Bruce Cox

Summit of Seneca Rocks – ECP Rock School June 2009

Where It All Started

In 1958 my 7th grade Junior High School Geography teacher and ECP founder, Dr. Ivan Jirak, took me and the rest of the Geography Club to Seneca Rocks. I don’t remember much about the trip other than Princess Snowbird was owned by some old guy named Buck and I was more scared crossing the old Army swinging bridge at Roy Gap road than leading a pitch of Old Man’s with rusty old Army pitons, steel beniers and a hammer. Much has changed over the years from those first boyhood adventures to Himalayan mountaineering and almost everything in between the ECP has offered.  

Mountains, Rock, Ice and More

With Sir Edmund Hillary between Kumjung and Namche Bazaar with the successful ECP Ama Dablam Expedition

• Student of Dr. Ivan Jirak,(ECP founder) in Jr. High School -where it all started
• Student and Instructor in the AK Adventure Sport School of Ivan Jirak’
• Adventure Sport Instructor  at CCAC – 5+ years
• ECP Rock School Instructor and present Co-director
• ECP charter Mountaineering School Instructor and co-director and present Committee Member
• Current ECP Secretary, past V.P and Librarian.
• ECP Flag Member
• Student of Dunham Gooding – American Alpine School
• Ex-ACC Member, member of Conservation Committee and charter member of what is now the Access Fund .Founded local Access Fund and was the first local Access Fund represenitive in Pennsylvania and Ohio.
• Co winner of the American Alpine Club New York section Golden Carabineer Award for our successful Ama Dablam climb in Nepal.
• Consummate ECP “We Do It All” –Vertical Caving, XC Sking, Scuba, Orienteering, Backpacking all seasons, White Water all types, Hang Gliding, Rock, Ice Climbing Skydiving, MOUNTAINEERING and leader of the Infamous ECP South Side Traverse first “decent-origin of “You all Will Die” motto”
• Rock Climbing – All over Eastern US, first ascents Seneca Rocks, to many classics to list or remember at the Gunks, Daks, Stone Mountain, Champ Rocks and the New having been “druged” up several first ascents by infamous climbers of the era.
• Ice Climbing – Local Pgh Area, Pioneer routes on Elk and Walnut Ck, climbs in the Whites and Daks
• Mountain Trips To – Western Rockies, Cascades, Peru, Bolivia, Kenya, Nepal, Slovenian Alps
• Current Wilderness First Responder
• Favorite book climbing books: Freedom of the Hills (the bible) and  Downward Bound-Warren Harding

Avid Fly Fisherperson/ Fly Tier-part time guide/instructor – desire to fish all places that I climbed and share this new outdoor avocation to all “experienced” climbers who are ready. As John Markwell, past owner of the Gendarme Climbing Store at Seneca said when I told him that I took up fly fishing, “You know allot of the folks (meaning experienced climbers) are doing that now! The similarities to climbing are spectacular. Ask me about it sometime.

The Now

At this point I am overjoyed to “be around” and be able to get up some climbs but more blessed to be around the new climbers in our club that I call friends. It is with this new sense of adventure I wish to “pay forward” to both the students and instructors whatever I have learned and experienced so they may continue the ever expanding circle of safe, competent and successful ECP Mountaineers.

Angeda Kemaron -Facing the Wind from Every Direction
Mt. Urus, Cordillera Blanca, Peru