exist?
They were vanlifers in the forties! The first ones to summit all those spindly spires in the Needles, what? And then downclimb them. What! They became legendary cavers while living off the grid for their entire adult lives. How?
Because they were still alive, I felt I might someday meet these pioneers of American rock and basically learn all the keys to life.
Photos from “The Misfits”, a feature story by Chad Heddleston, in SJ 323, about Herb and Jan Conn. Here is Herb doing maintenance and repair work on Mt. Rushmore, Black Hills, South Dakota, 1971. Photo by Joe McCully
SJ: What were some of the keys to life that influenced your own growing up?
CH: First, I wanted to climb everything, everywhere, just like they did! I wanted to find the perfect climbing and life partner and to be happy in the process. I learned that they also saw climbing as a somewhat selfish pursuit, but it looked like they had found a balance with a sustainable life. They were kind and giving creatives who seemed to do it all. I wanted to follow their lead.
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SJ: One thing led to another and you eventually produced a documentary about the Conns, Catching Pinecones. First off, do you have a background in documentary filmmaking?
CH: No, I mostly think documentaries are boring.
I made Almost Alpine purely for the fun of it. Hard is fun and so Almost Alpine was a blast! Like climbing, passion projects test our limits and I was proud of the mockumentary we made. It gave me the freedom to consider making a legit film.
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SJ: As we’ve covered, you had experience making a mockumentary, but how did you go about producing a real one?
CH: It started when I bought a flight to South Dakota to meet my hero. I had made some YouTube videos and, obviously, Almost Alpine, but I perceived the Conn story to be way out of my league.
I knew a documentary about the Conns could be phenomenal, but I really didn't think I was the guy. First, I wanted to hang with Jan.
I was considering a YouTube short but also knew that would do them no justice. In the end, any filming Jan would let me do could go to some real filmmakers' effort. I had a minute between jobs and wanted to hear the story.
Jan climbing in the Needles, early 1950s. Photo from the Herb and Jan Conn Collection
SJ: What was it like meeting Jan for the first time? What did you expect and how did that correspond with reality?
CH: She exceeded all expectations. She was so kind and wanted to hear my story as much as I wanted to hear hers. Hardy and petite with an ear-to-ear grin for the world, she very much lived up to the Hobbitesque descriptions I had heard.
Watching a woman in her 90s split wood with her human-powered splitter on a breezy December day in SD, it was easy to visualize her on top of those tiny spires wearing dime-store tennis shoes 70 years ago. When I climbed a bunch of those things myself, it blew my mind.
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SJ: Can you talk to the process of researching their story? Did you go to any cobwebbed and sooty libraries to find old guidebooks? How did serendipity or whimsy play into the process?
CH: It was more old climbers' cabins than sooty libraries. There, serendipity and whimsy was omnipresent, and we called it all Conn Magic.
By the time I first met Jan, I had read the Wikipedia page and gone down quite a few internet rabbit holes. I felt like I knew a lot. Jan said the story was all already out there and there really was a ton, but it was in so many places. My main focus was to talk with and interview as many people as I could because I wanted to hear the stories.
I bought as many of the primary source materials as I could find online. The old guidebooks, videos, and other archival materials were mostly a byproduct of talking to the people.
I also leaned heavily on the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club (PATC) online archive. The Conns were the first editors of a bi-weekly publication for the club in 1944, and they chronicled many of their adventures there. So many of those stories became completely forgotten by everyone else but I had read up and could just ask Jan the details.
Her memory was crystal clear and she could give details about all of it!
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SJ: What’s your favorite Conn story?
CH: So many.
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SJ: Fair enough, which of their FAs most impresses you?
CH: I like the one about the time they got the first ascent of the strictly prohibited face of Rushmore. The tenuous permission was for “certain close-up pictures” for the park service’s official files.
They proceeded to climb an impressive route to the west, “on forbidden rock”. Onward they went, behind the faces, crossing creaking wooden bridges, peering into the Hall of Records, and descended a compressed air pipe before “scrambling to the shoulder” (George Washington's). Then they fired the line between GW and TJ [Thomas Jefferson], passing a “ticklish step” on the lead. After snatching the FA they remembered the camera.
Unfortunately, the sun was now too low in the sky to capture images in the fading light. Ha!
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SJ: What have you taken away from getting to know the Conns better?
CH: Fun and perspective.
For me, it was a way to learn from the elders of the tribe, to examine what they learned and try to apply the parts that work for me.
They asked themselves, what do I really want? What should I back away from? They thought deeply and chose for themselves. These are questions we can all ask. If we find our answers and commit, we can all catch a pinecone.
