A Climber We Lost: TM Herbert

You can read the full tribute to Climbers We Lost in 2024 here.

Lifelong rock climber TM Herbert died on March 23, aged 87. Herbert played a key role in some of the most iconic ascents of Yosemite Valley’s “Golden Age,” notably the first ascent of El Capitan’s Muir Wall with Yvon Chouinard in 1965. This was the first route on the formation established by a two-man team, without any fixing or advance recon. Herbert also partnered with Royal Robbins for the first ascent of El Cap’s West Face in 1967.

Born in Utah but raised in Southern California, TM Herbert began climbing at Tahquitz in the late 1950s—sending 5.9 when it was the hardest grade in the sport—and, later, after moving to Berkeley, became a Yosemite Valley fixture.

Herbert was an indefatigable force on the wall, an explorer of big, long vertical routes when these routes weren’t just big or long but do-or-die endeavors. They took days—sometimes weeks. Gear was homemade. Rescue? Out of the question. Herbert’s climbs were on the rim of imagination, fantastical in commitment and depth.

“We had a philosophy of climbing these things, not conquering them, but conquering ourselves, and leaving no trace of having been there,” explained Chouinard in “Legacy on the Muir,” a short film documenting his and Herbert’s ascent of the Muir Wall, and the Herbert’s son Tom’s later attempt to set a speed record.

TM Herbert never pushed his way into the limelight like some of his contemporaries, who went on to found outdoor gear and apparel brands, become sponsored climbers, or journey to big mountains in the far-flung ranges of the world. Instead, he continued climbing in the Valley, particularly in Tuolumne Meadows. As the Golden Age climbers drifted on, Herbert roped up with the next generations, first the Stone Masters of the 1970s and 1980s, later the Stone Monkeys of the 1990s.

Though he moved to Reno at the turn of the century to be closer to his grandchildren, Herbert remained a Valley regular throughout his life, regularly free soloing his beloved South Crack (5.8) on Stately Pleasure Dome well into his mid-70s. “He soloed that route perhaps four or five hundred times,” Tom Herbert said. “He’d scare the shit out of climbers. Seeing this old guy come climbing up there without a rope. I mean, I didn’t like him soloing, but if you’re that old… if you’re going to die, climbing isn’t a bad way to go. And he never did.”

As climbing became more difficult, Herbert kept up his love for the outdoors by hiking and bird-watching, and remained popular around Yosemite as a master storyteller and jokester. In his later years, stifled by Alzheimers and dementia, he moved first into an assisted living facility and then a group home, but he remained upbeat. “Two weeks before his passing, we walked together and he introduced me as his twin brother to the staff as a joke,” Tom wrote in an obituary for his father.

Herbert’s memorial on November 7 could have easily been mistaken for a gathering of who’s who in American climbing. Former rope partners and friends who gathered to pay their respects included Ron Kauk, Peter Croft, Dick Long, Don Lauria, and Yvon Chounaird, to list just a few of the most recognizable. Other of Herbert’s rope mates who have passed on but are certainly welcoming Herbert into their ranks above include Chuck Pratt, Royal Robbins, John Bachar, and Tom Frost.

Many other climbers memorialized Herbert on SuperTopo and Mountain Project, sharing an array of near-mythic tales, like the time Herbert caught a partner with one hand when he fell from their shared belay (“TM’s hand slammed around my wrist like some kind of a sprung trap … I knew he had a black belt in karate, but I had never seen it.”)

In the threads below Tom Herbert’s memorial, Don Lauria relayed letters he and his wife often received from TM, full of statements too ribald to be republished here, noting that Herbert’s “humor was scathing yet harmless; coarse, yet witty. He uses vulgarity in a way that defies abhorrence—instead, one is unabashedly amused. … To edit Herbert is to mute Beethoven—you lose the essence.”

Herbert’s first name, TM, was not an initialism (à la T.M.), but exactly was what was written on his birth certificate. Herbert’s father had named him TM after his own father, who had always gone by the initials, without having known what they stood for. “It was the bane of his existence throughout his life,” joked Tom, “starting with his birth certificate, and ending when he died. We couldn’t get him cremated for a week, because the state couldn’t understand his name.”

For his entire life, TM Herbert never knew the real meaning of these two letters. Only after he died did his family uncover records indicating that—in his grandfather’s name—the initials had stood for Thomas McCool. It is perhaps indicative of his character that TM Herbert never went to the trouble of changing his name, nor even finding out what it stood for. Tom Herbert said his father would simply tell you his name stood for, “Tough Mother.”

“Hours before he passed, I sat with him,” Tom wrote. “He stared at his poster of Yosemite on the wall. He said, ‘That is the most beautiful place I have ever been.’ He talked about how much he loved being a Yosemite guide. I told him he was my hero. He will be dearly missed.”

You can read the full tribute to Climbers We Lost in 2024 here.

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