05/26/2026
A customer brought this in this week. Shoshone Topographics, by Kirt Cozzens, 1983, one of the very first real climbing guides to our local area. Typewritten descriptions with hand-drawn maps and topos, photocopied and ring-bound on blue cardstock, and the old Sunlight sticker still right there on the cover, faded but holding on.
Five sections cover the canyon, Cedar and Rattlesnake: The Boulder Gardens, The Bridge Bands, The Island, Inner Canyon, and the Dam Area. Routes inked onto careful sketches of the rock, with names that came from the people who were actually up there first, back when there was no one to ask whether anyone else had already done the line.
In the opening note Kirt writes: "Due to the lack of climbing history in the canyon this guide is selective and may not include older routes which have not been called to my attention. Any information concerning routes old or new, changes in ratings, general information, and climbing history in the area would be deeply appreciated by the author. Good Climbing."
There are hundreds of routes documented in Shoshone Canyon now, across books and apps and Mountain Project pages with star ratings and comments and the whole modern apparatus, and none of it exists without Kirt. He owned Alpine Style here in Cody, put in the years it takes to actually know a place, and developed a lot of those early routes with a small group of locals, including Mark Twight, who lived here at the time - and whose job application is still in our files.
Climbing Magazine ran a piece on Kirt in their "A Climber We Lost" series. Worth reading if you want to understand who he was. https://www.climbing.com/culture-climbing/a-climber-we-lost-kirt-cozzens/
Grateful to the customer who brought it by.
