Early Life
Chouinard's father was a French-Canadian handyman, mechanic, plumber. In 1946, he and his family moved from Maine to Southern California. His early climbing partners included Royal Robbins and Tom Frost. A Sierra Club member, in his youth he founded the Southern California Falconry Club, and it was his investigations of falcon aeries that led him to rock climbing. To save money, and make adaptations for the way he was climbing, he decided to make his own climbing tools, teaching himself blacksmithing, and eventually started a business.
In 1971, Chouinard met and married his wife, Malinda Pennoyer, who was an art and home economics student at California State University, Fresno. They have a son (Fletcher) and a daughter (Claire).
Read more about this topic: Yvon Chouinard
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“We passed the Children’s Bureau bill calculated to prevent children from being employed too early in factories.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“The melancholy of having to count souls
Where they grow fewer and fewer every year
Is extreme where they shrink to none at all.
It must be I want life to go on living.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)