On February 5th, 2023, while Gary Slate was traveling to a church meditation group he suffered a high-speed solo spin-off car accident. The accident left him paralyzed from his chest down. Since then he's had a series of infections and been in and out of the hospital. Now is his time of need.

Gary Slate was a pioneering rock climber who did early ascents of some of El Capitan's hardest routes, and left a slew of awesome first ascents across Northern California. I was lucky enough to join him him on a number of cutting edge climbs, including Flappers(12c) in the Whitney Portal(the hardest route in the Portal at the time), Helter Skelter(5.13a), the hardest pure slab route I ever did, and the ever popular route Shipoopi(5.12a), arguably the best route in Tuolumne Meadows. But his real tour de force was his guidebook Rock Climbs The Sierra East Side", coauthored with Errett Allen. This single volume documented all Mammoth to Bishop area rock climbs prior to the 1980's. Every guidebook since then has drafted off this masterpiece, preserving past generations work, and paving the way for the guidebooks of the future.

If any of you reading this has ever done a boulder problem, a sport or trad climb on the East Side of the Sierra, then you owe Gary a favor for starting to document all these climbs. Let us help him out in his greatest time of need.

Thank you,

Steve Schneider, Oakland, CA