Aspirants Mountain Cartoon Story

Loose rock! Unsafe steep chutes at almost 14,000 feet but what do the naive upstarts know? The story depicted in these cartoons, one likely recognizable to so many aspirant mountain climbers, really happened. I took some expressionistic liberties here as far as a precise profile and name of the mountain in question, but the spirit of the experience remains accurate as far as I can remember.

The originals are woodcut block prints. I use coated cherry oil-based inks and do my own cutting and printing. A contributor too many underground comix in the 1970s, I sidestepped from my manufacturing design and fine arts backgrounds into the bottom feeder world of cartooning and animated films. For a while I taught drawing and printmaking, then finally bought my own press and started full-scale making of multi-colored block prints. I prefer the hands-on labor intensity to the obedience of sitting in front of a computer.