Merrill Bitter, Salt Lake City, Utah: an interview by Matt Driscoll, 2011

Merrill Bitter, Salt Lake City, Utah: an interview by Matt Driscoll, 2011

Bitter, Merrill (1953 - 2022)

2011-09-19

Merrill Bitter (b. 1953. d. 2022), born in Salt Lake City, was first introduced to the outdoors in Michigan in the Boy Scouts. He got into climbing in the mid-1970s with a course at Timberline Sports instructed by Dave Smith and Mark Freed, and was hooked for life. In a lifetime of climbing he has climbed with numerous well-known Utah climbers, from Bret and Stuart Ruckman, to Jeff Newsome and many others. He remembers the big 1980s climbers, Brian and Jonathan Smoot, Les Ellison, the Ruckman brothers, and Kim Miller. Mr. Bitter talks about climbing styles, his favorite climbs in Utah and outside the state, and the value of travel in learning new styles and knitting the climbing community together. More interested in movement than in simply being outdoors, he discusses the evolution of the Utah climbing gym scene and also emphasizes the importance of diet in his own climbing. Project: Outdoor Recreation. Interviewer: Matt Driscoll.

Outdoor recreation

Rock climbing

Outdoor Recreation Oral History Project

Mountain West Digital Library

English

https://utah-primoprod.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/primo-explore/fulldisplay?docid=digcoll_uuu_11uum_elc/1750979&context=L&vid=MWDL