Page 68 - EarthHeroes

Yvon was born in Maine, USA, in 1938 and lived there until he was eight,
when his family moved to California. His family was French–Canadian and
in Maine he had gone to a French- speaking school. He found life at his new school lonely and difficult at first
because he couldn’t speak English. Instead of playing football or baseball with the
other children, he spent much of his time by himself, biking miles to the park or playing
around ponds where he could fish and hunt for frogs, crayfish and rabbits.
In his teens, Yvon joined a falconry club to train hawks and falcons for hunting. He and his friends would abseil
down rock faces so that they could look into the falcons’ nests. One day they met some people climbing up the
cliff instead of down. Yvon was excited by the idea of rock climbing and gave it a try. Soon he was hooked.
Aged 16, he headed off in an old Ford car he had rebuilt himself and spent the summer climbing. After leaving college,
Yvon spent most of his time travelling and climbing and became an expert at the sport. But he began to feel unhappy with the pitons – metal spikes that climbers hammer into the rock to help
them climb – because they had to be left behind, littering the rock face. Yvon borrowed money from his parents to buy an old forge and anvil,
set himself up in the old chicken coop behind his parents’ house and taught himself to become a blacksmith so he could make pitons that could be removed. In between climbing and surfing trips, he supported himself by selling pitons and other climbing tools that he’d made. He didn’t have much money. In fact,
he was so poor that on one trip to the Rocky Mountains he ate dented tins of cat food he’d bought cheaply, along with porridge, squirrels and porcupines.
But his pitons became very popular, and Yvon was able to hire some friends to work with him. By the time he was 30, his business – Chouinard Climbing Equipment – had grown to be the biggest climbing gear company in America. Throughout this time, he continued climbing in mountain ranges all over the world, while his team looked after his business.
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